“Dems are just as bad,” they say.

You’re going to hear this a lot more in the next two years.

You’re going to hear it from com­mu­nists and anar­chists and the very very far left (along with the occa­sion­al lib­er­tar­i­an) because Democ­rats now have to focus on get­ting their mes­sage out, and the left­ists who said, “Nev­er shall I ever…” are now being ignored and worked around and strug­gling to stay polit­i­cal­ly rel­e­vant by going full sabo­teur on social media.

You’re going to hear it because, even though Democ­rats plat­form is always more pro­gres­sive than Repub­li­cans and because the Biden/Harris plat­form was more pro­gres­sive than Obama’s in 2012, and even though Har­ris ranked in the top ten of pro­gres­sive Sen­a­tors when she was in the Sen­ate (and usu­al­ly the top five)—even more pro­gres­sive than the apos­tle Bernie Sanders—she DID do things that involved harm to mar­gin­al­ized com­mu­ni­ties. And yes, peo­ple had legit­i­mate axes to grind. Let’s not pre­tend they don’t.

You’re also going to hear it because Russ­ian psy­ops and right-wing “false flag” oper­a­tions don’t just make shit up out of the aether to divide us, but instead gin up our exist­ing frac­tures. And these bad actors will do absolute­ly ANYTHING to keep the right wing of U.S. pol­i­tics in pow­er. They will be push­ing this nar­ra­tive through dank meme stash­es and elo­quent posts that some­how get picked up by left-wing com­mu­ni­ties and go viral. 

The “Dems are just as bad” may take the form of a sophis­tic bumper sticker—“Democrats sup­port geno­cide!” “Fund­ed by AIPAC”—or of a very com­pli­cat­ed anal­o­gy about good cops vs. bad cops all work­ing for the same cor­rupt sys­tem. Or a point by a promi­nent intel­lec­tu­al point­ing out that both par­ties bend to busi­ness inter­ests, mak­ing their dif­fer­ences illu­so­ry in some con­texts. But regard­less of what form it takes, you WILL hear it. 

And no mat­ter who is say­ing it, they are wrong. 

I don’t want to sound unkind. I don’t want to shit on the opin­ion of those who I would most accu­rate­ly describe as hav­ing a dif­fer­ent philo­soph­i­cal prag­ma­tism about get­ting that which we both want. I cer­tain­ly am not being pre­scrip­tive about how folks should vote. I am to the left of most of these peo­ple (yes, the LEFT), and I share their frus­tra­tion with the U.S. Over­ton win­dow, white male suprema­cy in the Demo­c­ra­t­ic par­ty, DINOs, and an unswerv­ing ser­vice of cap­i­tal­ism.

But, still, they are objec­tive­ly wrong.

It’s true that our two par­ties share harm­ful assump­tions, are all right of a glob­al cen­ter, vil­lainize any legit­i­mate­ly left views like redis­tri­b­u­tion of wealth, and have some real shit­ty over­lap on things like colo­nial­ism and cap­i­tal­ism. The nature of our win­ner-take-all democ­ra­cy requires an enor­mous umbrel­la to be able to counter the slav­ery-pro­tect­ing rules of the Elec­toral Col­lege, and the fact that a Wyoming vote counts more than three times as much a Cal­i­for­nia vote. 

Twice in 16 years, a Repub­li­can who lost the pop­u­lar vote has become Pres­i­dent. (It’s only hap­pened five times ever since we start­ed record­ing the pop­u­lar vote, but twice in the five most recent elec­tions.) It means that instead of an actu­al­ly pro­gres­sive par­ty that can lean left, Democ­rats need to project the image of a mod­er­ate par­ty that can (hope­ful­ly) build a big enough coali­tion to counter the Elec­toral College—along with ger­ry­man­der­ing, vot­er ID laws, vot­er purges, poll clo­sures (almost exclu­sive­ly insti­gat­ed by Repub­li­cans and almost always dis­en­fran­chis­ing BIPOC). This time around, they’re just gut­ting the Vot­ing Rights Act alto­geth­er. That “big umbrel­la” that is required to counter all this cheat­ing means a lot of mod­er­ates on the nation­al stage and a lot of mar­gin­al­ized com­mu­ni­ties get­ting pushed under the bus to go for the broad­er appeal. And that means a LOT of folks have absolute­ly legit­i­mate griev­ances against Democ­rats.


That doesn’t make the Dems the “same” as Repub­li­cans.  It just doesn’t.

The leg­is­la­tion and action Dems have tried to pass over the last few years before they became an oppo­si­tion par­ty, includ­ing an impeach­ment, FAR greater Covid stim­u­lus, debt relief, the Pay­check Fair­ness Act, the Cli­mate Action Now Act, the Vio­lence Against Women Reau­tho­riza­tion Act, The Amer­i­can Res­cue Plan, The Infra­struc­ture Act the Con­sumers First Act, The Keep Kids Fed Act, The Buch Lewis Act, free trade, labor unions, con­sumer pro­tec­tion, some sem­blance of attempt at equi­ty are not the same. Nei­ther is it “just the same,” when all were opposed as a uni­fied block by near­ly every Repub­li­can. More recent­ly, Repub­li­cans block vote to release the Epstein files. They have stepped out of Trump’s way while he vio­lates the sep­a­ra­tion of pow­ers enshrined in the Con­sti­tu­tion. They block vote to increase vot­er reforms. They block vote for envi­ron­men­tal pol­i­cy, labor reforms, health care, and abor­tion access.

**takes a deep breath**

To look at all of that, and con­clude that Dems “aren’t doing any­thing,” or that both sides are “just the same” is the kind of reduc­tive hasty gen­er­al­iza­tion that is broad-brush­strokes enough for podi­um pound­ing at the communist’s club or the local anarchist’s meet-and-greet, but is out­ra­geous­ly inap­pro­pri­ate for a sophis­ti­cat­ed, accu­rate, or pre­cise read of our cur­rent polit­i­cal cli­mate since the hor­ri­fy­ing turn tak­en in 2016. We went from “not left wing enough for left­ists” to the ADL jump­ing up and down and warn­ing us that the pro­gres­sion of Trump’s Amer­i­ca was ALL TOO FAMILIAR, and every alarm bell there is about ris­ing fas­cism and author­i­tar­i­an­ism ring­ing as loud­ly as is pos­si­ble.

That is not “just the same.” The casu­al dis­re­gard for lives, health, pros­per­i­ty (of any­one oth­er than Wall Street), and the Grand-Canyon-sized chasm between par­ties in order to make a claim like “they’re all alike” has reached the point of its own delib­er­ate­ly obtuse brand of fanati­cism. And I don’t say this to be inval­i­dat­ing to folks on the far left. (I am one.) I don’t say it because I don’t under­stand that cap­i­tal­ism as we know it is unsus­tain­able. (I do.) I don’t say it with­out ful­ly under­stand­ing that except for maybe “The Squad,” Dems too sup­port oppres­sive insti­tu­tions and share harm­ful assump­tions. (They sure­ly do.) What I’m point­ing out is that folks who think this makes them “the same” com­plete­ly inval­i­date some very real dif­fer­ences with very real con­se­quences to very real lives. This isn’t just a mat­ter of cos­met­ic differences—blues and reds and don­keys and elephants—and it’s not just an intel­lec­tu­al exer­cise either; in fact their dif­fer­ences are mas­sive, affect real people’s real lives, real people’s pros­per­i­ty, real people’s health and real people’s safe­ty and secu­ri­ty.


There are peo­ple with their own com­pli­cat­ed rea­sons not to vote, and I grudg­ing­ly respect those that don’t smack of middle-class-white-cis-person-(who-doesn’t‑do-much-activism-anyway)-wants-a-winged-unicorn-pony-in-one-election-cycle-or-will-post-guillotine-memes-instead-of-doing-harm-reduction. Also, lord knows there will be salient crit­i­cism of any­one who ends up a fron­trun­ner in a main­stream elec­tion.

(Although, with that said and Triple Legit™ stamped, some of the talk­ing points, I should men­tion, sure do sound an awful lot like they’re right out of a Russ­ian psy­ops farm, com­plete with a lack of of down­ward drilling and nuance for ideas… strange when com­ing from folks who claim to actu­al­ly care about both those things.)

There will always be salient crit­i­cism about any­one with an actu­al polit­i­cal… you know… CAREER. Some­thing that hap­pened on their watch. Some­thing that got added to a bill that had to be passed. Some­thing that was polit­i­cal­ly pop­u­lar at the time, and now we have a greater under­stand­ing of its prob­lems. And in par­tic­u­lar, any cen­trist Dem—a con­ces­sion we have to make as the far left does not com­prise enough peo­ple to win a main­stream elec­tion, and you can’t gov­ern if you don’t WIN—is going to be some­one with a long career of calls that tru­ly harmed peo­ple.

I don’t know what the polit­i­cal cal­cu­lus of each deci­sion will be. I don’t know what a politi­cian would have risked to go the oth­er way, or what their painstak­ing polit­i­cal polling says they’re weak on, and their oppo­si­tion research says they’re going to get hit on and prob­a­bly lose. But I do know they will hurt peo­ple. They will because they are human start­ing guns, and some­times they know what a nation­al debate will do to their chances. And in a plu­ral­is­tic soci­ety, they can’t take on the fights of the far left and still be main­stream and/or win in a main­stream elec­tion.

And the folks hurt have every valid and legit­i­mate rea­son to be unhelp­ful in giv­ing them more pow­er. I don’t have an easy answer there. Oth­er than to point out that every activist group and every rad­i­cal politi­cian says the same thing about voting—the oth­er side is worse, so vote for the per­son that will be the eas­i­er fight.

How­ev­er, to say that the par­ties, their plat­forms, their offer­ings for POTUS, their SCOTUS nom­i­nees, their LOWER court nom­i­nees, their bor­der poli­cies, their inter­na­tion­al diplo­ma­cy, their tax poli­cies, their social safe­ty net con­cerns, their civ­il rights records, their pol­i­cy ini­tia­tives, or even their Covid-19 respons­es are “just the same”… Well, it tells me quite a few impor­tant things

• It tells me that the laws passed (always by the right) against body auton­o­my or trans rights are mean­ing­less to them.

• It tells me that a secret police round­ing up folks who look a cer­tain way (some­times cit­i­zens) isn’t con­sid­ered appre­cia­bly dif­fer­ent than just a shit­ty bor­der pol­i­cy, so why both­er.

• It tells me that MY being alive and healthy when the A.C.A. saved my life does­n’t mat­ter to them. It tells me that if I HAD sur­vived, I would be crushed under debt, and that’s okay for them.

• It tells me that the death of one of my ex-part­ners to can­cer rather than the A.C.A. sav­ing her life would be “just the same” and is of no impor­tance in their eyes.

• It tells me that the par­ty try­ing to raise the min­i­mum wage and the par­ty that blocks it at every turn are “just the same” in their eyes.

• It tells me that the tens of thou­sands of reg­u­la­tions that were put into place over decades to pro­tect peo­ple from preda­tors, and that are now being gut­ted… those are pret­ty much non-issues as far as they’re con­cerned.

• It tells me they have lit­tle or no sym­pa­thy for folks who feel like they have to flee the coun­try because they and their chil­dren are no longer even base-lev­el safe from mass depor­ta­tions.

• It tells me that wars start­ed on social media by a man who is so des­per­ate for approval that he will post AI pic­tures of him­self as a king lit­er­al­ly shit­ting on U.S. cit­i­zens for dis­agree­ing with him are a lev­el of dis­course not notice­ably dif­fer­ent than Democ­rats.

• It tells me that they can’t tell the prag­mat­ic dif­fer­ence between a leader who attempts to gov­ern a plu­ral­is­tic soci­ety peace­ful­ly from that of a leader who stokes sto­chas­tic ter­ror­ism, hate crimes, and ginned-up right-wing mobs and assas­si­na­tions.

• It tells me that get­ting chum­my with despots across the world and under­min­ing diplo­mat­ic rela­tions with demo­c­ra­t­ic and far-more-egal­i­tar­i­an soci­eties does­n’t strike them as a moral behav­ior dis­tinct enough to even acknowl­edge that a dif­fer­ence exists (nev­er mind to act upon it).

• It tells me that a sev­en-fig­ure death toll that every epi­demi­ol­o­gist and most oth­er coun­tries respons­es told us didn’t have to hap­pen is not a mean­ing­ful rea­son to delin­eate between these two groups.

• It tells me that the dif­fer­ence between pass­ing laws that dis­en­fran­chise mar­gin­al­ized pop­u­la­tions and those who fight tooth and nail against such laws is con­sid­ered triv­ial.

Also this might be a bit­ter pill, but ALL of that is exact­ly what a Russ­ian psy­op or “alt-right” false flag oper­a­tion would WANT them to say. It is exact­ly the “stay home” mes­sage being craft­ed by every­one who finds lib­er­al pol­i­tics anath­e­ma. 

I do not say this to shit on those left­er than me, though lord knows they’d seem like they’d rather come full force after the labor class that they see as too cen­trist than actu­al­ly take on the right or the monied class. (Blam­ing the work­ing pro­le­tari­at from behind a key­board and meme for want­i­ng health care and labor reforms as the “rea­son we have fas­cism” is eas­i­er than win­ning hearts and minds.) And lord ALSO knows that peo­ple think­ing that they are going to WIN OVER that labor class by telling them all their prag­mat­ic con­cerns in the U.S. polit­i­cal land­scape are mean­ing­less might need to at least take a tour of the swing states and talk to some peo­ple who don’t already agree with them.

I say this because I have skin in this game. Trans fam­i­ly mem­bers who have been open­ly, and with leg­isla­tive vio­lence, ATTACKED by this admin­is­tra­tion. Dear loved ones who I have lost to basi­cal­ly an evac­u­a­tion of this coun­try for the sake of their chil­dren. Friends who haven’t seen their fam­i­ly (who last com­mu­ni­cat­ed from the south­ern bor­der) in months. Fam­i­ly who can’t afford to skip over five states for an abor­tion. And the mem­o­ry of how I and some­one I love are lit­er­al­ly alive today because of the “just the same” Dems forc­ing through some ves­tige of a health care plan against every mea­sure of resis­tance… from the GOP.

“Both the same” is a use­ful metonymy when every­one in the room has a big-pic­ture lens on anti-cap­i­tal­ism or anti-colo­nial­ism, or maybe pass­ing­ly under­stands when Noam Chom­sky is being quot­ed out of con­text in a‑n­ear­ly-two-decade-old inter­view (that he has since repeat­ed­ly clar­i­fied). It’s much less use­ful when some 3edgy5me white male lib­er­al (who needs to pol­ish their “acces­si­bil­i­ty” inter­sec­tions) think­ing they have the world fig­ured out because 95% of the dif­fer­ences in the par­ties nev­er affect them decides to whip up some dank memes. How­ev­er, these ideas are pos­i­tive­ly dis­as­trous when brought into a robust dis­cus­sion of cur­rent main­stream U.S. pol­i­tics, harm reduc­tion, or how dan­ger­ous ced­ing pow­er is in a (regret­tably) two-par­ty coun­try; they reek of a breath­tak­ing solip­sism that blows off six-fig­ure body counts, an anti-immi­gra­tion pol­i­cy of secret police and ter­ror, a despot on the cusp of the sort of author­i­tar­i­an­ism that, his­tor­i­cal­ly, we don’t get to come back from, and ris­ing fas­cism… ALL as some­thing too minor to “get dis­tract­ed by” on the way to that one key “more impor­tant thing.” 

They are not “just the same.” They demon­stra­bly, objec­tive­ly, are NOT. Treat­ing them like they are is not just breath­tak­ing­ly un-prag­mat­ic, but is actu­al­ly insult­ing and not a good look for the folks I gen­er­al­ly agree with com­plete­ly.