As usual, the blue choice is obviously much better than the red choice, but only in comparison to this bat shit crazy red choice. On it's own, the blue choice is still rather bad.
I'm starting to think that Republicans just exist to make the bad Democrat options look always better in comparison.
If you have one side that is pushing into the crazy territory really hard, the public discourse will change and shift in a way, that a moderate position will be perceived as extreme. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overton_window
Your comment made me think of this spoken piece at the end of Anti-Police Aggro by Oi Polloi.
"Revolution isn't a thing that happens overnight. It's not a thing that - the orgasmic storming of Buckingham Palace and everything's all right in the morning, we've got a revolutionary society. We've got to realize that as things get harder - when we have a revolution, when we're headed towards a revolution things'll be harder still - and when we've obtained our revolution it doesn't stop - it continues on and on and on and on - It continues on until WE are the moderates. Right? When we are the moderates that's when we have a revolution. When ordinary people say "Anarchists? Ah, fuck - they're a load of fuckin liberals - they don't believe in revolution at all, ah, fuckin hell they're useless, like, you know" - Yeah, that's what I wanna see. That's what I'm fuckin' fighting for."
Well said. Yes, this is what self-identified-"leftists" miss out on. Their dismissal of Democrats is based in a child's fantasy of politics. In the real world, you have to win the election, move everybody up one, win another election, move everybody up one, win another election, etc. In the meantime, republiQans kick everybody back at-least-two either way, and the cycle repeats.
Magical leftist thinking says we all vote for gay space communism and tomorrow BAM it's replicators and free energy. Alas. There exists a timeline where that is at least sort-of-possible - but we ain't in it right now.
Leftism, at least the version currently prevalent on Lemmy, is literally religious thinking. There's in-groups and saints and prophets and holy scripture and a Rapture everyone keeps waiting for.