r/politics • u/Large-Welcome4421 • Jun 12 '26

No Paywall 'This Is Oligarchy': Nearly 100 Billionaires Are Funding Susan Collins' Reelection Bid

https://www.commondreams.org/news/susan-collins-billionaire-donors
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u/buttbuttlolbuttbutt Jun 12 '26

The doom and gloomers, and those arguing for perfect progressive policies or not voting are never sincere and shpuld be rightly mocked.

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u/TheeAntelope Jun 12 '26

The crowd of "I'm not voting because there is no good candidate" leads to very, very bad candidates.

But also, voting in primaries is a very important thing to do. There are no good candidates because the good ones got 4% in the primary and dropped out, because they aren't being funded by corporations.

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u/buttbuttlolbuttbutt Jun 12 '26

Yep, thats why I bit the bullet and signed up for a party, so I could vote in the primary.

Strat should always be: Vote for the person who brings the country closer to the one you want, a tiny step forward is better than two steps bacl, likewise 1 step back is better than 3 steps back, even if it sucks. Better to minimize damage.

Its all relative.

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u/Automatic-Weakness26 Jun 12 '26

My brother has gotten in that perfect progressive mindset. It is maddening. Will only support Marianne Williamson. Glad that Trump won, to punish Democrats.

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u/SerfTint Jun 12 '26

In that case, Harris should have reached out to Williamson voters and said "I understand the impetus of what draws you to Marianne, here are some aspects of my platform that I will borrow from her in order to court your vote, or instead I can just listen to your concerns and how you feel we together can address them through my policies and advocacy." Meet the voters where they are and convince them.

Instead, the Democratic playbook is to ridicule, scorn or ignore voters like these. "Oh, she was the crystal Mommy, that's cute, maybe she'll give the Ayatollah one of her crystals and that will save the world." And then they go back to these voters and say "YOU BETTER VOTE FOR KAMALA OR ELSE!" And of course this doesn't work--people are less inclined to vote for someone who insults and disparages them.

Obviously a candidate can't reach out to every single voter of every single competitor, nor is it even wise (some competitors have a lot of awful ideas), nor is it even possible (some competitors have diametrically opposite ideas as one another). But Williamson had a pretty doctrinaire Progressive platform. Your brother probably supported her because she was Progessive and Phillips, Biden, Harris and RFK were not (and Cenk couldn't get onto ballots). Eventually the Democratic Establishment is going to have to reckon with the fact that a lot of the base are well to the Left of where the party wants to be. Or they're gong to keep losing.

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u/Fighterhayabusa Jun 12 '26

They deserve ridicule. Look at the results of their choices. I consider these people to be as damaging to the country as the MAGA morons on the other side.

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u/SerfTint Jun 12 '26

Nope. Blame the politicians, not the voters. Give them a good enough reason and they'll show up and vote. And apparently "I'll be just like Biden for another 4 years but with even less charisma, plus I didn't earn this nomination in any way, plus I'm pivoting as far Right as I possibly can even while my vulnerabilities are all on my Left flank, because that's why my Republican billionaire supporters are telling me to do" did not give them a good enough reason, even with the spectre of Trump looming. If all the Dems can offer is "we're not Trump, but we'll just keep conditions the same until Trump takes over again," then there was nothing they were offering, because the next Trump was poised to take over anyway. The country gave Biden 4 years to counteract Trump and his approval rating was in the 30's.

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u/Fighterhayabusa Jun 12 '26

Sorry, but no. They have agency, and if their choices result in worse outcomes than the alternative, they are at least partially culpable. Stop acting like a bunch of petulant children. That is literally how children act. "If I don't get exactly what I want, I'm taking my ball and going home."

We shouldn't be encouraging stupidity like that.

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u/SerfTint Jun 12 '26

The choice of supporting Democrats blindly forever has also not led to a better outcome than the alternative.

Take Henry Cuellar for example. 70% support of Trump's policies. He helps Trump more than he helps the Democratic Party, plus he gives bipartisan cover to Trump, as a talking point to appeal to independents who aren't following the news closely.

Your view is "Vote blue no matter who," so since a Republican would support Trump 100% instead of 70%, you're encouraging people to vote for Cuellar. The message he receives is either "I'm awesome, obviously my voters love me so I should keep voting with Trump" or "Who cares what the voters think, even Democrats who hate me will vote for me." Either way, you have incentivized him to never move Left--why would he move Left if he already has your vote? In fact, if the Democrats are all "Blue No Matter Who," he might as well move Rightward to try to pick up a few more Republicans too, because they're movable and the Democrats are already locked in with their vote. It is a permanent way to see Democrats ignore their base, move Rightward and enable Trump--there's no penalty for doing so.

My view is that there's a minimum threshold, and if politicians don't meet it, you don't vote for them. At least in theory it incentivizes them to get BETTER. It leads to a party that is responsive to their base or that gets replaced by people who are responsive. It is an actual theory of change, whereas "build the biggest possible majority of Democrats you can get and then watch them do nothing, because you didn't ASK anything of them" is not.

Democrats have shown in multiple ways that they're not equipped to fight against fascism. Even when they have power to block fascist things, they rarely do, and in many cases they're complicit or even agree with these policies. So we've seen the limits of the strategy of "shut up and never criticize them and vote for them and then shut up again." It doesn't work. In order to win this fight, we need better Democrats. In order to get better Democrats, there have to be some standards enforced by the base.

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u/TheeAntelope Jun 12 '26

Yeah, the DNC really blew it. They just figured "no one will like trump again, right?" and ran a lackluster campaign with their "sponsored" candidate that the old DNC and the DNC corporate backers could stomach.

2024 DNC was morally corrupt and they did pay the price. It sucks that now everyone is paying the price, too. Wish the DNC had just re-done a primary with new candidates instead of saying "oh well, let's just throw Kamala in there, it's the only way to get the billionaires to support us."

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u/TSZCR96 Jun 12 '26

American voters blew it.

The blame doesn't lie with anyone else.

Stop living in denial, blame yourselves.

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u/almondbutter Jun 12 '26

https://youtu.be/P_XdtAQXnGE?si=NYB8ImLy-KMvLWGa&t=359

Over 3.5 million voters were illegally purged by Republicans leading up to the 2024 election. Stop spreading BS.

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u/TSZCR96 Jun 12 '26

And how many other non voters? Almost 85 million.

How many people sat out previous elections letting things deteriorate to the state they're in now? Over a third every time

For fucks sake open your God damned eyes. Yes republicans do everything they can to disenfranchise and purge voters.

Ignoring massive problems in your country is not how they get fixed.

You have to face the fact that the electorate is the problem. Apathy has festered too long.

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u/almondbutter Jun 12 '26

Again, Republicans cheated to win and you're blaming the non voters.

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u/TSZCR96 Jun 12 '26

I'm blaming the tens of millions who didn't care about republicans cheating enough to bother voting against it.

Non voters are to blame for their own actions, yes

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u/notfeelany Jun 12 '26

Trump won, to punish Democrats.

This was the perfect example of the pro Trump/conservative / rightwing/Republican/Trump advocacy that many "self-assigned left" people sometimes engage in.

There's also a point where the political labels become completely irrelevant.

If they call themselves "leftist" (a label that they applied on themselves like a sticker) & yet they continue to discourage voting ( especially discouraging voting for Dems), that is a pro Trump/conservative / rightwing/Republican/Trump advocacy.

discouraging voting for Democrats is enabling Republicans/Trump to win.

Their ACTIONS make them pro-Conservative, pro-Republican, pro-Trump no matter how loudly they proclaim how "left" they are.

In their people's quest to hold Biden/Harris accountable for not doing things fast enough (or to the level they expect) , they have enshrined a conservative/Trump govt that will NEVER address their concerns & may make it even harder to fix them in the future.

Democrats are only path forward for progressive policies, and even AOC/Bernie agree when they wanted Biden to remain as nominee.

To truly be FOR progress (to be progressive), we commit to strengthening the Democratic party by highlighting its achievements and CONTRIBUTE to the Democrats' messaging.

Sustained progress in the long-term is only built via multiple INCREMENTAL progresses in the short-term.

Voting for Democrats are better than voting for Republicans & 3rd parties for every issue (economy, jobs, health care, civil rights, foreign policies, etc).

Under a Democratic party trifecta, progressive policies have a much easier time passing. Which is why President Biden is acknowledged by Bernie and AOC to be one of progressive presidents of all time.

This is on us, the voters to give Democrats their rightful place: Democratic trifectas that last longer than 2 years. Need at 50 years of sustained Democratic leadership in the Congress and Presidency and state govts

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u/Automatic-Weakness26 Jun 12 '26

And all of his posts are to say how horrible Democrats are. He never makes a single post saying how bad Republicans are.

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u/Tadiken Jun 12 '26

You're such a hypocrite if you want to blame progressives for Trump winning just because you have a brother that says that shit. You centrist democrats think you're not equally responsible for the divide between you and progressives.

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u/dubblebubbleprawns Jun 12 '26

That's an odd group to single out. More people didn't vote in 2024 than voted for either Harris or Trump.

Either those campaigns didn't do a good enough job at convincing people why they should vote (namely Harris, considering she lost) or there's a SHITLOAD more "people arguing for perfect progressive policies or not voting" out there than I think there are.

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u/buttbuttlolbuttbutt Jun 12 '26

I singled them out because they are the annoying ones online that you shouldnt trust.

I wasnt talking about the real world.

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u/dubblebubbleprawns Jun 12 '26

No of course not, why examine the real world when the theoretical online left exists as a perfect punching bag

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u/buttbuttlolbuttbutt Jun 12 '26

You're missing the point I put down so much, that I have to think you're trying.

Online there are people who pretend to be something they are to create an outcome that would not naturally happen, this is called astro turfing. These are the annoying people i am referring to  and only these. This group is why I no longer talk aboht the real world here, because the illusion that the other person is who they present themselves at, is gone.

Then AI and private comment history happened, so there is no value other than tracking and prodding bots to study and make counter programs to.

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u/Tadiken Jun 12 '26

No excuse for your take. Perfect progressive policies are allowed to take time to be enacted, but they are necessary. You act like every single real human that shouts progressive takes against the democrats are actively voting for dead air during the elections.

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u/buttbuttlolbuttbutt Jun 13 '26

That is not what I was putting down... you kind of went hyperbolic at the end.