I do consider that “game theory” voting (a) results in a definite single rational course of action for this election for anyone who favors democracy or left-leaning policies. But I also, it (b) is not be the endgame and just a mitigation until we prioritize ranked choice voting and other structural reform.

This is fine if there was any indication that the underlying problem of fascism in the US is going to be addressed by the incoming administration, or if you believe it is addressed by voting against it. The problem is that many of us don’t believe either to be the case, especially when the current campaign strategy has been to grant concessions to those nationalist solutions while turning away from socialist ones.

When neither of the most likely outcomes address the continued growth of fascism inside the US, the ‘game theory’ of electoral politics suddenly seems like a naieve indulgence more than any kind of solution, even a temporary one.

I think the miscommunication is that you’re looking for a game-theory explanation for the best way to vote given a desired outcome, and TDD (forgive the shorthand) is doing a higher-level analysis on large-scale electoral trends and demographics that explain a shortcoming in the democratic campaign strategy. Even working within the 2-party electoral system, democrats have been leaving a lot of voters on the table, and the only outreach they’ve been doing for those voters (who are getting more and more frustrated) has been to scare them/shame them into falling in line and swallowing their scruples.

The reason why it’s dumb to paint Greens or other third-parties as ‘spoilers’ is because of this implicit assumption that those votes will trickle-down into one of the two major parties if they weren’t there. TDD is pointing out that Greens (and RFK before he stepped out, and PSL, ect) are filling political voids that the democrats and republicans have left open by not addressing the concerns of those voters. Assuming those voters would simply make a different choice ignores the fact that there was something about whatever third-party candidate that was motivating them that isn’t present in the 2-party candidate. That voter is about as likely to decide not to vote at all as they are to decide to give up their scruples and vote for the party that they were actively avoiding in the first place, especially when that candidate has refused to give those voters/those interests representation.

All of this analysis is on top of a foundational understanding/materialist lens that suggests that the US is heading toward economic/capitalistic collapse independent of whatever electoral showmanship is happening every 4 years. This game-theory bullshit is completely indifferent to the environment that is actively pushing voters away from the center and into more and more extreme populism.

Yup. This is what frustrates me here and especially the last year: everyone pretends as if Trump is the singular threat that - once defeated- we may move on to other more important things.

But Trump is a manifestation of a national disillusionment with electoral politics and a broader economic failure. We keep dismissing the progressive populism of the left, while the fascistic populism on the right grows to a fever pitch.

If tonight trump keels over from a stress induced aneurism, by tomorrow lunch an opportunistic upstart will take his place because conservatives are frothing at the mouth for retribution. If Republicans return to classical wasp conservatism now, they’ll lose the next decade of elections because half their voting base simply isn’t interested in stale fiscal policy anymore.

The longer democrats ignore the conditions creating that current of populism beyond the orbit of Big Orange, the shorter lived any victories they might squeeze out now will be. We’ll see what happens Tuesday, but i think the odds are leaning away for Harris. We might have to confront that failure sooner than we think.

Yes.

It doesn’t make me feel uncomfortable, it’s just hilarious that they felt the need to include it lol

“Did Biden bite a baby? Maybe, but the guy who said something about it is a felon!”

if it’s relevant to what they’re saying, yea lol

How does Benny Johnson being paid by russia change or effect what he’s saying about Biden pretending to bite babies?

Like, if the article had said:

Lemmy user LowtierComputer, whom is alleged to like pineapple on their pizza, commented on an article about Biden biting the baby in the turkey costume.

“Wouldn’t you like to know who’s a Russian rat up front?” they wrote. Their post had been upvoted 4 times by midday Friday.

How does your preferred pizza topping relate to the topic of your comment (biden biting babies)? It might be true, and it might be important information to people who distrust pineapple-pizza-lovers, but it absolutely no bearing on the thing you wrote.

Lmao it’s just funny that an article about something so ridiculous has deleterious details about random conservative commentators in it, as if those details have any impact on whether the ridiculous thing happened or not. It almost makes you wonder if the story is actually about Biden at all, or if it’s about how shitty those commentators are and Biden was just the excuse to write about them.

The fact that this extremely unserious story is being taken extremely seriously by all parties involved is hilarious to me. Not just the faux outrage by the conservative media, but the shots being fired back by the lib media in response.

Ok, first, LMAO that this is real.

Second, the entire political media apparatus in the US has completely lost grasp with reality. Conservative media has predictably reacted to this with faux outrage, but the fucking liberal response to the conservative response is hilariously combative:

Conservative commentator Benny Johnson, whom the Department of Justice recently alleged was unwittingly paid by Russian state media to produce Kremlin sympathetic content, reposted an image of Biden biting the baby in the turkey costume.

“Apparently Joe Biden is biting babies at The White House this evening,” he wrote. His post had been viewed 740,000 times by Thursday morning.

Lol, like - sure - all objectively true. But throwing out ‘he’s a paid russian agent’ accusations against a tweet that’s pointing to something Biden actually did is batshit crazy lol. Is the implication that russia is paying Johnson to fabricate a story about Biden biting babies?

The US political media has become a parody of itself and all I can do is laugh at it.

My take? That a third of the american population has taken a liking to fascism.

Fascism isn’t borne out of stupidity, it’s borne out of greed and desperation. Sure, some of those people are probably as dumb as a bag of rocks (any slice of the american population is liable to have a few), but most are likely just your average-intelligence american who has taken their feelings of fear or envy and rationalized them into fascism.

People like Josef Mangele don’t become famous because they’re dumb - they become famous because they end up wielding their intelligence against humanity. If we were to assume that everyone with those beliefs is dumb, we’d misunderstand what motivates them and we’d waste our time trying to educate them out of bigotry.

Trump is actively attempting to court these dissatisfied voters. In September, he received the endorsement of Democrat Amer Ghalib, the Muslim mayor of Hamtramck, Michigan.m

Woah, you mean they can do that?!

Wild

This almost sounds like ‘fascism is capitalism in decay’, but strangely isn’t.

disconnect the circumstances from their perpetrators.

Bud, that is literally what the cartoon is doing, Jesus christ.

Good job for seeing past the cartoon i guess but you’re hallucinating commentary that isn’t there lmao.

This is like when Musk thought the ‘machine’ in ‘Rage Against the Machine’ was supposed to be communism lol

Even in the most charitable reading, Israel’s atrocities are only the backdrop to what is objectively about Arab Muslims and Islamic practices specifically

It isn’t israel slapping the hand of a starving Gazan, it’s a Muslim woman in Islamic dressings.

You dont have to be the author to see that they’ve left israel out of this drawing

Go ahead and point to the character in the cartoon that’s meant to represent israel. I’ll wait.

lmao, the thing you’re insisting is the subject of this cartoon is literally not present in it.

Strange way to evoke Israel’s motivation to starve Gazans by pointing to the religion of the victims.

edit: i’m confused, are people upset that they aren’t being given permission to blame the voters they’re abusing into voting against their conscious?

what I am saying is very similar to what leaders of the “Uncommitted” initiative have themselves said, by publicly refusing to “endorse Harris” but declaring that their movement “opposes a Donald Trump presidency, and urging supporters “to vote against him and avoid third-party candidates that can inadvertently boost his changes.”

What a strange world we live in that we’re acknowledging the legitimacy of voters’ concern over genocide, but pleading with them to privately support a candidate anyway

I hope that, given this acknowledgment, we don’t still end up blaming those voters for a loss or interpreting a win as a popular mandate since we’re now at a point where public opposition cannot be assumed to be aligned with how one votes.

If Harris loses, it will now be in spite of undecided voters being made to swallow their moral principles - and if she wins, it will be in spite of her support of Israel’s genocide.

Israel wants them dead or gone so they can have their land.

Religion is what they use justify their lack of humanity, but its simple greed and depravity that motivates them to abandon it.

The critique of the trolly problem isn’t that you don’t still make the choice, it’s that the outcome was predetermined before you even got there.

Leftists who are making a point of abstaining are doing so to point out that voters have no control over the trolly to begin with - that the choice is artificial because the outcomes were pre-selected by someone/something else to ensure a particular outcome, and that participating in that choice only ends up legitimizing that process.

The joke only works if the reader holds the Islamophobic view that Palestinians were starving because their faith forbids them from eating, and not because Israel was starving them by blockading humanitarian aid.