If you're in a position where you're introducing yourself to a wider world, and leaving people to make decisions about if and how they want to interact with you (that is to say, using a social media network like The Fediverse), and the only information you give me about yourself is:

- I voted for Harris
- I support Ukraine (DUH!)
- LLAP

I'm left to make one of two choices:

1 - You aren't a real person! You're a bot, and not a very good one, who probably exists specifically to boost and provide legitimacy to propaganda.

or

2 - You're so completely brainwashed by the myth of American Exceptionalism that you legitimately can't imagine a world better than the one we live in.

If you're going to make politics the CENTER of your identity, and then choose a political stance as boring as "Don't blame me, I voted for the lady cop!" ... you're lost. You're a lost cause.

Joe Biden was tougher on immigration than any president in recent memory other than Donald Trump. He supported the genocide in Gaza. He was dismissive and patronizing and too damn stubborn to follow through on a single campaign promise.

We have no reason to believe that Harris would have been any better than Biden, and lots of evidence to say that she would have been just as bad, or possibly worse, on important issues.

(This is not an endorsement of or an excuse for Donald Trump. It's an indictment of the mindset that refuses to treat politics as anything other than a game with teams to root for! If you come in here talking about how she would have been better than Trump you will get blocked, because the point isn't that she wouldn't have been better than Trump. Clearly she would have been! The point is that she could not possibly have won, and the Dem leadership knew that and ran her anyway.

It doesn't matter if Harris would have been better than Trump because Harris couldn't beat trump. What matters is that there are people who could have beaten Trump, but the democratic leadership were so high on their own fucking bullshit that we didn't even get a primary.

and "don't blame me, I voted for Harris" is exactly the wrong message to take away from the 2024 election. "Don't blame me, I'm okay with genocide", "Don't blame me, I'm okay with keeping people in overcrowded prisons that the courts of CA have ordered to be released, because if we release them we won't have enough slave labor to fight the wildfires that PG&E cause because no one in the democratic party is willing to force upon them any meaningful oversight."

(That's not hyperbole. Harris, as AG, refused to release people who the courts had ordered to be released, because once released they couldn't be used as firefighters!)

Centering your identity around having voted for a candidate who lost and who, in all likelihood would have also lost any fair primary if such a thing was ever allowed to happen, is to resign yourself to fait accompli. To publicly declare that things could not be better than they are.

What a waste.

@ajroach42 "Doesn't matter who, Vote Blue" without accompanying it with "And hey, let's all boost those participation numbers for primaries above single digits" is super exhausting.

@squishymage42 But it absolutely does matter who! Because vote blue no matter who gets you Joe Manchin.

The democratic party will not save us, we have to save ourselves.

@ajroach42 For sure.

Though when it comes to a general election, I'd still take a Manchin over a Vance, Moreno, or Portman every time.

But, still a reason to get out in primaries and other chances to make clear what we actually want to try and avoid those nose hold votes.

@squishymage42 that's the whole point though, we shouldn't ever be in a situation where we have to hold our nose and vote for someone who will only make things a little worse instead of someone who will make things a lot worse.

Fixing them democrat primary will not ensure this. Replacing the democrats might.

@ajroach42 Thats a fair point, though with places like Ohio where Dems have automatic ballot access, "third parties" appear to have zero interest in anything but trotting out a sacrificial lamb to appear in the presidential so they can complain about the two party system for another 4 years, and where so many things in primaries or even local generals come down to single digit differences, I can fit the difference in a van.

@ajroach42 But your local picture may look different from mine. Here, loading people into a van can flip dome democratic primaries, while just getting a non-major party on the ballot would require several hundred thousand signatures on a petition

@squishymage42 makes sense! Primary some local Dems!

@squishymage42 (and then reform your local ballot access.)