If you go to university and do any kind of field that involves essay writing, you’ll learn to use a thesis statement to summarise your argument so people know what you’re arguing for. You’ve provided some evidence, but it’s entirely unclear what your position is in this conversation other than “the democrats do bad things sometimes”. If your entire position is “the democrats do bad things sometimes”, then great job! We’re all very proud of you for proving the democrats do bad things sometimes. Now go do your fucking job developing the Lemmy software, because this software is full of issues and the grownups are talking about important issues that actually have a point.

Karl Marx said:

The relationship of the revolutionary workers’ party to the petty-bourgeois democrats is this: it cooperates with them against the party which they aim to overthrow; it opposes them wherever they wish to secure their own position.

What that means in the American system is we vote against liberals in the primaries, and we vote for them against the fascists. America doesn’t have ranked choice voting, but voting socialist in the primaries and left (out of the two candidates presented) in the generals is the closest approximation. This is the Karl Marx approved strategy, as you can see from his speech to the Communist League.

Now let’s talk about this meme. It’s fake news. There was no Alligator Auschwitz under the Democrats. Guantanamo Bay wasn’t a concentration camp for immigrants under the Democrats. I submit that the Democrats are at least 1% better than the Republicans, and that this proves the meme is fake news. And if anyone replies to this comment and says well 1% isn’t good enough, I’m going to accuse you of moving the goalposts, because this meme says colour is the only difference. The meme doesn’t say 1% less people get run over by the trolley, and I think there are at least 1% fewer state caused deaths under the Democrats.

Lmao I read that whole entire comment, and it wasn’t easy, and it’s all frantic backpedaling.

For the record I think the study you’re citing makes a methodological mistake by applying an issues based measurement framework in a representative democracy, but I have no intention of elaborating because you’re not arguing in good faith and you’re just going to waste everyone’s time.

Anyway next time post the version of the study that actually passed peer review and got published, not a draft.

Closer than my attempt at nuance? I didn’t know I made an attempt at nuance yet. I thought I just vaguely gestured towards the nuance and said it exists. Can you please explain what my position is on how much I think voting can accomplish so I’m all caught up with the conversation?

See, the problem with Dessalines’ meme is that it uses “work” as a binary category. As in, something either has no effect or it completely restructures society. It is absolutely true that electoralism can’t completely restructure society, and there are many valid explanations for why that is in communist theory. However, Dessalines reveals his lack of understanding by equating completely restructuring society with “working”.

If we were to construct a true binary between working and not working, it would be between having zero effect, and having any effect, no matter how small. The beating of a butterfly’s wings has some effect on the world, and could theoretically contribute towards a tornado that sucks up all the bourgeoisie and allows the workers to democratise the means of production. So obviously voting has some tiny effect, since it’s stronger than a butterfly’s wings. Voting works, in other words. But that’s a virtually meaningless statement if we’re constructing a binary as Dessalines did.

The correct approach is to ask “how much can voting accomplish”, and with that question we can actually arrive at an answer with some nuance and a justification from within the theory. But the binary question Dessalines asks can afford no nuance, and is obviously not supported by theory or anything else. Which proves that even if Dessalines read theory, he didn’t understand much of it.

Your use of “work” is doing a lot of heavy lifting and is very reductive. I’d recommend reading theory until you properly understand the issue, Dessalines.

Ninetyies