Can everyone in the West finally admit that moderate politics has been a failure?

@Elessar me? The collective eluded you. Did you do that on purpose because you hate change and really love the way things are, or you really just have to make this PERSONAL, get at ME? Annoy ME?

@Elessar the politics of Biden, whom you call moderate, doesn't really depart from the politics of Trump. Both are mainstream. The framework leaves you without a left and pretending to have one.

@Roundandroundwego Yeah and the politics of Jill Stein is.. check notes.. disappear back in Mar a Lago while Trump governs thanks to her voters 🤣

@Elessar obviously when you asked Americans if they would vote against genocide and ecocide they unanimously said NO! In November. But that's without any debate over ideology or results. With billionaires in full ownership of the media. When we get around to an honest comparison of socialism vs the present war and poverty with billionaires,? Maybe people will still choose this, maybe they really are moderately genocidal after all. I doubt it.

@Roundandroundwego Also imagine believing green new deal, student loan forgiveness, infrastructure bill, chips act just to name a few points of Biden politics are the same "frameworks" of the guy who let 200k+ of you die of a preventable disease, with a straight face, while allegedly being 61-69 and not like 14

@Roundandroundwego You only have yourself to blame as you've openly advocated for sitting out the vote against any of that.

@Elessar again, you use personal to avoid the issue. But the results are horrific and obviously what you like.

@Roundandroundwego I'm not avoiding it, I'm pointing it out. If you didn't like genocide why did you let the guy who's planning to buy a hotel on the rubbles of Gaza win the election?

@Elessar nobody thinks that the two parties differ in their records on Israel. You just want to pretend that by voting for the duopoly Americans didn't unanimously double down on their support for genocide. You ignore the left and vote only for the duopoly. Nobody thinks you can have a left without politics or questions about why you are so aggressive and ballistic as Westerners.

@Roundandroundwego Yeah so you're planning to get rid of the duopoly by casting your vote for the lady that's predictably disappeared (probably back to either Moscow or Mar a Lago)? 🤣

Genius move. The duopoly won, and specifically the side that is about giving Israel everything it needs to "end the war" as opposed to the side that was pushing for a ceasefire.

Genius move. You'll go down in history as the dumbest leftwing movement in the history of all nations on this world.

@Elessar no plans for change in Dem carvanna? Nah! This is successful. We understand expanding wars suit you. Move harder to the right and tell people you really aren't the GOP, you're different.

@Roundandroundwego So where's Jill Stein right now? What did you achieve?

Because last I check Trump won.

@Elessar you still talk about individuals and have no need for politics on the right. Meaningless but effective! You seem obsessed with Jill Stein - the election is over, by the way.

@Roundandroundwego You still dodge the point. The duopoly is alive and well and Stein literally robbed your vote and disappeared with it. And you're here criticizing everyone but yourself.

@Elessar I doubt that just offering the Americans an alternative to the two war parties turned them into genocidal war lovers with no plan to cut emissions. They voted for the war and the ecocide because they wanted to. Period! Nobody thinks there's a Green or non aggressive, non lethal USA hiding behind the bipartisan government or the bipartisan majority. Nope! You are the apocalypse. No hedging. Nobody but us reds objects to a single killing.

@Elessar Much as I do think that the left should vote for lesser evils when there is a clear difference (as I have) it's not enough on its own.

Unless the actual left can eventually gain political reaction, we will slowly and inevitably lose

@Burnley123 Yeah, but throwing your vote away for a candidate that has below zero credibility and (predictably, once again) disappeared just after the election isn't the way to achieve that. Stein is for all practical purpose an arm of Trump's campaign, and succeded at what was her goal.

@Burnley123 Also, isn't it giving in to right-wing propaganda saying that mere anti-unregulated-capitalism social democratic policies (like, think of Sanders or AOC, to use American figures) aren't a form of moderate politics too?

Moderate politics isn't strictly about being centre-right neoliberals, short of tankies the modern left isn't anywhere as extremist as the modern right, and it's mostly moderate.

Like, I'd classify you as moderate in my book personally, unlike the OP.

@Elessar How has she disappeared?

It's probably that the media has stopped covering her because the election is over.

Green politicians will tell you that they struggle to get heard in the media.

Calling her an arm if trump's campaign is ridiculous and also removes any accountability from the democrats.

To reiterate, I personally would have voted democrat to keep out trump..I completely get why Gaza is a red line for people.

"Vote for genocide enabling party with a centre-right domestic agenda or you are in team Trump!"

The nominally centre-left political parties are also complicit in the rise of the far right.

@Burnley123 She doesn't stand for anything, her sole and only policy is syphoning votes out of the blue candidate no matter who it is, as she's always done. She literally campaigned only in the states where Harris needed to win. She's nominally against Netanyahu (and that's just and solely for the blue party's positioning, rest assured she couldn't give a f*ck, had Biden/Harris the opposite stance on the matter she'd have campaigned on the Dems being antisemite, I would bet €1000 on that because I'm sure to win) while at the same time making excuses for and going to dinner with Vladimir Putin. It's only genocide when it's Palestinians but the Ukrainians are perfectly sacrificeable to the American "greens". Even the European greens called the BS out, which is quite telling (https://europeangreens.eu/news/us-elections-european-greens-call-for-jill-stein-to-step-down/). An actual leftists continues to be active when they become the opposition, this woman only appears during the election and hibernates for four years after each one lol

Throwing the vote to a candidate like this, or sitting out the primaries (2016) to then complain when there won by a neoliberal candidate isn't the way of defeating the status quo, it only reinforces the status quo.

I'm absolutely in support of someone like AOC over Biden or Harris, but voting for Stein is how these people made sure it won't happen.

@Elessar That is an interesting point.

I am a moderate in the sense that I see myself as a pragmatist on strategy. Also (unlike the OP) I aim to persuade, not virtue signal. I despair at how consistently abysmal most leftists are at this online. CountScrofula and Basilfaulty are the only other outright leftist on this site who is good at constructing arguments.

Bernie and AOC do support domestic policies that have a lot of support yet they are framed as radicals. Not by you but by mainstream media. The centre of public opinion and the the centre of the political establishment are different things.

There is a reason for that. The left of the democratic party (much like the labour left) is the only body that truly represents something other than corporate interests. Just follow the money and it's really clear (especially in America with their PACs and donors). Bernie ran for President by refusing corporate money and just relying on crowd funding. It's obvious why and equally obvious why corporate donors would have never have funded him anyway.

The mainstream democrats ('centrists') are not as bad as the Trumpsters on policy but they are heavily corporate funded and do represent those interests. It's probably the reason why Liz Cheney had prominence later in the campaign and why (the moderately social democratic) Tim Walz was given less prominence. They needed to reassure their friends that they were a safe pair of hands and that nothing would change.

Speaking of AOC, she's just been passed over for an important committee position in favour of a no-name man in his seventies. Pelosi intervened to block her. That in spite (or because) of her being one of the most famous democrats and having huge popularity with the democrat base. AOC has bent over backwards for the Democrat establishment: campaigning for Harris and frankly outright lying to defend her party on Gaza. She's still seen as too much of a populist for the mainstream of her party so needs to be marginalised.

@Elessar Stein didn't get votes because she is Jill Stein, she got votes because she is against the genocide of Gaza.

Many people vote green in UK elections without even knowing the names of the party leaders. What they are not is the key issue.

Calling her in league with Putin is also quite a stretch given it's based on her once having dinner with him and not explicitly calling him a war criminal in one interview. She later did call him a war criminal.

Why is it that people who are anti-war are depicted as agents of foreign governments? The same happened to critics of the Vietnam War and the Iraq War. Also, supporters of the civil rights movement. MLK himself was depicted as a pro-USSR figure.

None of this is an accident and there are rational reasons for this discourse to happen that are nothing to do with actual support for Moscow.