"If you didn't want fascism you should have voted!"

Neither the Dems nor the Reps are left. Further, that isn't how electoralism works, parties don't change their position if they recieve mass support, but if they don't, and only up to the extent their donors allow. In the US, this means Capitalists, ergo the Dems will never be a Leftist party.

Dems could become a left wing party if that's where voters wanted them. They would lose their donors, yes, so the reps would become the much better funded party.
But if voters voted for left wing candidates there is nothing the donors or centrist politicians could do about it. It would be a generational project, winning primaries and general elections, but it could be done.
- Dems could become a left wing party if that’s where voters wanted them.
  They do want them to be, and Dems proved they'd rather lose an election then let that happen.
  
  Lose an election to who
  Voters.
  Democratic leadership can schedule events or platform people or even change the rules but voters get to vote at the end of the day. There are more voters than leadership. And if voters didn't vote for centrists in primaries there wouldn't be any centrists in office.
- This is wrong. Even a compromise candidate like Bernie was colluded against, the party will only act in its own interests. It isn't a democratic party, it's one fully oriented towards resisting radical change.
  
  Explained in my other reply to you.
  
  Yes the Democratic party is oriented towards resisting change. You act like the people have no power, no say. If you think the votes are rigged please explain how.
  Voters do have a say. Republican voters wanted someone more extreme than milqtoast mitt Romney, and they got it in Trump. They wanted republican congresspeople that would support Trump instead of obstruct him like McCain. They got them.
  Democratic leadership can make it hard for leftists to win, but they aren't changing vote totals. If Americans voted for leftists in primaries for mayor and city council there would eventually only be leftists running for Congress and eventually a leftist would win the nominee for president.
  Money is a tool, it's not mind control.
  
  In 2016, the Clinton campaign shut down polling favoring Bernie. In 2020, the campaign was swaying towards Bernie, but all of the moderates dropped out and rallied around Biden. The primaries aren't truly democratic.
  Even if a Leftist made it to office, the party would not rally around them. The entire system is designed against change, and the preservation of the interests of Capital.
  Really, you're making the case for third party voting, as technically a third party win is possible, and would allow a Leftist in.
  
  Moving the Democratic party would be easier than electing a third party. It just doesn't happen in a year or decade.
  
  I have seen no evidence of that.
  
  Moving the democratic and Republican parties left has happened more recently than a third party winning national prominence.
  Both Democrats and Republicans moved left during the progressive era, 1890's to 1916. The Democrats stayed there for decades while the Republicans moved right over the course of the new deal. A third party hasn't gained prominence since the Republican party came on the scene in the 1850's.
  
  You didn't connect that to the will of the voters, though. Two important factors:
  The US took a "progressive nationalist" stance following World War I, leveraging its income from the inter-ally debts it levied during the war in order to bleed Europe dry for its own gain.
  The historic rise of the Soviet Union presented the world with an alternative to Capitalism, and as a consequence many Capitalist states began making concessions to their working class in order to pour some water over the rising revolutionary fire.
  In neither case was the progressive shift due to the will of the voters, but the ruling class.
  
  You just said the concessions were to head off the growth of revolutionary fire. What is that but responding to the will of voters?
  
  Voters do have a say.
  That's why I vote third party.

republicans never vote for democrats, yet democrats never stop chasing their votes.

the left wing are far more reliable voters for democrats than the republicans whose votes centrists envy. And their votes are actually gettable. You know their issues.

They really are the same though and no this isn't some demoralization post. People always get pissed on here because they think it's propaganda or something. There is no meaningful difference between Nancy Pelosi and Mitch McConnell outside of the performatives. It's a joke.

Trans people: am I a joke to you?
Seriously. Harris would have been a lot better for me personally. My life is not a performance.
- Every trans person I know hated Harris throwing them under the bus to appease Republican hillbillies who would never vote for Harris.
  And they also hated Harris's treatment of trans inmates, forcing them to be with their sex, not their gender. Which got them killed.
  But sure, I guess her record for years and the months leading up to the election don't matter. Maybe she would have protected them in office.
  Oh wait no she said she'd follow state laws. The ones that enable enmass dysphoria and social murder.
  
  Are you really going to lecture me about how I was just as unsafe under Biden?
  Harris swung to the left as a senator and was vice president to the most progressive administration in history.
  I live in a red state and a year ago I had the consolation that at least the white house had my back.
  
  It has your back by... Not protecting you or me or your friends. Or not pushing Congress to keep Title IX in place and expanding LGBTQ rights.
  Trump is worse but let's not pretend that Harris loves us.
  
  Agreed, sometimes, basically all the time, you have to choose between the bad and worse options.
- As a nonbinary person myself, you’d think trans people wouldn’t throw the entire global south under the bus to keep themselves (and by proxy, this system) safe and secure, but rather stand against the system that causes all this death. It’s no surprise that reaping the benefits of exported fascism will eventually bring that fascism home.
  
  Voting for trump or not voting isn't taking a stand, it's watching the flames rise and refusing to fight the flames.
  
  Voting is a tool the capitalists have provided to you because they know that either option will give them a win. I vote because local positions are important, but federal positions have been pre-approved by our abusers. If the ruling class has convinced you that voting is the most important action you can take to stop fascism, you’ve fallen for the exact propaganda they wanted you to believe. You don’t stop a house fire through politics- you throw water on the immediate problem. Direct action is responsible for nearly all of our civil rights gains we have made in this country.
  
  I never said voting is the most important thing to do. Voting is the bare ass minimum. It's (usually) easy and zero risk.
  Actual progress nearly always requires direct action. Women's suffrage involved firebombs. Abolition took a whole ass war in the US and the new deal happened after strikes and outright war all over the continent.
  Voting is not sufficient it's just the easiest possible way to give leadership information.
  
  Focusing on voting over direct action where one has a <1% impact on things over the far more impactful thing kind of implies you think it is the most important thing. My apologies if that wasn’t your meaning. It just comes across like “of course we have global warming when Jerry down the road didn’t recycle that one time”, ignoring the blatant destruction of our planet by oligarchs. Yes, Harris would’ve likely been better for me as well, but I’m done thinking that sacrificing others for my own comfort is justifiable because of my gender identity.
  
  That's the thing. There was no sacrifice. There was no pro Palestine candidate. There was a quiet genocide supporter and a loud genocide supporter. You can't punish the quiet candidate by abstaining or voting for the loud genocide supporter.
  The message they take from that is voters don't give a shit about Palestine or genocide except that some voters want it to happen faster with more death and suffering.
  You are correct that we cannot vote our way to peace, prosperity, justice, or any other desireable goal. Voting is not the end, it's the first step on a long road to building those things. Do unionize your workplace. Volunteer for your local aid agency. Build dual power. It's just so easy (nearly always) that there is no excuse to not vote.
  
  Do you honestly believe politicians don’t know what we want if we don’t vote? Sure, they can gauge how much they can truly get away with, but we have the internet and polling and email and phone calls and protests and petitions and every manner of just as ineffective tools as voting that tells people in power what regular people think, which is generally ignored for the wishes of the mega donors.
  Like I said earlier, I voted, but hyper fixating on it only distracts from the knowledge that there’s far better things to do than talk about voting other than the single day every couple of years where you go to the polls.
  
  Voting is at it's base a means of information transfer, but it's also a way to transfer power.
  Legislators presidents are not all powerful, but there can be real consequences to who gets to make the rules.
  We do not disagree about what is most important. But voting is a gateway to civic involvement. I don't think people who don't vote are more likely to organize labor, volunteer, or engage in activism. I think it's the opposite. Voters are more likely to be engaged and engaged active people are more likely to be voters.

Glad to see you endorsing voting third party

Did not say that. If everyone kept voting left then both parties would move left.
- Yeah, so people should vote left, which means voting third party
- When both parties are right, and most voters stay home, isn't that the same thing?
  You keep talking about "voting left" as if voters are given that option. Harris could have run on corralling big business. Does anyone think that "Almost as hard on immigrants as Republicans" was a better platform than running against billionaires?