They really thought she’d be worse?

For the love of God, please stop spreading this mode of thinking. Elections are won by enthusiasm, not an intellectual weighing of the pros and cons of each. This is the model Democrats have used for decades that got us here. Being the lesser evil is not a solid campaign strategy. The greater evil will always get more attention, and therefore enthusiasm.

I don’t think this is an exclusively American thing. Did Brits really think brexit was a good idea?

The left threatens power. MAGA doesn’t.

Not all Democrats are in sync with party leadership though.

The President isn’t the problem. He’s certainly “a” problem, but let’s not pretend that Vance is going to be any better.

Get rid of all the corrupt Republicans (redundant phrase), and you will still have MAGA, the silicon valley tech bros, a corrupt financial system, white/Christian nationalists, and the military industrial complex.

Then we have the Democrats who have proven themselves over and over again to be incapable of standing up against any of these groups.

Whatever we protest for, any result worth the effort has to address the systemic failures that led to the Trump presidency. Anything less is performative at best.

We need an inverse lottery. The top 100 most wealthy Americans are automatically added to a pool and one is drawn at random each year. Then we confiscate everything they own, put them in the street, and see if they can get rich again.

Don’t make the mistake of thinking this is a legitimate implementation of such a system. It will absolutely be intentionally flawed in ways that allow the disenfranchisement of millions of Americans citizens. That’s 100% what always happens with Republican initiatives to “protect” elections. It will be made trivial to “accidentally” remove legitimate voter registrations, and a labyrinthian bureaucratic process to correct them.

That’s kind of my point. It’s turtles all the way down.

The Natives “moved” to Texas to steal it from the previous group of natives.

That group is infuriating. The worst are the ones that drag Democratic primaries to the right, then vote Republican anyways.

Cuomo was projected to be ahead after the first round. The election was going to be a question of whether or not Mamdani’s certain gains in subsequent rounds would be enough to catch up. Mamdani being so far ahead after the first round meant Cuomo was done.

The people you are talking about about will never remove their cranial bowel obstructions, but their twisted forms can be removed from the Democratic party by voters.

but to keep the brown natural-born citizens who voted for him from realizing

Um, what? He has better support from wealthy whites than from racial minorities.

You are way understating his odds at winning the general.

Your implicit argument that so-called “centrist” Democrats are better at winning purple states because voters all exist along a simple left to right spectrum is absolutely wrong. The people in this country are fed up and they want revolution. Republicans offered it, and Democrats didn’t. The rightward lurch was just an artifact of people rationalizing their vote and conforming to the stereotype on offer.

One big excuse the Democratic establishment gave was that the world is in an anti-incombancy mood. That’s a correct observation, but what is really happening is the death of neoliberalism everywhere. The one big outlier to the trend was Mexico where an aging male President successfully handed the reigns over to his protege, a younger woman. The difference is, they were progressives. Mexico is also arguably a more religiously conservative country than America.

The wonky framing of the US electorate has been the standard Democratic perspective for decades. It’s what led to the income inequality we have now. It’s what led to Trump, and the complete routing of Democrats in both federal and state governments. For the love of God, wake up already.

The Democrats don’t win because they aren’t real people, they are characters on TV that people are sick of. Neoliberalism drains the blood and passion that people want to see in leadership. Republicans have it, and Democrats don’t. It’s past time that changed.

When it’s an inexpensive product that nobody ever has a reason to buy twice yet remains an ongoing cost for the company? (They keep the data available for review and continue to update it with useful information as knowledge of genetic traits and lineages grows). That’s not a way to build an ongoing cash flow to cover expenses. Especially when all the people inclined to be interested have already purchased.

Shit, Oracle was down in the low $400B range in May. Apparently being evil pays well in the current administration.

A little searching finds only one company that really fits the bill. Costco has a market cap of $433B and had a reported $14.8B cash on hand as of May 11. That’s an interesting possibility that I wouldn’t have guessed. Costco is less evil than most big corporations, so that’s a little hopeful if I got it right.

Oracle comes close with a market cap of $583B. That’s indeed over $400B, but that would make the description a bit weird. In any case, Oracle makes more sense from a business angle. Unfortunately, they are near the top of the evil scale.

It’s not a great business model if you think about it. Customers pay a small fee once then never again.

The progressives that do still belong to the Democratic party (despite your claims) are the only progressives making any serious progress in growing a functional progressive movement outside the party. Your bunch of posers don’t even register in the culture outside of Internet chatrooms where no one else can stand you. It’s the culture that needs to shift, and you are never going to be the ones doing that work.

On the extremely remote chance that a 3rd party ever amounts to anything, it will be because of the work being done by progressives in the Democratic party today. Not just at the national level, but at the state and local level where Democrats are generally a hell of a lot better. (Not what either of us want them to be, but better).

Elections are run at the local level, and there is no third party or independent movements making any gains there at all. The Greens don’t even try. Good luck winning elections when the media flat out ignores you and the people controlling ballot access despise you.

You have been trying to “replace” them for decades. How is that working out for you?

You too have been trying to “replace” them for decades. How is that working out for you? We’ve gotten a few elected and pushed a few more in that direction. Where is your progress? You don’t get to start the clock over every election and pretend that your approach hasn’t been tried.

There is no coming over to the progressive side, because the progressive side doesn’t exist in that party.

I’m talking about voters, and I think that was pretty clear. If all you do in alienate voters, then your movement is nothing but performative.

Yes, Democrats suck. That’s why we need to work to replace them. Your third party vote does fuck all to achieve that end. It ain’t happening. All your edge lord bullshit does nothing but alienate the very Democratic voters we need to come over to the progressive side.