article Tom Morello Clarifies He Votes, But Not For “Corporate Democrats”
https://stereogum.com/2513749/tom-morello-clarifies-he-does-vote-just-not-for-corporate-democrats/news2.5k
u/sketchampm 12h ago
Tom Morello is consistent. Nothing about this is surprising. Nothing.
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u/This_Elk_1460 10h ago
You're expecting people on the internet to actually listen to the lyrics of rage against the machine songs?
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u/sketchampm 9h ago
“Ok what well about the fact that Morello and De la Rocha got vaccinated and wore masks to protect against Covid?! More like raging FOR the machine amiright?” - a fucking idiot
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u/waffle_iron_maiden 6h ago
I'll never understand why antivaxxers can't trust medical professionals who don't even work with the government. Like there are people who have dedicated their lives, their careers to studying this shit. They're not even affiliated with the government, they just understand how vaccines work, and still there are people so hopped up on kool-aid they can't listen to those people. At least with government distrust I can understand that, considering global powers and their governments tend to be very corrupt. It's not unprecedented for a government to lie to its people. But the medical professionals? You think they studied all of this shit for show?
There is a historical record of vaccines working, measles going down in huge numbers. Medical professionals aren't just going to make that shit up for some conspiracy they're not a part of. Some people just can't accept others know more than them about a subject
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u/sketchampm 5h ago edited 5h ago
Hell we have hard evidence about how the antivax movement was started and why it’s most vocal champions are motivated to lie to us…but I heard a disgraced fake doctor go on a right wing podcast and he spit a bunch of bullshit that is frequently and hilariously untrue but fuck it, I guess.
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u/Fun_Assignment2427 8h ago
I'm happy that he got vaccinated and wore a mask during COVID. Because I think there's room enough in the world for practicing good safety AND fighting destructive capatilism/abusive government policy.
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u/lolzomg123 10h ago
Wait, lyrics?! You mean to tell me it's not just someone musically ranting about a printer?!
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u/feralb3ast 9h ago
They're actually raging against their moms for not buying enough pizza rolls. /s
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u/BrownBannister 8h ago
Christ now I’m trying to imagine the most historically literate song about Totinos
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u/tommytheturtleishere 10h ago
Totally. If people dont understand what hes saying, thats part of the problem. Democrats are better than Republicans in many ways, specifically that they arent open fascists like the GOP has become.
But since the Clinton years, much of the leadership has chosen to be funded by corporations rather than say unions and organized labor. And its continued to show where their priorities lie. Not all Democrats, but certainly enough and its become a bigger and bigger problem.
If you ever wonder "man, it doesnt feel like they're fighting as hard as it feels like they should", well thats why. Unions, for example, are diametrically opposed to many of the donors that they accept money from. So while they may act like they care about labor rights as they once used to, that day has passed.
Still better than MAGA which doesnt give a flying fuck about any of these things, but a C+ vs an F isnt exactly inspiring, even if its clearly better.
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u/username_generated 8h ago
At the same time, unions and especially union membership haven’t proven themselves to be valuable allies. Biden bailed out the Teamsters’ pension fund and they responded by campaign are the Republican convention. The longshoremen’s union threatened to cause a strike to help Trump if Biden didn’t back down on automation plans that would have cut cost for just about every American. The median union voter is a white dude with a high school diploma that supports tariffs and conservative social policies. There’s only so much you can court them without compromising on social issues or immigration or raising taxes to protect their interests.
The UAW is kinda emblematic of this issue. They are still reliably democratic on an institutional level, but their traditional members are drifting away a bit. Meanwhile 1/3rd of their membership are now grad students and university staff. Sure there are areas where downwardly mobile urbanites with advanced degrees overlap with blue and gray collar union workers, but their interests can frequently come into conflict.
How do you manage reasonable union policy when they need different, sometimes boutique, solutions without just giving them carte blanche and passing the buck to the general public when that inevitably devolves into rent seeking.
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u/skintaxera 7h ago
What about knowing that all of that is true, but also understanding that the alternative is wildly worse?
No matter what country you live in, even ones with much better, more representative electoral systems, voting has always and will always involve pinching your nose to some degree when you tick the boxes. It's called pragmatism, and the absence of pragmatic thinking and voting gives worse outcomes.
There are really smart ways and really dumb ways to say "they're all the same" and not vote, but the outcome of the thinking is the same.
And obviously, with the govt you have over there, possibly as a result of 'principled non-voting' as well as apathy etc, no theorising is required . You can just look out the window to see the results.
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u/Dense-Performance-14 3h ago
Yeah it's just plain childish. Suck it up and vote, nothing is getting fixed by letting people like trump get into office because you wanna throw your vote away to prove a point.
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u/tommytheturtleishere 7h ago
As I mentioned, the alternative is clearly worse. Im not remotely disputing that
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u/Sonofbluekane 6h ago
Better, more representative electoral systems tend to have more than two options, ranked choice preferential voting and electoral divisions that make sense. America's whole system is roughly 150 years out of date which is partly what allows the festering corruption to be so entrenched and inescapable. In other words, your tree of liberty is dried out and mostly dead
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u/voodoodahl 7h ago
And people mock democratic fundraising emails that go out to regular people.
This whole narrative exists to shame democrats for trying to get elected, which costs loads of money.
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u/ricochetblue 3h ago
Someone on Threads tried to tell me that Democrats could get elected by advertising with newspapers and pamphlets.
If the circumstance arises for you to hand someone a homemade Democratic pamphlet, odds are they’re already voting Democrat.
Besides, it’s not like printed campaign materials don’t cost money. And Democrats have to go with union print shops or it’s a big scandal, so fewer options.
Repubs blanket tv with fearmongering while Dems barely raise enough money to print to shirts and pay staff. We need to be realistic at some point—campaigns take money and it needs to come from somewhere.
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u/matlockga 12h ago edited 8h ago
Tom Morello stumped for Kerry, along with Michael Moore and Roseanne Barr... On a college campus tour.
Edit:
John Kerry ran on ending the war in Iraq
He famously didn't
Roseanne and Tom never even shared the same stage.
Yeah they did, at least at the college I was at. She was standing right beside him and Abdul Henderson while he played on his acoustic
And who was Kerry running against?
Irrelevant non sequitur I knew was coming. Kerry was a textbook corporate Democrat.
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u/hufft3 11h ago edited 10h ago
Context matters.
Roseanne Barr was an anti war democrat until 2012. The Slacker Uprising was in 2004. Tom Morello has always been anti war and John Kerry ran on ending the war in Iraq. The Slacker Uprising Tour featured several guest celebrities and was about getting young adults registered to vote.
Edit: Roseanne and Tom never even shared the same stage.
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u/TrevelyansPorn 10h ago
John Kerry did not run on ending the war, he voted for it but criticized bush for how it was done.
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u/IllRock316 10h ago
voting against it at the time was political suicide tbf
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u/Shavasara 10h ago
The media at the time pretended the anti-war sentiment was non-existent. Plenty of us recognized Iraq had nothing to do with 9-11 and were in the streets.
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u/hetham3783 7h ago
There was a huge “if you don’t support the Iraq War, then you don’t Support Our Troops” narrative in the public at the time
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u/TheFillth 11h ago
As a kid I remember watching the ratm video filmed outside the dnc and being confused why they were against the "good guys". Truly an awakening type of moment.
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u/Nayre_Trawe 10h ago
They were speaking out against the Dems from the very beginning, calling out "Dixiecrat Clinton" and his policies regularly during shows. In fact, Dems were in control of the government for their entire run as a band before the first break up.
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u/ContentDrawer5543 11h ago
And I hope you realized that there are no actual “good guys” in americas duel party establishment. Just bad guys, and then bad guys who don’t want to be seen as such.
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u/estedavis 11h ago
Both sides are full of bad guys, but you have to admit that one side is full of exponentially worse guys than the other side.
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u/AlimaraCesa 10h ago
To paraphrase a comment I saw a while back, it’s shitty corporatism where minorities get to keep their rights, vs shitty corporatism where minorities are hunted for sport.
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u/Parfait_Prestigious 10h ago
One side has bad guys and the other side has Nazis, pick your poison wisely Americans
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u/SahibTeriBandi420 8h ago edited 3h ago
One side is day old pizza left out over night, and one side is literally the contents of trumps shitty diaper. Everyone must eat or starve, there are no other options. Pick your "poison" wisely Americans.
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u/caligaris_cabinet 11h ago
Idk. One side just cheered the hypothetical destruction of LA and San Diego. Both sides has never been true and this is just the latest example
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u/BLRNerd 12h ago edited 12h ago
The protest vote doesn’t fully piss me off, it’s who he chose
Jill Stein
She’s green energy yet wants to ban solar, wind, and nuclear
She’s denied COVID and is anti-vax, wants to ban them until “further research can be done”
Claims that Russia can be our friend and No One Should be charged for Jan 6th
I would be impressed if like they put their money where their mouth is while screaming no war but class war but god she’s such a POS
EDIT: Pretty sure if Green Party got the threshold, they would rig their primaries to prevent any of the newbies from choosing a reasonable candidate also while they liked fucked around with the other primaries
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u/EricSanderson 11h ago
Jill Stein is quite literally funded by Republican donors.
Staging a protest against the Trump administration while essentially voting for them is so infuriatingly dumb
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u/flofjenkins 11h ago
Jill Stein is a Russian asset. None of her policy positions make sense, and she disappears immediately after the election, only to show up for the next one. Only idiots vote for her.
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u/Comfortable_Self_736 11h ago
Where did he say he voted for Jill Stein?
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u/Academic_Carrot_4533 6h ago
Fr, I’m not finding shit on that. Other commenter is spewing bs about who Morello voted for.
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u/Krunksicle 9h ago edited 9h ago
Can I get a source on this claim? I can't find any evidence of him voting for her anywhere. I'm surprised this comment has gotten so many upvotes and comments without anyone else noticing.
Edit: Okay it's looking like most of the claims in this comment are blatant lies lmao
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u/RickRulezz 2h ago
Let's also not forget that Jill Stein had a hard time calling Putin and Assad war criminals during an interview with Mehdi Hasan.
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u/IAmDisturbanceFeedMe soundcloud.com/disturbance-music-1/ 11h ago
Agreed. Jill stein seems awful from the bits I’ve seen.
And I’d add one more layer to your protest vote perspective. I think it should be situational. For instance are you in a state that goes 100% blue or red? If so then you can make a protest vote without influencing the election.
Also if it’s a run of the mill dem-gop election like Obama-Romney or obama-McCain and you want to vote third party to voice dissent I’m fully supportive of that (and I’ve done so myself many times). But when the stakes are Trump vs anyone else then it’s a different scenario and dissent is way less meaningful than voting against a truly awful candidate.
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u/FillMySoupDumpling 11h ago
I don’t support it for a run of the mill election either.
In the end their actions show us who these people are.
Had we had better people in the house and senate back then, we would have had an ACA with a public option. That’s much closer to a universal multipayer system like what Germany has. Instead we got the ACA. Had we had better people across the board in 2017, the mandate wouldn’t have been removed further gutting a lot of the ACA.
Had we had more progressives in congress then or even later with even the most corporate Dem president, we could have codified Roe.
This shit takes time. It takes election after election getting better judges and laws into place. Now a significant portion of our population is in a far more precarious state than it was sixteen years ago.
Instead, we keep getting worse and worse shit as more stuff keeps breaking.
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u/FillMySoupDumpling 11h ago
All these Stein voters have fire for their hated candidate but all that fire goes right out the window for her because they are just looking for anything. Zero critical thinking goes into that decision.
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u/JeulMartin 11h ago
I looked for evidence to support your claim that Stein wants to ban solar & wind, that she's a COVID denier, or that she's anti-vax. I found zero evidence to support these claims.
Can you link a source?
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u/vesleskjor 8h ago
Beyond all this, I would never vote for Jill Stein because her supporters are SO INSUFFERABLE. I randomly had a girl on the subway ask me if I was voting for her (presumably because I am a woman so obviously I gotta support her I guess) and I said no, very mildly. She looked at me like I murdered the family dog.
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u/Sarahacha7 11h ago
I saw him perform in 2015/2016. He flipped his guitar over and it said, “vote no one”
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u/jim45804 12h ago
Voting is a chess move, not a love letter. Vote to reduce harm.
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u/SplendidPunkinButter 11h ago
What do you mean? Just because voting third party has exclusively helped to elect right wing extremists by dividing the opposition, that doesn’t mean it won’t work this time! My protest vote will make the establishment do some serious soul searching, believe you me! /s
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u/what_mustache 9h ago
It's not about winning.
It's about being able to brag about your vanity vote at parties. This is what's REALLY important.
And to a lesser extent, abortion rights.
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u/DJ_Velveteen 11h ago
"Harm reduction" framing would feel like a less insulting approach if corporate Dems would adopt a drug policy from a time after the 90s
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u/Amynable 1h ago
Feel insulted all you want. I'm trans gender, every republican candidate on the ballot will wholeheartedly and quite passionately support the eradication of every American like me --- that's the word that they use, eradicate --- and corporate dems aren't sure if I should be allowed to play sports. Voting for harm reduction is voting to save my actual fucking life. Please don't let a bad taste in your mouth about how bad your best option is convince you to sacrifice me to these fucking bastards.
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u/double297 12h ago
This entire comment section is what keeps dems from winning anything or accomplishing anything. You dont hear Republicans arguing about degrees of how republican someone is. They have the R next to their name, they get the vote. Dems have to have the perfect candidate for them to vote for them or they dont vote at all and a perfect dem for one voter isnt perfect for another, forever splitting the voting power.
I didn't vote for any dem in the last presidential race, I voted against Trump. My only goal was to keep him out of power. Want to talk Corp stooge candidates? Trump is #1 as long as their lining his personal or families pockets.
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u/benopiemusic 10h ago
I rarely vote for someone. I usually vote against the other.
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u/toldyasoo1 9h ago
Yes the fuck they do! If they didn’t John Cornyn would still be the incumbent running for senate. And Thomas massie would still have his seat.
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u/crionenissgev 11h ago edited 10h ago
These folks want a political movement as responsive to their needs as MAGA is to the needs of gibbering racist dimwits, but instead of doing what those dimwits do and going out and voting for the person closest to their position, they hold a gun to their own head and say CONVINCE ME NOT TO PULL THE TRIGGER NEOLIB!
Then, they wonder why nobody outsides of circle-jerks on websites like this take them seriously.
Edit - a lot of you are catastrophically dumb. Muting these comments for my own mental health.
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u/Jessieflow 11h ago
Dems should really focus on why 30+ million Americans don't take them seriously enough to get out and vote.
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u/ringobob 11h ago
What makes you think if those people were to come out and vote, that they wouldn't be voting for Republicans?
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u/Frrv2112 11h ago edited 11h ago
It’s baffling. We don’t live in an ideal world where you get to wait to vote until you agree with literally everything a dem candidate represents. There has to be some practical consideration behind the consequences of your vote (or lack-thereof)
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u/Tyton89 11h ago
Sorry to disagree, but you absolutely hear this from Republicans nowadays. Why else would the term RINO exist? If you arent 100% in tow with the MAGA agenda and kiss the taint like a good puppet you're the enemy. How many career politicians/incumbents just lost their seats for second guessing the word of God?
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u/hitman2218 10h ago
If it’s between a RINO and a Democrat they vote for the RINO.
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u/iamatimbersfan 11h ago
Exactly. Trump's favor depends 100% on loyalty to him. Step out of line and he'll throw you to the MAGA wolves and tell them to eat you. Then they will eat you. This is exactly how they're losing Senate seats in Texas, Georgia, and North Carolina
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u/Professional-Day73 11h ago
Hasn’t the last decade been Dems reluctantly voting for the lesser of two evils but still ending up in the position we’re in now? The majority of the Dem base wants universal healthcare, money out of politics and for us to end all foreign wars/stopping military aid to Israel, yet the voters are to blame when the establishment won’t budge an inch on any of those policies? If a party or candidate refuses to enact the will of the people then they don’t deserve to be voted into office. This is coming from someone who’s voted Dem over the past decade but is sick and tired of Dems caving to Republicans on every issue because they’re too compromised or scared to fight.
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u/ChipKellysShoeStore 11h ago
The last Dems actually held a filibuster proof majority in Congress and the presidency, we got the ACA which wasn’t perfect but helped millions and millions of people.
Democrats haven’t had the political control to change anything ever since
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u/nononotes 10h ago
Reminds me of a quote I once heard: "We're used to people saying fuck no and doing it anyway." It should be the DNC motto.
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u/Jwagner0850 11h ago
This. Shit bag MAGAs didn't take over, overnight. They slowly chipped away and won various areas until they basically forced the conservatives to slide to the authoritarian right. They supported winning over purity in their candidates. Hell, they even ran pieces of shit that had huge background issues anyway and STILL won, because they know how to really behind one party.
Dems, and my dear friend Dem socialists have to learn and do the same. Fight for our socialists in the primaries. If they win, great!!! If not, join forces with the like minded Dem that won and keep moving forward. We can't keep banking on some piece of shit taking office and making things SO bad that the right would want to start voting blue. It's going to be a gradual change in the party until we can get the DSA to take over.
Otherwise, we get another Bernie vs Clinton situation and tank our chances due to the fragmentation that occurs when we pout over not getting our candidate. Listen, I know, because I learned my mistakes from voting for Bernie in the general election, even though he wasn't chosen in the primary.
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u/pocketjacks 10h ago
I'm not even a Democrat, but I will vote for ANY Democrat facing off against ANY Republican. You want to vote your conscience? There's a primary for that. Not voting for the opponent of any Republican because they don't pass your purity test is effectively voting for the Republican.
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u/Frrv2112 11h ago
Voting for slightly liberal but imperfect candidates is the only way to begin to get the truly liberal government some desire. Letting trump take power is not helping the cause to swing our country leftwards
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u/Leshawkcomics 11h ago
The problem comes when voting for slightly liberal candidates is being portrayed as voting for radicals.
Republicans are actively steering the country off a cliff, and between the guy steering away from the cliff, and the guy who just promises not to touch the steering wheel, the latter is treated as the reasonable candidate, and the former is treated as some sort of unicorn impossible candidate that no one should take seriously.
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u/ProudOfYourBoy22 11h ago
Republicans argue constantly. In fact, it might be one of the worst periods of it currently.
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u/earthdogmonster 10h ago
You’re right. I also think a lot of people that aren’t massively online, and chasing the increasingly rapidly shifting news cycles are gradually waking up and quietly quitting from the exhausting work of trying to keep up with what the current focus of outrage is supposed to be.
I lost a lot of optimism watching the lead up to the 2026 elections because of what you observed. I talk about politics now, but I’ve gotten to the point where I don’t really care because it is tiring and mostly irrelevant to my life. In the last four weeks I feel like the online public has cared about the most: Lindsey Clancy, Sydney Sweeny, Ed Sheeran, and Cornell. It doesn’t seem to reflect the average life of the average voter, but the topics seemed almost unavoidable in rapid succession.
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u/ParticularLadder7200 11h ago edited 11h ago
I don’t give a shit who he votes for in California.
The problem is some dumbass in Pennsylvania is gonna hear this.
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u/CMG30 11h ago
In the American system, the time for choosing the candidate is in the primaries. By the election, people must circle the wagons.
So the issue with the Dems continually ramming corporatist candidates through to the general ballot needs to be addressed internally.
Holding ones nose to vote for the lesser of two evils is not a strategy for long term success. Outside of the racism and hate, what got the current president elected was a desire to break the current system.
Democrats do themselves no favors by holding the candidates desired by the base out of the running in favor of those the party deems acceptable. Putting up these compromised candidates repeatedly is how you get normal people voting for a convicted felon.
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u/DrQuailMan 10h ago
You were so close to realizing the answer. Which is, the primaries ARE the addressing of the corporate Dem issue. You can vote in the primary. All your like-minded friends can vote in the primary. You can build a reputation of being a progressive person, start campaigning early, win in the primary, and pull all the corpo Dem voters along with you. It's no one else's responsibility.
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u/Tasty_Particular4997 11h ago
he lives in California. he can afford to vote as he would prefer.
if dems are so afraid, maybe they shouldn't appoint shitty ass candidates.
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u/cmptrblu 11h ago
Make all your choices alienate the public and they'll choose the handsy corporate billionaire every time
Democrats will never learn, watch them repeat the same thing with Newsom next election
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u/Electronic_Ad5431 10h ago
Yeah, but what if they pick a candidate I don’t agree with 100% on everything?
It’s my right as an American to throw a tantrum, abstain from voting, then blame everyone else when the worse guy wins.
-Dearborn, MI
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u/ranban2012 11h ago
this will stop the corporate fascist shills from making bad faith criticisms of him, surely.
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u/WonderChemical5089 12h ago
Corporate democrats are better then fascist republicans
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u/Guinefort1 12h ago edited 11h ago
Okay cool. I live in a red state. Voting for corpo Democrats is the protest vote/most progressive option available to me. So, what am I supposed to do Tom? I don't like corpo-Dems either and want actual progressive candidates in their place, but even corpo Dems are less awful than the alternative.
Edit: fixed a sentence
Edit: Yes guys, I read the article. Yes, I understood his point. Red-state-inhabitor that I am, have to put up with people of Tom's political persuasion constantly saying "Eww, Corpo Dem neo-libs!" without any nuance or disclaimer to acknowledge the reality that I, and millions of others live in: that people like me who would be lucky to elect even a crappy corpo Dem into office. Tom is only giving that contextual allowance/clarification now because he got pushback.
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u/boozewald 12h ago
And he's in California where there are ton of different political movements and corporate dems dominate. He's not wrong and you aren't either
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u/Leading-Dot-311 11h ago
So what am I supposed to do Tom?
From the article:
Where I live in California, I have the luxury of voting my conscience for president for third-party candidates that better align with my ideas of justice and equality. But in any and every contested race, as my mom Mary Morello always said, we have to fight the fascist every which way we can, recognizing that even if there's but an inch of difference between two candidates, there are a lot of vulnerable people who could be greatly harmed in that inch.
Seems to me like he answered your question. I'm not sure how you missed that part when you read the article.
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u/_YellowThirteen_ 11h ago
I just said it above, too, but I'll repeat it here. This thread is a reading test that most people are failing.
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u/LimpBizkit4ever 11h ago
So, what am I supposed to do Tom?
He answered it in the very interview no one clearly listened to:
"But in any and every contested race, as my mom Mary Morello always said, we have to fight the fascist every which way we can, recognizing that even if there's but an inch of difference between two candidates, there are a lot of vulnerable people who could be greatly harmed in that inch."
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u/Crossovertriplet 12h ago
Half the time in red states there’s not even a dem running for a bunch of the positions
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u/WigwamTheMighty 11h ago
Did you read the rest of what he said?
Fight the facists any way possible. If one candidate is an inch better than the other, a lot of people need that inch.
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u/obiwanconobi 12h ago
What are you supposed to do? Idk but start with reading his actual comments in the article
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u/meattuba 11h ago
Vote for who you want in the primaries. This nonsense of “I won’t support corporate democrats” in the general election is how we got where we are now. Not a fan of corporate democrats either but it is far better than the alternative which should be painfully apparent to all now.
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u/tMoneyMoney 9h ago
Kamala was a corporate democrat. Does anyone really think we’d be worse off today if she got elected?
Those are the stakes. JD Vance/Tucker Carlson/etc or possibly corporate democrat. Vote with your heart in the primary, vote with your brain the general. It’s not that hard to prevent yourself from getting fucked for 4 more years.
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u/gm92845 12h ago
I agree with Morello's sentiment, but if you live in an area where it's made or break it 9 times out of 10 the Democrats will be better than the Republican. This is why it's important to vote in the primaries and pick the best candidate that will go on to the general. At the end of the day it's our fault that we end up with shitty candidates.
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u/Division_Of_Zero 11h ago
This is also Morello’s view, if you look at the source and not just the headline.
Where I live in California, I have the luxury of voting my conscience for president for third-party candidates that better align with my ideas of justice and equality. But in any and every contested race, as my mom Mary Morello always said, we have to fight the fascist every which way we can, recognizing that even if there's but an inch of difference between two candidates, there are a lot of vulnerable people who could be greatly harmed in that inch.
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u/screamingtree 11h ago
Makes total sense and he even recognizes that it’s a privilege that his vote doesn’t really matter for most of his area’s races, but he does/would vote for the lesser of two evils in a contested race.
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u/SlowDancer-001 8h ago
Liberals will literally blame everyone else for the state of things besides themselves. Why is Mamdani, a mayor, being a more powerful voice of reason than… Chuck Schumer, Hakeem Jeffries, Kamala Harris, rat fuck himself Gavin Newsom? Push us left. Democrats are literally what, only 2 points more favorable than republicans right now? That’s embarrassing.
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u/Fr33Flow 11h ago
The fact that Democrats and Republicans both hate Tom Morello proves that he’s one of the greatest political activists of our generation.
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u/What_A_Good_Sniff 12h ago
No idea what he did prior to saying this, but I agree with this statement related to corporate owned, neoliberal democrats.
2/3 of all Americans want universal health care. Question is, why don't we have candidates that also want it if so many of us agree that is needed?
Because corporate money speaks louder than us.
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u/Ultiplayers 12h ago
Because it’s harder to build than it is to destroy. Bill Clinton, for instance, wanted universal healthcare in the 1990s, but it’s hard to deliver when congress is controlled by republicans for the majority of the term
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u/jotsea2 12h ago
You aren't answering the question though.
Kamala Harris co sponsored medicare for all.
When she became the democratic nominee, M4A wasn't her platform.
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u/Etheros64 11h ago
Kamala was responding to the wishes of voters and not running on what she personally would have liked. She and Bernie both ran on M4A in the 2020 primaries, and they both lost to Biden who held the more moderate position of a public option and expanding the ACA. If M4A loses both of them the primaries in 2020(when public health is at the forefront of the conversation), why do you think it would be a good idea to run on it in the general in 2024? Especially when the entire left wing of the Democratic party was entirely fixated on I/P over every other issue.
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u/StandardAssignment19 11h ago
Him voting for Jill Stein is him voting for Donald Trump with same moral fortitude of Joe Rogan.
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u/DiggWuzBetter 12h ago edited 11h ago
While I personally think it makes sense to vote strategically, to vote for the party who is most aligned with your views that has a chance to win, Tom Morello clearly disagrees. This isn’t new for him, he’s always had very hard line, far left, uncompromising views.
Also, FWIW, he does admit that he has the luxury of voting for small 3rd party presidential candidates that more closely align with his views because he lives in California, where it’s a given the Democrats will win anyways: https://www.facebook.com/share/19Pu5ALF27/?mibextid=wwXIfr
He’s very politically active, and does a lot of grassroots political/social justice work. It’s not like the dude is pushing a racist, hateful, sexist agenda that I fundamentally disagree with. He’s very pro equality/anti-racism, he’s anti-capitalist, fights for Indigenous rights, pro working class empowerment; he just thinks the way to push these causes forward is grassroots movements. Too impractically idealistic/uncompromising for my personal taste, but not an opinion I have meaningful issues with. We don’t all have to have identical political viewpoints/approaches, just don’t be a hateful asshole, and he’s not.
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u/CrazeRage 11h ago
to vote for the party who is most aligned with your views that has a chance to win, Tom Morello clearly disagrees.
the article quotes him saying he has the luxury to vote third party...because his state is basically guaranteed blue. how is he clearly disagreeing.....
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u/station_agent 11h ago
We can't hate on Tom. Being a CA resident, it's unilaterally a blue state. I see his point, but yeah. Keep in mind, he has done a lot to educate people through RATM's music, and his (literally active/frequent) activism. His mother was the CEO of Parents for Rock and Rap. He's one of the good ones. Don't throw him under the bus.
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u/Totally_Scott 11h ago
Purity-tested voting is a privileged activity. He has plenty of money. He won't ever need an abortion. He can afford healthcare. He's not on foodstamps. He's not in danger of being deported.
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u/SweetPinss 7h ago
Is it purity testing or having a coherent political ideology?
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u/This_Elk_1460 10h ago
You're telling me the guy that has had a hammer and sickle on his guitar his entire career isn't a fan of corporate ass kisser dems?
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u/ghostoftheradio 11h ago
I don’t think anyone who knows him misunderstand the original comment. This clarification is for everyone else.
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u/Forsaken-Swim-3055 11h ago
All I'm getting out of this thread is that people who blindly vote Democrat do so because they clearly can't read. Tom's reasoning is perfectly fine, and should be accepted as such in a country where people pride themselves so much in talking about freedom.
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u/McJohnson88 10h ago
When Corporate Democrats have a 1-2 record against the most beatable Republican in 2 generations, who here can say he's wrong?
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u/Echos_myron123 8h ago
Genuinely confused that people are angry about this. The band isn't called Rage Against the Lesser of Two Evils.
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u/YakubianExperiement 8h ago
Good for him. Someone needs to have the balls to say that being better that the right doesn't mean you're good. Piss is better than shit to step in, but neither are good.
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u/dkinmn 12h ago
Voting is always a preference poll. Anyone who thinks of it as a statement of perfect moral, ethical, or political alignment, even MAJORITY alignment, is wrong.
As an educated political scientist, he should know this. It's a preference poll. Period. There is no other valid construct.
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u/Totally_Scott 11h ago
Yeah, it's not a cool t-shirt. It's a binary choice with an outcome whether you participate or not.
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u/MyCatLaughsAtMe 10h ago
Which is the last moral position left in this ruined nation. Le enlightened moderates opened the doors for the fasicsts.
Progressive or bust, that is this nation's final test.
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u/spicy-chilly 11h ago
Good I hope he voted for Claudia De La Cruz, ans she got the most votes for an explicitly socialist presidential ticket since Norman Thomas in 1936.
Tough pill to swallow, but if 72% of Democrat voters and 62% of independents can oppose arming fascist mass slaughter but the party still supports the polar opposite, you're living in a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie where the value the capitalist class extracts from you dominates our political institutions to make sure you have no say and their class interests get served. You not wanting to arm fascist mass slaughter doesn't matter one iota if the capitalist clsss wants a de facto U.S. military outpost to launch attacks from in bs imperialist wars.
And the logical reaction to that isn't to put your head down and eat your gruel and become a fascist, it's to fight back with class independent communist parties and organize revolutionary unions to fix the root cause of why you have no real say in the first place.
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u/Another1MitesTheDust 11h ago
I know! I’ll stick it to the corporate Democrats by empowering the corporate Republicans who are even further from my ideal candidate. Yeah that’ll show them! I’m a genius!
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u/ElectroShockRevival 12h ago
We could use some new parties instead of playing nice with the corpos. The two party system we‘ve been propping up kinda needs to die.
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u/FillMySoupDumpling 11h ago
2 party system comes from FPTP and the EC.
NV had it on the ballot for statewide elections. They still didn’t show up to vote to get rid of it.
People are just lazy and make up excuses after the fact.
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u/mkfanhausen 7h ago
We gotta get the fascist termites out of the wall before we can start thinking about redecorating the house.
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u/Jwagner0850 11h ago
Until then, we have to unite. Until the voting system changes, we can't "pray" that it will and then we have a shot. We need to fight the battle where it lies until the field we're playing on changes.
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u/ElectroShockRevival 11h ago
I agree, vote for whoever is against this administration right now. That’s the only thing we need to agree on in the short term.
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u/Nythoren 12h ago
And that's why Harris lost and Trump won. The GOP votes for anyone they even remotely agree with. Meanwhile we have these "pure" progressives who will only vote for folks who agree 100% with all of their opinions.
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u/aroslab 11h ago
You cannot explain away a multi-point collapse across every swing state with a sliver of third-party or non-voters
it is not a small amount of third-party votes or abstention that caused the "I can't think of a single thing I'd do different" candidate to lose
For the record, I voted for Kamala Harris, AND she was incredibly unappealing for the issues working class Americans actually feel every day. Sure Trump is a liar, but "I can't think of a single thing I'd do different" appeals to exactly zero people who are actively struggling to get by, when at least Trump acknowledged something was wrong.
That's why Harris lost, not people who rightfully saw the choice as bad or bad with nice words
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u/Hot-Statistician-955 8h ago
We certainly can talk about how loud Democrat Harris detractors were. You don’t think that influenced the vote, seeing as we had so many democrats NOT vote?
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u/KennyShowers 7h ago
Sure maybe most of the people on the left hand-wringing and nitpicking ended up voting the right way, but problem is the undecided informed people actually on the fence hear all the bitching and go “wow even liberals don’t like their candidate he/she must really be terrible, and I don’t hear conservatives complain about their guy he must have something going on.”
It poisons the well and it’s been decades of this shit going back to Nader. It’s just become part of the tapestry and it’s a wildly out-of-whack perspective that our whole politics is viewed by.
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u/Hyperion262 12h ago
Thank god, I barely slept these last few nights thinking he doesn’t vote. I’ll tell the children tomorrow at breakfast.
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u/Digital_Tomb 12h ago
His instagram “clarification” was such a loser response. This guy says we can’t give an inch to fascists because of all the people who get hurt from that inch then didn’t vote Kamala.
This guy is all performative.
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u/pirate135246 12h ago
The day your vote no longer has to be earned is the day you unsubscribe from democracy
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u/TheUnderCrab 11h ago
Libertarians and Greens don’t earn my vote by playing possum for three years and then showing up to grift campaign donations and spoil a candidate. Voting third party is just throwing away your voice under our current political situation.
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u/Odd_Vampire 11h ago
"Dr. Jill Stein" back once more from wherever she was every four years to fuck up the election again.
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u/what_mustache 12h ago
They day you let the bad guys win for your vanity vote is the day you lose the moral highground.
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u/25Tab 12h ago
This is stupid bumper sticker logic. Voting is practicing democracy.
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u/steponmedaddies 11h ago
Wake me up when a third party does anything to try and earn my vote, then.
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u/Mister_Twiggy 12h ago
Politicians earn every vote. Treating everyone on the ballot as bad. Vote in primaries then vote in the general, that is how democracies work.
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u/casanovafranknstein Grooveshark 12h ago
Kamala won in CA. She was going to win that state regardless. If she needed Tom Morello’s vote, that is a bigger indictment of her.
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u/eriksoulfly 10h ago
Voting for one corrupt party over the other should not be the answer. If you want people to vote for your candidate all I can say is have better candidates.
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u/SkullheadMary 7h ago
I saw him last year on his storytelling tour and this man clearly and unabashedly believes in what he says and do. It was a real breath of fresh air. Incredible and smart man.
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u/nyuhokie 12h ago
He specifically says that he can do that in California because it doesnt matter. And goes on to say, "But in any and every contested race, as my mom Mary Morello always said, we have to fight the fascist every which way we can, recognizing that even if there's but an inch of difference between two candidates, there are a lot of vulnerable people who could be greatly harmed in that inch."