• Dimmer06 [he/him,comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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    14 days ago

    143000 votes for a guy with literal brain worms who isn’t even running for president anymore

    This is why any talk of democracy in this country is pointless without systematic mass education.

  • brainw0rms [they/them]@hexbear.net
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    14 days ago

    It would be nice if the Greens just endorsed the PSL ticket next time around. It sounds like Stein didn’t even want to have to run, and it’s pretty clear there is no one else in the GP that can fill the ticket, given the shit show around Cornel West. It’s not like PSL’s platform is at odds with the Greens in any way.

      • brainw0rms [they/them]@hexbear.net
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        14 days ago

        I’m not super in the loop either, but I’ve heard some interviews on podcasts like Bad Faith, specifically the interview with Stein’s running mate Butch (I believe it was “Episode 411 - You’re Not a Democrat w/ Dr. Butch Ware”).

        Basically, this time around Dr. Jill Stein didn’t really want to run so the party was looking for another candidate to endorse. Cornel West was running under the People’s Party who had very limited ballot access, so he was happy to use the GP’s platform and ballot access to expand his reach, media profile, and support base, but when it came time to follow party protocols and work within their framework he apparently didn’t like being told what to do, so he did a hard break with them and started yet another party. At which point the Greens basically had to scramble and get Stein to run again so they could retain their ballot access for next time around. Just sounds like a total shit show.

      • Is PSL even strictly “pro-China” tho? Of course they have critical support for them as a multi-polar force and are very opposed to escalating tensions with them since PSL is anti-war. But I would imagine that the party still has its criticisms of Dengism in a purely ideological sense.

        • jack [he/him, comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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          13 days ago

          We have criticisms of the height of the Dengist era’s backsliding and corruption, but fundamentally the Dengist program has proven correct, and the Xi era has been a demonstrable commitment to the socialist project. There’s no point in purely ideological critiques - we need a materialist analysis.

  • CleverOleg [he/him]@hexbear.net
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    14 days ago

    This might a small W but it’s a W nonetheless. The Libertarian Party is the most popular and best organized third party in the US, by a long shot. They have decades of work put in, not to mention ideologically they are very compatible with (white, middle/upper class) American superstructure. And Chase Oliver is objectively their best candidate they’ve fielded in maybe ever. He’s articulate and is good at emphasizing the least bad aspects of the ideology, like being anti-war and anti-MIC. For a Marxist-Leninist party that’s only gotten big recently and doesn’t even focus on electoralism, that’s honestly a great showing.

    • Belly_Beanis [he/him]@hexbear.net
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      14 days ago

      Naw, they used to be one party, the Democratic-Republican party. They grew out of the Anti-Federalist Party and outlasted the Federalists. In the 1824 election, they were the only party in the US. They ended up fracturing in two, creating the Democratic party and the Whig/Republican party.

      The full severing of the political parties would occur just prior to the Civil War where Whigs splintered over slavery while Democrats supported it. Anti-slavery Whigs and Republicans consolidated together as the Whig factions further separated from each other.

      So the “Grand Old Party” is a splinter faction of a splinter faction that can trace its roots back to the original parties of post-Revolution America. Republicans and Democrats are technically the same age.

        • KobaCumTribute [she/her]@hexbear.net
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          14 days ago

          I also learned that the color red wasn’t strongly associated with them until 2000.

          This is the weirdest and most infuriating of all the empty little symbol stuff. Historically election maps just kind of used random colors in the US because none of the parties had traditional color associations, but because one newscaster talked about “the red states” when pointing at a map where Bush was represented with red and the states in question were literally just colored red on the map, now the GOP has the left’s color and the Democrats have the traditional color of elite reactionaries and as stupid and meaningless as this is it’s just so annoying especially because the Democrats really do just want to be snooty aristocratic elites and they do insufferable left punching based on associating their even-more-reactionary liberal counterparts in the GOP with the left to smear them.

          It’d be like if American political parties somehow adopted the hammer and sickle through some galaxy brain “hammer=judge’s gavel=law and order” and “sickle=agricorp subsidies” logic: meaningless and empty, but offensive appropriation all the same.

          • AssortedBiscuits [they/them]@hexbear.net
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            13 days ago

            Yet another way to sever the connection between the US and the global left to have the color red be associated with conservatism. Just like how the US celebrates fake Labor Day instead of May 1.

  • Barx [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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    14 days ago

    Whoah hell yeah. And nearly 50k? Does that mean commiefornia is responsible for half of PSL’s votes or has the total gone well past 100k?