The Democratic votes on the pair of resolutions from Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., were not enough to overcome universal opposition from Republicans.
Still, the votes represented a watershed moment in the party’s relationship with Israel and the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Israel had continued to enjoy strong support from Democratic leaders, despite outrage from the base over the war on Gaza. Sanders said the votes signaled that party leaders are finally taking note.
“This is where the American people are. The polls are very clear: The overwhelming majority of American people do not want to continue to give weapons to Netanyahu and his horrific wars in the Mideast,” he said. “I think the Democrats have caught on to that. It took a little while, but they caught on to that. But Republicans, I think, are standing in opposition to millions of their own supporters.”
Does this mean the tankies are actually going to vote in the midterms?
Or are they just going to have a harder time coming up with excuses why Democrats are so bad that it’s better just to let Republicans hold onto power?
Why do you care what tankies think? Do you need their help to win elections?
87 million eligible voters didn’t vote in 2024.
Anyone out there encouraging leftists not to vote is only helping republicans.
Which is more likely: a Tankie being convinced to vote Democrat or the Democratic leadership rejecting genocide? Like yes voter apathy is helping Republicans, but the cure isn’t “voter discipline”, it’s having a party that listens to its constituents.
Schumer and Jeffries are unapologetic zionists and should be replaced, but I don’t follow the logic that says we need to desert the entire democratic party, when they’re the only viable opposition to republicans who aren’t merely permissive of israel’s genocide but actively encourage and participate in it.
Leftists will vote for leftists
How will leftists vote for leftists if leftists won’t run?
Cornel west was a leftist
If anything, that’s only an argument against running as an independent in a presidential election. Also, it helps the republicans win.
Besides, naming one or two leftists who have run for office isn’t much of an argument against the fact that most state, local, and congressional elections don’t have any leftists or progressives running in the primaries.
If you want the democratic party to fix itself, show it that progressive/leftist policy is a winning campaign strategy. That’s how the system works, and like it or not, if you don’t participate in it then you don’t get to complain when it doesn’t go your way.
Doesn’t every state have a green party? And most have communist parties?
I don’t want the Democrats to go left. They’ve always been Conservative, and moving them to the center would be an enormous, unlikely, and a huge waste of resources
How many seats on the ballot in each of those states have a candidate from one of those parties?
Also, DSA are a caucus within the Democratic party. If you think DSA are conservatives, then I might as well put my brain in the microwave for all the good it’ll do trying to reason with you.
No. Since we hold all the cards and the democrats can’t win without us. We’re waiting on every conservative democrat to apologize to us for their support of a genocide before we let the democrats hold office again.
If you really support the democrats you should be groveling for forgiveness in your response. If you refuse, I’ll be bringing that up at the next tankie meeting.
Republicans get a pass though?
No. Abraham Lincoln was the last republican us tankies voted for. We don’t normally vote republican.
But that doesn’t sound like groveling to me. So I guess you do want republicans to win. Which is a shame, becuase I really wanted democrats to win and was going to vote for them. But since you’re not groveling I can’t.
But it makes sense, Trump is attacking our ‘greatest adversary’ ensuring we have ‘the most lethal fighting force in the world’ and continuing the genocide. So you’re getting what you voted for either way.
But the all powerful tankies have made our decision and there was nothing the poor, powerless, helpless president of the United States, Joe Biden or his VP could have done. They couldn’t have stopped the funding for the genocide, Kamala couldn’t have run on popular polices like Medicare for all or against militarism. The democrats were just poor little guys, helpless to stop the all-powerful tankies. Muahahaha
I’ll never understand why anyone would vote for someone who supports republican/Trump policies… SAD :(
Bruh, I’m not even the other guy you responded to, so maybe cool your jets a bit. I’m also not a Democrat. I’m not even US. I was poking fun at “We won’t let Democrats hold office until they apologise for genocide” by wondering whether you’d let Republicans hold office then, or whether they’d need to apologise too.
Me not begging you for forgiveness for a party’s policies means I want the other party to win? That’s one hell of a false equivalence.
It also implies that you’d rather let Republicans win if the Democrats don’t come crawling, in which case I don’t see the meaningful difference between actively or passively supporting the Republicans.
Oh I understand your confusion now. Let me clarify. We tankies only have the magical powers to control if democrats win office that conservative democrats think we have. We can’t control who actually wins. If a Green, PSL or, Republican candidate got enough votes there’s nothing us tankies could do. Sorry.
And don’t feel bad about your confusion, it’s a common misconception. Especially for someone not from the US, you must be unfamiliar with US politics and culture. Everyone in America knows about this, it’s just like the three shells.
You not groveling will probably be fine… probably. You’re not from the US as we’ve already established. But if you were a conservative American democrat that wanted democrats to win, the tankies have already decided that if they don’t see groveling they won’t use their democrats winning power. I’m sorry that’s all I can divulge from the tankie meeting at this time. But just know we have greater considerations for our choices.
I personally was an advocate for the democrats winning in the last meeting but I’m just one tankie.
If Republicans start apologizing for their mistakes then we can talk. Never will happen though, best we get is “I was wrong this time but I learned nothing”
I’ve got nothing to grovel for your forgiveness for. Not sure if you’re serious about the tankie meeting thing, but that’s a lame-ass thing to say, and I really don’t give a shit if you all decide to waste your time complaining about some random lemming who has the gall to remind you that letting republicans win to spite the democrats is fucking idiotic.
Maybe if you would vote in the fucking primaries then you could replace more conservative democrats with progressives. Maybe if you would vote at all then democrats would court the left-wing voting bloc more instead of considering it a lost cause and courting the center/right. But abstaining from the political process and then complaining when you don’t get your way and blaming everyone else is asinine.
Yeah that presidential primary last election rocked, can’t wait for the next one.
Man I remember when Bernie was in the primaries. It was totally normal and he didn’t win for totally normal reasons in spite of the very cool democratic party supporting him.
There wasn’t one last election. Sure, that sucks and it was wrong, but that’s no reason not to vote in this one. That’s terrible logic.
And sure, the DNC fucked Bernie and that sucked and was wrong too. But again, that’s no reason not to vote in this year’s primaries, especially for congressional, state, and local positions (which can help turn the tide at the DNC).
I never said the democratic party is cool or moral or anything like that. I said the republican party is worth opposing, even if we have to hold our noses to do so.
Arguments like yours helped maga get back into power, and are helping them stay in power.
“maybe if you vote in primaries blah blah blah progressives get elected” - paraphrasing
Never claimed to be a tankie.
Made it clear that argument is fucking stupid (historically)
I was with you until that line. The democrats are responsible for being unpopular, not tankies.
Both things can be true. The DNC could court progressives instead of centrists and “moderate republicans.” They don’t, and that’s on them. (But again, that’s no reason why leftists shouldn’t participate and try to steer the DNC towards the left).
At the same time, the US has a two-party, FPTP system. It’s fundamentally broken and we can’t expect it to give us perfect candidates. The electoral system itself needs to be drastically reformed before it can truly serve the people’s interests rather than the elites, and encourage quality candidates rather than bombastic mudslingers.
In the meantime, leftists shouldn’t abandon pragmatism. Sometimes you have to hold your nose and take a harm-reduction approach. Sometimes you can bargain for incremental progress, and absolutely should whenever the opportunity presents itself, but that’s not always the case.
But this idea that “I won’t settle for anything less than perfect” is really defeatist in addition to being idealistic, and not the mentality we should embrace. It leads to burnout and nihilism, not progress.
We have all interacted with tankies that act like that, but they were never going to vote anyways. For everyone else, not supporting a genocide is not asking for perfection. Characterizing it as such is only going to push those voters towards the tankies.
Yep. This guy could try to characterize people however he wants but it’s reductionist and silly. Harris didn’t get elected because she refused to stop supporting the genocide. Full stop. The heart of the issue is policy and refusal to represent the American people.