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Cake day: December 12th, 2023

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  • In the case of UK Labour, they got fewer votes in absolute terms this time than under Corbyn, and only marginally improved on his vote share in 2019’s wipeout— what really got them into power was Conservative discipline collapsing as soon as Corbynism was dead and there was no longer any threat to the political consensus, combined with the quirks of a constituency-based fptp electoral system. Veering right is a ‘vote winner’ for a nominally left/centre party only in that it buys you the right to participate in the first place.






  • This whole debate is so warped tbh. No-one ever says that voting for a candidate/party who would have won anyway is “throwing your vote away” but it does exactly as much good as not voting at all. Similarly, if you wake up the day after the election, and the Bad Dude won, well, your vote wouldn’t have changed anything anyway.

    You can register your dissent by voting third party. It’s not much, but that’s all you’re allowed to do.





  • I can’t really furnish you with a link, though I saw some pretty convincing breakdowns back when I was on Twitter. Long story short, nobody is actually buying e.g. James Ball’s books — they don’t even print nearly enough to cover what the author is paid. It’s similar to the columnist grift, which is definitely a thing in the US too






  • Far from an expert here, but imo you only need to look at the media coverage itself to at least see that the idea of a huge popular upswell is bunk. I’ve been scouring the reportage for a long shot of these protests, and nothing. How about the opposition figures in front of a crowd? Again, nothing. It’s always a handful of goons in a conference room. Meanwhile, Maduro still demonstrably has a huge social base, going by the attendance at rallies, official support from social orgs etc.

    There have almost certainly been irregularities dgmw, but, as has been mentioned elsewhere in this thread, the election was hopelessly compromised from the get go. It’s just not possible to have ‘free and fair’ elections under circumstances such as this.

    With regard to other forms of suppression e.g. Machado’s disqualification, well… I mean she’s openly calling for foreign intervention, is collaborating with hostile state actors, and she’s a fucking nazi.

    If liberal democracy worked as advertised, the opposition would have conceded to a new political consensus by now, and perhaps even be back in power. They could just say, “ok, the nationalized oil stays. Now, why not let us manage it instead?” But they have not ceded an inch on privatisations, and they won’t either. Liberal democracy demands that the complete dismantling of the meagre gains of chavismo be on the table at every election.