[pstuart]

Let me try this again.

A two party system is a rigged game. Period.

The Democratic party absolutely needs to be taken to task and none of their bullshit should be tolerated or defended, ever, except one small exception: election day, in the general election -- because we can't fix the government if it's no longer a democracy.

[forgetfreeman]

Thank you for clarifying your position.

We are in violent agreement in all but this: I refuse to reward the Democratic party for putting a gun to my head. If they as a political organization are willing to literally risk our democracy when the alternative is assembling reforms that clearly address the imbalances in our society then we can all burn together because I refuse to continue to reward their brinksmanship.

[pstuart]

Great! I engage to try and reach consensus, not dismiss. Sometimes it even works!

I want to point out that there were enough viable voters for Harris to win (but I am in the camp that believes there was actual election fraud done by Trump supporters).

The anger at blessing Harris without a proper primary, the genocide in Gaza, and the "everything's fine in the economy because the market is doing great!" -- none of that should be tolerated, and I recognize the anger leading to not voting for her because of that.

But by not voting in that unpalatable compromise we have an administration that is as evil, corrupt, and anti-democratic as could be. It's not clear if we can ever wrest control again. I'm frankly terrified.

We have to be strategic in our opposition, but that involves all of us reading from the same script -- a power that the Right excels at and the Left seems incapable of doing.

Case in point: "wokeness". It's been artfully weaponized by the Right and is the Achilles heel of the Left. It's the GOP's golden ticket to victory.

One of the superpowers of "wokeness" is that it's definition is never acknowledged on the Right other than "shrill libruls trying to boss everyone around and make everybody transgender and gay". That vagueness is intentional. To the Right it's an opaque blob of hate that requires no thought, no reason, other than "I hate that shit".

As "woke" was really about becoming aware of the institutionalized racism of the US I would call myself "fully woke" in that regard. But as it's more of a amorphous entity now I'd call it "human decency".

That said, I believe the Dems need to bail on "woke" and follow the model of the Tea Party, where a subgroup can espouse the more "extreme" stuff, and the main party can say "oh those silly people, that's not us, we're the serious party of populist economics and foreign policy"; then once that is framed in the public's eye, to go "oops, the extremists made me do this".

Politics means 2 distinctly different things: tending to the rules of governance, and tribal warfare. It's the latter that makes people hate talking about it.

This is all a game, a very important game, and a very strategic game. The rules used to be more clear but now its Calvinball.

Our only viable choice is to play the game the best we can, and recognize and act on what will help us "win".

Disclaimer: while I shit on the GOP, I recognize the value of "conservatism" and would love to see a GOP that existed to be the check and balance of any follies that the Dems enage in. If we're stuck with a two-party system, that would be our best bet for the country to survive, let alone succeed.