There are non presidential races. They can go to a march. I knkw that's all a bit weak sauce but so is the argument that you just can't vote against Hitler bc his opponent is merely 55% ok.
There are non presidential races. They can go to a march. I knkw that's all a bit weak sauce but so is the argument that you just can't vote against Hitler bc his opponent is merely 55% ok.
That’s not the point, the point is that once one major party is Literally Hitler pretty much all intraparty leverage evaporates because the consequences of losing are so dire!
Like if you had idk a CSU like Republican Party and not voting for the Dems meant there was a reasonable chance CSU won, ok that would suck but there’s a reasonable tradeoff of upside risk versus internal leverage and pols can make intelligent decisions about the cost of alienating XYZ side.
It’d be more like knowing one candidate said “I will disappear your neighbors based on skin color, take away your rights, and make your food poison, and I promise I might stop a war” And another said “I promise I might stop a war, otherwise do some good things” And 🤞 the disappearings won’t happen
Like, your framing presented it as “genocide will probably continue regardless so fuck everyone” but the ‘everyone’ included not just Palestinians; there’s also the local—the neighbor, the family, the coworker, the friend, the stranger getting fucked and/or killed now.
And no it’s not a “only care if it impacts me,” because obvi it’s not. It’s a “this will impact an entire people” vs a “this will impact an entire people plus many, many more people.” Sensibly, protecting as many as possible should win out.
But crossing fingers and sitting out, *hoping* the lower number of casualties happens even if the actual literal fash gets in, is…indefensible, immoral, unjustifiable, other adjectives.
And without this you need a sense of actual buy-into the party’s outlook, which the Dems don’t do well because they’ve let the kind of ordinary orgs connecting party to base wither and get Consultanted
In any case i think basically everyone in this fight badly miscalculated how salient I/P actually is politically and how much leverage the pro-Palestinian half of the party had.