The difference is actually greater than that. Jamelle Bouie breaks down how the Democratic party is way, way less destructive, here. (on YouTube).

They might reform SCOTUS now that their careers, and possibly their very lives, depend on it.

I do fear they might not do enough. The damage caused by allowing this Supreme Court to run amok is overwhelming and might not be easily reversible. They need to not merely add term limits and expand the court (possibly to over a hundred) and mandate an enforceable code of ethics, but it may be time to strip SCOTUS of jurisdiction so that they no longer have total veto power over legislation and executive action.

Curiously, term limits might require an amendment to the Constitution of the United States. Stripping them of jurisdiction only requires legislation.

At what point am I deflecting responsibility away from liberals? Saying voting is important is different from saying one needs to do more than merely vote.

Part of why that strategy lost to Donald Trump twice now is because the Republican propaganda machine, including Russian state actors and Cambridge Analytica levied a massive campaign against the Democrats. And its largest push was to get Americans – black Americans specifically – to not vote. Tens of millions were spent discouraging voting.

So regardless of what you or I think, the Republican strategists that decide how to budget their campaign believe Democrats voting is pretty darned important. Perhaps that’s why voter suppression is central to the Republican platform: if more people vote, Democrats win. If fewer people vote, they win.

I do agree with you. It’s not enough for Democrats merely to campaign harder (as Biden advised soon after his presidential victory). And I admit I don’t have all the answers, but this single graphic is not the sum of my effort.

If I preferred MAGA to far-left politics I wouldn’t be looking for ways to aid the resistance at all.

So your complaint is that we’re not moving far enough fast enough?

I share your frustration, especially as the Trump regime is moving fast and breaking things, breaking laws and then defying either courts or Congress to stop them since much of law enforcement is on its side.

I don’t know if we’re still at the point where we can a) get the Democrats back into sweeping power and b) depend on them to make sweeping reforms of elections and the US Supreme Court, and then start to rebuild what the Trump regime has destroyed, or if we’re already doomed to a one-party system and need to focus on organizing resistance like a general strike. Spelling it out like that, it seems like a long shot.

Part of it depends on how the 2016 mid-term elections go, if they go. I suspect that swing voters may still be under the influence of the massive far-right propaganda machine that dominates social media and mainstream news. If that’s the case then the US will fall to one party autocracy and then to civilization collapse.

All that said, so long as we do have elections, it’s still worthy to consider voting defensively, especially if the alternative is voting third party or not at all.

That’s the problem. More people voted for Biden than voted for Harris or Clinton. Democrats were unmotivated to stop Trump from winning, and in all three elections, he was a greater threat no matter who was running against him.

I don’t like the EC either. In fact, no-one other than the far right likes the EC.

And curiously, you think the solution is to let the Republicans, who hate you even more and have now set up concentration camps, win.

I do not refute that some of the Democratic organizations are captured by corporate interests, but the Republicans are even more captured, and pose a dire threat to the meager democratic features of the US political system.

Maybe you’re an accelerationist?

Oh, I agree that the two party system does serve as a ratchet, and has since the 19th century with a few exceptions. I do believe it needs to be changed in order for the US to become a public-serving state. Since the 21st century, though, the Republican party has become an existential threat to even the meager democratic features of the US.

And given that third parties will typically be closer to the Democrats than Republicans in their platforms, third-party votes will displace Democratic votes more often than Republican votes. And in the current political clime, that is a problem.

I hope not. I’m not making the propaganda up. But yes, we have a lot of single white men with conservative grievance and male insecurity, and this is the sort of rhetoric that is working on them to keep them loyal to the Republican party.

Maybe once they get hungry enough, or are sent as troops into Iran, their minds will change.

Ellie Mystal pointed out that was a risk of civil war: If congress were to strip SCOTUS of jurisdiction (no longer decides what is Constitutional or not) and the court then responds by saying that law is unconstitutional, the blue states side with Congress while the red states side with the Court, and we have a crisis that cannot be resolved by institutional procedure.

Personally, I’d like to see more of They’ve made their ruling, now let them enforce it. But as we recently saw with the Virginia redistricting referendum, their governor obeyed in advance.

Then you made your point poorly, and I’m not sure if you’re confused or are wittingly trying to confuse and deceive me.

Voting a third party in the US doesn’t get third party candidates elected. In fact, AIPAC is sponsoring opponents of candidates who have pledged not to take AIPAC contributions in order to dilute the vote. Election strategists are putting money behind the notion that third-party candidates serve as spoilers to principal candidates with whom they share platforms.

There are a number of election system models better than the ones used in United States elections. Sadly, our elected officials get more power with the system as it is, and it’s difficult to organize general strikes around election reform…or court reform for that matter. And I say that since the US Supreme Court has succeeded in vetoing the VRA and is carving into the 14th and 15th amendments.

People who voted for Biden in 2020 didn’t show up to vote in 2024. People not showing up to vote is how we got here. People not showing up to vote for Clinton in 2016 is how we got the SCOTUS far-right supermajority that can veto anything it wants, including the 14th, 15th and 19th Amendments to the Constitution of the United States.

And yes, if you’re organizing for the next noncooperation effort or the next general strike or coordinating obstruction of ICE abductions or working for your local mutual aid org, then yes, you’re doing something more, possibly more important than voting.

But it’s going to be a while before those organized efforts have enough power to make demands, and by then we’re likely to be in civil war. We’re already seeing state violence and concentration camps.

Which is why voting is not the only thing we need to be doing.

Americans failing to vote is how we lost USAID, an action which also caused the death of a fuckton of children. If the US wasn’t afraid of black women in office, a lot of dead people would, in fact, be very much alive, and more reasonable minds would be trying to solve the crisis in Gaza.

Because we can’t detect or define them as awful out of hand. Awful people don’t have evil printed on their forehead nor do that show up on a detector. Liberal society is founded on the notion that everyone is afforded the chance to fit in and to behave civilly.

There’s also the matter that the giant oligarch-sponsored trillion-dollar-plus far-right propaganda machine is turning people awful by appealing to fear, rage, hatred and prejudice as a means to distract them from the ownership class hoovering up the wealth and then expecting not to pay their fare share.

The preponderance of awful people, the propaganda machine and the billionaires are all symptoms of the decay of civilization. And we’re already watching as society collapses.

What specific history are you referring to that I allegedly don’t know?

In the case of the 2024 general election, the difference between the one trying to kill you, and the one trying to kill you less, was substantial.

Much needs to be done beyond voting, but there’s debate whether the country can last to 2028, or after Louisiana v. Callais we’ll see another Democratic majority in either legislative house after 2026.

Ellie Mystal observes that since the 1960s, it’s only been the black vote that has pushed Democrats to the Presidency. White voters vote majority Republican. Now that black districts are being gerrymandered away, we may well be a one-party state by 2028 or 2030.

There are more progressive candidates now than before, and some of them are getting into office. Pledging not to take AIPAC money is now such a thing that AIPAC is creating anonymous subsidiaries with which to donate to their opponents.

Yes, much of the Democratic party is still captured by corporations. The DNC and DCCC are still operating against Democratic Socialist candidates, but that also shows that the corporatist establishment regards the internal movement as a legitimate threat.

Also the Democratic party as a general rule still believes there should be checks and balances, and rule of law (whether or not they fully respect them at all times). The Republican party believes they should move fast and break things, and disregard laws and courts so long as they can do so without consequences.

There is a difference between the enemies you can vote for, and right now we’re experiencing the consequences of too many voters failing to show up at the polls.

One of them is going to get the job whether you vote or not.

By my understanding, the Brexit vote didn’t work out for the UK public, and retrospectively they didn’t fully understand the consequences of what they voted for.

Very much the way that Trump voters didn’t understand what they were getting, even though he told everyone who he was.

Historically, at least in the US, voting third party has not been the flex you appear to believe it is.