(part II because it was too long for the comment window)

As far as the ‘“Democratic”’ process being fundamentally broken - that’s a valid question. Also irrelevant as to whether someone is responsible for the act of voting, and so is not covered here.

Your argument is shifting to an admittance that our electoral system might not actually be democratic, but you’re still incoherently clinging to the assertion that voters are responsible for the outcome regardless.

No, it’s not shifting. What I’m saying is there are challenges to making a fair election. Every year, local and state republicans rush to gerrymander districts, they make it easy to prevent others from voting, they close polling stations in majority Democratic areas. All fundamentally anti-Democratic and anti-American. And they do it loudly and proudly. With the only accountability that they be tossed from office, and they weren’t - again. Four years ago they were. That was nice.

Voters are responsible for THEIR VOTE. Who they vote for, they are responsible for voting for them. As a fan of a team, if i go to the game and cheer, if the team loses, am I responsible? You’re saying yes? Or no? i don’t know. You seem to be saying if the team wins (Harris is a good candidate), then we’d be good fans (enough votes) and should go cheer (vote). It’s kinda messed up, kind of backwards. It doesn’t work like that.

We support the team, and cheer, and hope they win. In a democratic contest there’s no “cheering” just voting. And that voting actually does determine who wins.

This is a Catch-22. You cannot reform a state that is designed to prevent reform without first reforming the state.

This is interesting because the elements that make up what you refer to as “a state” are not the same as the elements that make up a democratic election. By definition, and implementation, democratic elections are designed to change the state. That change might be more of the same for four years, or it might be radically different. The democratic election is the same EITHER WAY. And that’s NOT the same thing as being prevented from allowing change, though you desperately want to see it that way.

. . suggesting that our political parties would eliminate their own structural advantages over third parties if we just voted harder is some serious doublethink.

Voted harder? wtf is that. Are you saying if the democratic party added a plank to their platform to eliminate the elctoral college and the democratic party members voted for it they wouldn’t do it? IF THEY HAVE THE VOTES THEY DO THE THING. That’s how parties work at the most basic level. One vote - done . .really hard . .ly? . . is not a thing.

More to the point, how do you think a proposal to add that to the DNC party platform is done? In secret? By people in dark robes holding candles? No. It doesn’t always get the votes in the DNC, even inside the party you have to build coalitions to support things, that’s the nature of politics in any form.

The future is a dystopian wasteland and there was never anything we could have done to avert it without working outside the system. Luigi Mangioni did more to support the environmental movement and resist economic disparity with three bullets than has been accomplished in the last three decades, including Occupy.

Well that’s pretty dark. I disagree, but I see your point. I think it’s a shame we couldn’t build on the momentum of Biden and continue to make good changes, but not enough people voted for Harris. So. Here we are.

This election was so critical for that reason.

They say that at every election.

Yeah they do. Trump is completely unhinged though. Seriously, what they voted for is beyond bad. Beyond Reagan bad. Beyond GeeDubz bad. Way beyond. It was absolutely stupid and wrong to have not even tried to defeat it.

Even if Harris had won we’d still be fucked. She was never going to end fracking, much less support the kind of radical transformation our society needs to avoid ecological catastrophe and systemic collapse.

Once again, I completely disagree. And how did fracking get in there? I think she’d be supportive of renewables and we’re not going to get that now. Radical transformation is not usualy good and now that we don’t have intelligent compentent leaders it’s going to be even worse. It is a tragedy that so many people chose to sit this out. A tragedy for progressives. republiQan christian nationalists and nazis were all counting on so many sitting it out, because it helps them. And so it did.