Liberals will lie to you and tell you to “just vote in the primary,” but in reality they simply don’t care about trans rights and do not believe there is ever a right time to challenge transphobic Democrats.
First primary: the transphobes hide their colors so you can’t vote against them.
First general election: the snakes reveal their colors, but you can’t vote against the traitors because “blue no matter who.” They tell you to just vote in the next primary.
Second primary: the same people who tell you now “save it for the primary” shift their tune to “we can’t give up an incumbent seat in a purple district!”
Trans people can see through these bad-faith lies. Yet of course, mansplaining trolls will be sure to breathlessly explain “lesser of two evil” math, as if that’s not an argument we haven’t heard a thousand times and already rejected due to its obvious flaws. There’s never a shortage of arrogant cis people who think they know more about trans issues than actual trans people.
Liberals want your votes, not your voices. Be a good little minority and sit down. Shut up. Support the party. You owe the party your support. The party owes you nothing.
EDIT: A few thoughts to address the comment in the thread here:
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You need to get past your team sports approach to politics. I am not advocating voting against Democrats in general. I’m advocating for not voting for the 1% of Democratic candidates that have chosen to become fascist collaborators and adopt Republican positions on trans rights. To trans people, the Democratic party going TERF is a greater danger than the Republican party winning a slim majority in the Senate. The nightmare scenario here is what happened with Labor. Labor has completely fallen to Nazi collaborators. The UK has regressed in trans rights to now be the most transphobic country in Western Europe, and that happened under the rule of a center-left government. The trans people of the UK would have been better off with another term of conservatives than the transphobic labor leaders they elected instead. We don’t need to elect more Fettermans who will turn around and vote against the party the first chance they get. So many people in this thread believe, “you have to vote for the Nazi collaborators, otherwise the Nazis will win!”
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On saving democracy: you are vastly underestimating how difficult that task is. You seem to imagine you can just write a bill that just says, “democracy saved,” and call it a day. Actually saving democracy is going to require stripping powers from the presidency and dismantling the post-9/11 security state. That requires Democratic leaders of moral strength and conviction. It will take leaders willing to look their constituents in the eye and tell them, “I am going to vote for this bill to dismantle ICE. Yes, that means that occasionally an illegal immigrant is going to murder someone. I’m going to vote for this bill to dismantle the NSA’s illegal programs. Yes, that means we may have more terrorist attacks than we would otherwise. It’s worth it to save our Republic.” Saving democracy requires leaders who are literally willing to vote to kill their fellow Americans. Every power you strip away results in a few more people dying. It’s inevitable. And these transphobe Democrats are fundamentally cowards with no inner moral center. They’ll follow any poll or vote for any policy they think will get them power. This kind of person is not capable of saving democracy. You can’t defeat Nazism by voting in Nazi collaborators, and it’s insane to pretend you can.
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Those arguing that trans rights are a minor or insignificant issue? Frankly, if you believe this, you deserve to have your right to vote taken away. If you’re not willing to protect the vulnerable among your community, you deserve whatever evil befalls you. Karma’s a bitch in that way. We can all go to Hell together if that’s the path you choose.
Can always count on there being a cis person that thinks they know trans issues better than actual trans people.
Remember, trans people are apparently numerous enough to owe our votes to Democrats, but we’re not numerous enough to have our issues be included as basic litmus tests of party candidate eligibility.
Maybe you should have some humility and stop acting like minorities owe you anything after you betray them.
You don’t represent all of us, slow your role. Jesus Christ can we at least keep the actual real fascists out of office while working on making things better at the same time?
Why didn’t the “working on making things better” start in 2020? We could’ve kept actual fascists out of power, if we’d started then, instead of breathing a sigh of relief and acting like everything was fixed forever.
Why are you commenting about things you clearly don’t know anything about?
Well, if it’s so obvious, answer the question.
Because you’re JAQ-ing off in bad faith. The question is bad faith. If you were politically engaged you’d be aware of everything done during the Biden administration to correct republican destruction, but you’re not, because you’re here in bad faith.
I don’t know about you but I don’t have a time machine. I’m stuck in the present timeline. If you’ve got a way back to try and fix this mess, believe me when I say try it and don’t worry of it destroys the current timeline.
Even though I recognized the trajectory toward authoritarianism back in 1996 with Pres. Clinton’s Third Way triangulation, and have been saying, guys, we need to start making things better sooner rather than later since then, the past is indeed the past. So, what’s the plan? What are we doing beyond “vote blue” right now to ensure that we don’t have to vote for anti-trans Democrats next time, too?
I love this question, because the answer can be so many things depending on your set, setting, and availability. Engage in local politics and community support.
Show up for meetings and listen. Share your thoughts and opinions as you become informed or find you have questions. Talk to your friends and neighbors. Join a local committee. Run for a local office or go further if that’s your path.
Get acquainted with your local town office, rec center, senior center, etc. Start volunteering. Serve meals, maybe deliver some. Support a food bank - donations, pickup from local business donors. Promote Progressive voices that are supporting workers’ and people’s rights. Support people doing everything described in the previous paragraph.
Gogol Bordello said it first: Think global, act local. Installing a president with true progressive values isn’t a path to success unless there is wider congressional support, so start developing grass roots support or support those that are developing such.
Conservatives have spent 50+ years slowly and steadily doing this and fucking over progressive voices all along the way with exuberant neoliberal support on embracing corporate money and influence. It’s a long road back. We need to stop accelerating towards stupidity and it’s the right wing authoritarian cultists that have their foot stuck on the gas pedal so keeping them out of power would be super neato as far as I’m concerned.
Connect the dots, please. Those are all wonderful things, but how do they add up to avert the authoritarian takeover of national power that the conservative movement has been working on for so long?
Local power matters. Both in local politics, like city and county, and in community connectedness. Make your town a better place, create non-political systems for neighbors to help each other, gain control of the narrative. You’re right that conservatives have been working for so long, and nothing we can do will magically flip a switch. The solution is going to take time too. And that starts with building connections with your neighbors.
Exactly. Plus, imagine a progressive president just suddenly takes over today. Senate and House are both the same. All of the money interests would love nothing better than to work together across the aisle and make sure the progressive president is the least effective president ever to a) preserve their money and power l, and b) propagandize the everloving fuck out of telling the voting population that progressives are useless leaders, hampering the movement for another generation or more. Upsetting the current power structure in the US needs support starting at the grass roots level and building upwards.
I live in a city with the last vestiges of a progressive 3rd party started in the 1990’s in the upper Midwest to do just that, but the two major parties collaborated to crush it. But we do those things locally. Lots of people do those things. It just doesn’t translate to state and national politics.
Case and point, here I am encouraging people to organize and make changes outside of the electoral system, and getting told in not so many words to pound sand.
Hol’up…
Where did you get the idea that “trans people are numerous enough”? Numerous in what, exactly? To swing an election?
I’m so confused by all the stuff you’re posting around here. It seems you are VERY misinformed about your position in society as a member of a group, and how that affects US elections at large.
I’m not saying to hold back on your swings or anything, but the crazy vitriol you’re spouting off just seems to say you’re making some wild assumptions that will not play out…
It comes from every time a trans person says they will never support a Democrat that stands against them, BlueMAGA comes out yelling at them saying they’re the reason Harris lost and will be blamed when any other Dem loses.
The entire “Blue MAGA” is literally manufactured russian republican propaganda. It’s not a real thing, it’s a psy-op to convince idiots to let the republicans win. And you are falling for it hard.
No it comes from the toxic positivity of libs telling everyone to support their destructive party over the other destructive party using the same talking points as MAGA, just with a couple words changed.
It’s literally both sides rebranded. It’s a psy op and it’s working on people like you.
You fucktards call everything that goes against libs a “psy op”. I just saw you calling horseshoe theory a psy op. You just want the slightly right wing jackasses to win so you can go back to ignoring politics for 4 years and telling the rest of us who spent 2021-2024 yelling at Biden for not being left and spent the lead up to the 2024 election yelling at Kamala to stop being a piece of shit to sit down and accept the bowl of vomit we’re being served.
And you want the republicans to win for whatever reason, which is demonstrably worse. I’m sorry you’re gullible enough to fall for it but nobody with any credentials takes horseshoe theory at all seriously. It’s not a legitimate political theory, it’s a meme to get low information people to equate Dems with Republicans. It’s more both sides dumb fuckery for idiots to gobble up. Point in case.
I don’t want either of these jackasses to win cause both will send us towards destruction. Some are fine with being sent there at a slower rate, but honestly I could just as easily call the “lesser evil” stuff a “psy op”. Shit I’m starting to see some try to rephrase it to “greater good” cause they’re realizing still using the word “evil” isn’t winning anyone over.
If trans people are so minor that we can’t affect elections, why are you complaining about trans people withholding our votes?
First: I’m not “complaining about trans people” in any way. I’m pointing out the flaw in your logic, and attempting to understand what mechanism you believe you are attempting to enact here because it’s no making sense.
Second: trying to contort other people’s comments to turn yourself into a victim over falsehoods is the weakest of weak discourse, and makes you seem like an unserious person. I hope you don’t engage with people in person like that, because it’s a fast track to being ignored.
This is part of a larger conversation.
I am not assuming that trans people are numerous enough to affect elections. I’m simply taking that as a given based on all the responses I’ve received in this and similar threads. People clearly believe that trans people are numerous enough for our votes to matter, but also somehow so small in number that our issues can be ignored.
You’re doing the Democrat version of the old Nazi trope that Jews were both incredibly weak and subhuman, while also a secret conspiracy that controlled the world. The Nazis simultaneously believed that Jews were inferior subhumans, literally less-evolved and less-intelligent than ordinary Germans AND that Jews were powerful and smart enough to secretly run the whole world.
You believe a similar thing about trans people. Our numbers are small enough that our issues can’t be litmus tests for the party. (No one would tell black democrats that they have to support a democrat that is a member of the KKK. Anti-black racism is treated as a red line by the whole party. No one says we have to support klan members because “blue no matter who.” Trans issues aren’t treated with the same seriousness by folks like you.) Our numbers are small enough that our issues can be dismissed as trivial and unimportant. You’ll dismiss the needs of trans people, and then with the very next breath say that we owe our votes to the Democratic party. Us not voting for Democrats risk them losing the election.
You believe in Schrodinger’s trans person: small enough in number to ignore, but not so small that we can’t be blamed for an election loss.
Again…twisting someone’s words into something completely different than what was said to make whatever point you feel you need to make. Unserious.
All I asked was for clarification about HOW you imagine this mechanism of withholding votes in the numbers you’re talking about. It’s math, not attacking your social standing or worth.
Go and read about people who made serious inroads for their social causes like Harvey Milk or Barbara Gittings. That’s how you get to real social change. Hell, look at Sarah McBride. She sees the social systems for what they are, and is working inside them to affect the changes she wants to happen. Doing this argumentative bluster thing that you’re doing and just attacking people, or threatening to abstain from the existing voting system is going to do shit. That’s just the reality of it.
Woody is working to keep MAGA in power, it’s their whole profile.
I’m not claiming the trans folk owe the dems shit. I am say the least I can do for marginalized groups is hold my nose and vote for the people who currently aren’t executing policy to harm those groups.
Voting for a third party?! Tsk-tsk!