yeah I'm forever voting blue no matter who. The republican candidate will always be a fascist. It will never end with Trump. It's going to be fascist vs not fascist blue vote and I will eat whatever shit the blue vote shits out. More cops? I'm all for it, not a fascist dictator. Support Israel? Fine with me, not a fascist dictator. It sucks but that's just America now for the next thousand or so years, fascism or something else. Better hope the something else isn't closer to fascism than before or else you're fucked.
And 5 month ago it was double that time and people already screamed that pointing out that an alternative to two genocidal geriatrics is needed were screamed down as being Trump puppets.
We already wasted half of that time to find a solution with people being vigorously opposed to demanding a solution as they are afraid to lose the status quo.
Declare to the Dems "I'll only vote you, if you stop genocide, internment camps and start taxing the rich properly." Then follow through with it. Already saying you dont want to follow through with it is telling them, that they dont need to listen to you. This is the only language they understand. Ideally look into organizing for a third party, so the Dems can be overtaken by a better third party which can take their place in the political system. The DNC has proven time and time again that they will be authoritarian and undemocratic to ensure no actually progressive candidate to make it into their leadership.
I hate Biden, and I do think that voting isn't going to solve our problems, but do you really think that NOT voting is going to solve our problems? Democrats know that they're always going to me more left than the Republicans, which will be enough for most people, and that very few people are going to try holding out for leftward change that could've been voted in during the primaries but wasn't.
What we need to do is vote for Biden to prevent Trump from destroying the country in 2 weeks flat, then actually force change. Voting works great when the system works, but it's been broken for a while - we need real action now, up to and including a revolution if need be.
All uprising means innocents killed. There were many innocents killed in the American revolution and every other revolution, yet most are celebrated, because we all understand that revolutions only happen because far too many innocents are already being killed, and at least this solution stops that eventually. Revolution as a whole is meant to be a horrifying last resort for people who are left no other choice.
People are not calling you a Trump puppet because you criticise Biden. People are arguing with you because you think not voting is a solution that Democrats are actually affected by.
By not voting, you just ensure the person you want the least to be in office wins (Trump). There's plenty of shills trying to discourage people from voting with that rhetoric. Republicans only win when dems don't show up.
I am not saying not to vote. I am saying not to vote Dems if the Dems dont stop the genocide. So vote third party or better yet pressure the Dems now to stop the genocide, so they can be voted for.
The last one is the best option. But it only works if they understand that you are serious about it and will not vote for them no matter what.
The political cycle is not 10 months long. Or 24. Or 48.
If you want change, you need to be involved in pushing over a large number of heavy objects over a long period of time. No one candidate, no one election, is going to change anything.
Because your damn country isn't "descending into fascism", it's been bathing in it for centuries, and every time there's someone trying to lift y'all kicking and screaming out of it just a little bit, the totalitarians crop up to try and self-destruct it all. Then, suddenly, a bunch of you come out of the woodwork to declare that it's better to blow it all up, actually, than to do literally anything to stop it, because you believe there should be a quick and easy solution, and everyone else around you is just an idiot for not seeing it.
But you only believe that because you're some kind of self-important, hubris-huffing sucker.
You know what is definitely not fixing it? Reassuring the Dems at every step that they will have your vote no matter what, as long as they are only slightly better than the Reps. Actually it is directly encouraging them to be at their possible worst.
Think of politicians as children and you as their parent. Do you think "reaffirm your child that no matter what it does, it will always get its favorite dessert" is a good parenting strategy? You raise egocentric psychopaths this way and this is exactly what you are getting as politicians.
If you have a dem that no longer aligns with your interests, you vote them out during the primary.
But then you show up during the general, hold your nose, and vote Democrat.
Want to know why?
Because the Republicans will vote Republican no matter what and we've unfortunately pushed our democracy to the point where we either vote for the somewhat okay guy or the guy that will bite your face off.
I wonder how many accelerationists around here are fascists/explodingheads users. Fascists don't fear the prospect of pretending to be something they aren't if it means furthering their agenda.
They're not afraid of posing as, say, a disenfranchised, discouraged and disillusioned left-winger who believes both sides are bad and there's no future except revolution.
They're not afraid to post about how "Genocide Joe" is funding genocide in Gaza while neglecting to point out how "Totalitarian Trump" would send B-52s to carpet bomb Gaza and the West Bank until nothing is left.
They're not afraid to point out how red states are still succeeding in trampling over LGBT rights under Biden while also ignoring how Trump would almost certainly push for that nation-wide.
They'll cry about our current supreme court justices while ignoring that Trump was the one who put those justices in power to begin with.
To be clear, I think the US is pretty far from saving and that it'll take a miracle to save this country from ruin. However, I'd rather see the country collapse slowly and in a relatively controlled manner that gives people time to prepare for its demise; while also giving people time to attempt to patch and fix the holes.
Revolution is high risk, high reward; if the left-wing wins, then you might get the socialist utopia you've always dreamed of. However, what if the right-wing wins? Yanno, the people with the majority of privately owned guns in the US. What if they win?
A Trump presidency means your leftist revolution against a fascist government will almost certainly be opposed by both rednecks and the US military.
However, if the fascists revolt during a Biden presidency, then the military will likely be backing you.
In the event of armed revolution, the president, whether it's Biden or Trump, will use the military to protect and reinforce their power. With Trump, opposition to his power will be coming from the left, so that's who the military will target. With Biden, the opposition will come from the right, and so the military will target them instead.
Of course, that doesn't mean you'll get the leftist utopia you've always dreamed, but at least you'll remove a lot of fascists from the equation. Removing those fascists means it'll be easier for the country to swing to the left and stay there. It won't happen overnight, but the result would likely be a government far more stable than if you tried to burn everything down and start over from scratch.
The reason why I say all this is because I feel that we are closing in on a revolution. Something is about to snap, and it will happen either during the elections or soon after. As such, you really, really don't want Trump, because Trump means you'll be fighting against the biggest, most well-funded and technologically equipped military in the world.
The air is tense and electric, filled with gasoline fumes and heated by our exhaust. The masses are shuffling to and from their workplaces, burned-out and overworked. They are struggling to afford rent, afford food, afford sleep and water. Static electricity is building on their shuffling bodies, and soon a spark will leap from an outstretched finger, igniting the air and bathing the US in fire.
Yeah, I'll admit that I'm pretty jaded and cynical when it comes to politics and the future of humanity. I'm not all that old either, but I'm old enough to remember how it seemed like life was getting better until Trump took office, and how much the US tumbled as a result.
I'm old enough to remember when being left or right wing was a debate and not a fight between competing "truths"; and how the US left and right wing were sometimes willing to compromise on issues instead of fighting a culture war where they try and see how badly they can fuck up the US and still successfully blame the other party.
I'm old enough to remember when people typically trusted the news and science; and conspiracy theorists were amusing nutjobs at best, harmless annoyances at worst.
I'm old enough to remember when the idea of a Christian theocracy in the US was considered insane by anyone except the most extreme conservatives; while militias were something only domestic terrorists and the most extreme political radicals supported.
And I'm honestly, not that old. I just... I've watched the downward spiral and it seems like no one in power actually wants to stop it, which is why I've become so jaded and cynical. It's why I think revolution is coming, and I'm just hoping that the political ideology I'm aligned with won't be forced into fighting a losing war against the US military.
That's why I think people should support Biden. No, he's not a good person, and I don't think he honestly has the best interests of America and the rest of the world in mind. Sure, he's tried to do some good things like (unsuccessfully) forgiving student loans multiple times and showing support for America's unions, however he's still enabling Israel's genocide and he's still beholden to the corporations that fund his party (which means he'll avoid real changes whenever possible). Yet, if Biden gets elected and the American right-wing revolts (I'm convinced they'll try), then the US military will be fighting them, not us. If Trump gets elected then there may not even be a chance for revolution before cops start kicking people's doors down.
Anyone that wants to accelerate things has never lived in the kind of world that they're advocating for.
I had a teacher in school that was a Bosnian Muslim during the genocide of the Balkan wars. She, her older brother, and her mom made it out. I never heard her talk about her dad, so I don't think that he did. She and her older brother would practice their drawing by the light of burning tires. The eventually escaped to England, and then got asylum in the US.
I would agree with you, but who's working on fixing things? It's looking close this time, and the historical pattern is that the Presidency flips parties when an incumbent can't run. What's the plan so we can ensure that a GQP authoritarian doesn't win in 2028? This was the talking point in 2020, and very little happened; Biden's AG even waited almost 3 years to appoint a special counsel, only after being buffaloed into it by the House January 6th committee, virtually ensuring that there trial will be delayed until after the election. And there's still no action whatsoever to hold Bush administration officials accountable.
I've asked the question "what's the plan to stop fascism in 2028?" several times now, with no other response, so I guess the answer is, "pull off a communist revolution in just 4 years."
Yes, by all means, exercise your right to vote as you see fit. But if the only way we can avoid fascism is by never losing an election, shouldn't we be seeking better ideas and stronger protections from fascism now before that plan fails?
If you don't vote you're not a part of the conversation. You obviously don't have any grasp on how the election process works anyways, so why are you even keyboard warrioring this at all?
I'm not saying that either. I told you to use your right how you see fit. It is not my place to tell you how to vote, nor is it my place to negatively pressure strangers into voting for my preference. I think everyone should vote. I'm also saying that promising votes to politicians regardless of their actions indicate that their actions won't hurt their chances.
I'm also saying that promising votes to politicians regardless of their actions indicate that their actions won't hurt their chances.
That's very true and likely going to lead to a very nasty future once this is thoroughly exploited. But I don't think that just "there should be something better" might help. Also, there might exist unsolvable problems, and if this is one of those we're in a very bad position, indeed
That's also part of my point. Voting will not get us out of this problem. We need to pressure politicians, we need to protest, we need to organize, and we need to implement more successful alternatives to the status quo. We will never avoid fascism if the only thing we do is vote. Right now the best way to pressure the better candidate is to make him believe, right up until election day, that he will lose.
You can't have it both ways. You might only be "pretending" to be withholding your vote but your "pretend" stops when all the people you've dissaffected don't show up.
Studies show that even in states that still do a plurality vote but encourage 3rd party voters see higher overall turnout and generally favor democratic candidates. The only ones disaffecting voters are the ones pushing the narrative of "a vote for x is a vote for y".
You have to choose your words more carefully. There's a lot of astroshitting all over the place. Should expect no less, if the primary races and 2016 and 2020 were any indication.
I agree "vote blue no matter who" is potentially dangerous. However at this current juncture, it really doesn't matter. Republicans can't be allowed to have control of another branch. They've shown their hand, and are pulling no punches. Straight up lies, exaggerations, and accusations fueling a culture war in a strategy to get to 270 with as little a popular vote as possible.
If we could win by more than the slimmest margins, there'd be a hell of a lot more room for division within the party.
Ideally the Dems would win so hard that the Republicans would be forced to change or go extinct. And ideally, the Republican party would lose so badly for so long that they cease to be relevant and the Dems split into two parties.
Why 48% of the country votes against this is mind boggling.
Paradoxically, people somehow think that voting for a third party will make the Dems change their platform n
Not sure how that's supposed to work. The more people that vote for a third party, the less people vote for the main party. That could make the result 48-47-5 with Trump still winning, and the Dems have no way to move the needle, because now they have no office. Or it could make it 28 third party, 30 Biden, and 42 Trump. Either way Trump wins.
Third party votes take votes away from the most aligned primary party and ultimately makes the outcome less desirable. The only way they can be effective is when the aligned party already has a very comfortable lead, and even then its risky.
I also think it's incredibly arrogant to think that a third party could come completely out of left field and score the highest office in the land while holding few (if any) state and local offices.
You don't understand how FPTP works. It is designed to penalize people for voting for a third party (because it will always devolve to two parties. They may occasionally change, but it starts at the bottom, not at the oval office).
This "lesser of two evils" is a consequence of that. No one candidate is going to be best aligned with the majority of people. When there are two candidates, one will be more aligned than the other.
When a third candidate enters, they have to be closer to one of the two, and attracts voters that were more closely aligned with the primary party candidate.
So if you've got a close FPTP race, you could easily take a race that would otherwise be 51/49, make it 47/49/4, and even though the majority of people were more closely aligned with Candidate A, because some of them went for C, candidate B won instead.
Therefore, it's foolish to abstain because you disagree with all candidates, because somebody is going to win no matter what. And it is foolish to vote for a third party, because they will not win, they will only detract from the closely aligned party, which in turn favors the less-aligned party.
Then you should know that to move things left, you need to vote more local progressives.
People don't start out going for the presidency (and they shouldn't, as the obvious recent mistake of a president shows).
Slowing down fascism provides opportunity for progressive politicians to make moves in the right direction, and take positions that are higher up the ladder.
Allowing a nose dive to fascism prevents the progressive folks from having an opportunity.
In short - yes, slowing it down is good enough at the presidential level.
I do know that. You seem like you're pretty in tune as well, so you should be aware that being permissive and/or welcoming of 3rd party presidential candidates generally favor democrats at the state and local level.
And it depends on the main candidates as well. What we have now is "strong" words against genocide while continuing, or fascist genocide. The third party candidate (RFKJr) is an anti-vax, conspiracy theorist, covid-19 denying, whacko with name recognition for a while host of democrats, and was one until. He's a spoiler candidate. Voting 3rd party in this election is, imo, dangerous.
I'm not sure what mutual respect you're referencing. If it's the kind you've been putting forth then I'm right there with you, and you have nothing to complain about.
If you're just saying "no fair!" then too bad, there no fairness in life. That's reality.
By mutual respect I mean not assuming ill will when a new person enters a discussion. I've voted in every single presidential, state, local, municipal, and union election since I turned 18 in 2014.
Do you acknowledge that you're voting for a coin toss between a slower descent or a faster descent into fascism? Averaging out to you being in favor of an even faster descent into fascism than the person you replied to?
Yes but not voting for that candidate is effectively just like voting for the other even worse guy.
I mean we both know that Biden ain't great, but Trump? Trump is far fuckXng worse! Don't like the genocide ? Biden is wayyyyyy more likely to sign a ceasefire than Trump. Want Trans Rights? Biden doesn't care, Trump wants to remove them. I'd rather have Biden's apathy than Trump's hate.
You know what would force Biden to provide actually decent politics? If people demanded them and withhold their vote otherwise. And you know who would rather want Trump to win, than provide adequate protection of human rights, including Trans rights? Joe Biden, the guy you want to vote for. The DNC and him are laughing their asses off together with the Reps that no matter what, you will keep letting them get away with it.
The one risking Trump to win again is Biden. And he does so because he doesnt give a fuck about protecting you or anybody else. If you remove yourself from the power of punishing a politician and will always reward him no matter what, you are removing your own democratic power. It is not about "owning" Biden. It is about taking your power and sovereignity, that you are supposed to have in a Democracy. By giving them the blanket check, you are surrendering yourself to them and encourage them to do their worst. And make no mistake. The Dems will start cracking down on LGBT people if they think that to be necessary to gain votes in some states.
Well what are you going to do about it?! As far as I know there is nothing you could do to change that before November.
If you vote for Biden now you get 4 more years where you're free to protest as much as you want, because contrary to Trump, Biden is likely to be receptive to your protests. We are not powerless.
And even if we were, what would happen? You don't vote for Biden -> Trump wins -> the whole country shifts even more into conservative ideologies -> you don't vote democrat again -> same thing but worse.
you are removing your own democratic power
Ok I see your point but not voting is like not even using that power and if you read my previous point you can see how your democratic power will go even lower if you don't do anything.
There is other parties on the ballot too. Definetely people should be voting, but they shouldnt vote Dems if the Dems continue genocide. Imagine there is 20% Green vote all of a sudden. Then Dems will be scared shitless and know that they have to work to win back those voters because the next election it might be that the "two parties" will be Green and Reps instead.
But better yet apply the pressure now and go demonstrate, talk to your representatives, take union action against the genocide...
You're just an accelerationist. Fatalism, nihilism, apathy, hopeless, etc aren't anything new, most of us disagree with you. I wonder if your outlook would improve if you got therapy or if you had a little skin in the game and stood to lose something.
The little bit you have actually said has indicated that and you have done absolutely nothing to refute it so my advice is that sarcasm only works when the targeted recipient of it has been shown you would only say it sarcastically.
Why not? You're claiming they're operating on a principle of trying to accelerate collapse, and that Trump is the candidate to do that. But this is completely inconsistent with what the person is saying they'll do. It doesn't explain their behavior.
Who says they aren’t?
So we're just making things up whole cloth about people now?
It's cute of you to step in to defend your alt account, but you can't be serious.
They're an accelerationist, for whatever reason, they want collapse. The quicker it happens the better, they admitted as much above.
You're supposing that Trump is the candidate to do that, I think most of lemmy would agree with you so I'll cede that point.
That point ceded, we can agree most of lemmy won't vote for Trump right? So what would be the point of talking about voting Trump here? It's far more effective for the accelerationist (who likely isn't conservative anyway) to be a "leftist" who's so disgusted with how corrupt and unfair the system is they simply just check out and encourage others to check out as well, "both sides are the same" of course.
So we're just making things up whole cloth about people now?
We're inferring things, it's quite a bit different comrade.
In a democratic political party you can influence the politics democratically. In a fascist party: Not possible.
The country does not need to hit rock bottom before it can improve. It can be changed democratically from within if you allow it to by voting for anything but the party that will take away that possibility.
You need to go take a civics class and stop trying to suppress the leftwing vote. Do you expect anyone to sit down and explain to you how campaigning for issues works? Do you expect us to list every decent win "the left" has gotten the last 5-10 years?
What have you gotten accomplished? What have you even participated in?
Just because you sit in a basement unplugged from reality, doomscrolling, doesn't mean the rest of should sit here and take advice from you. You admit you just want fascism faster.
Bad-faith, accelerationist, useful idiot. If it weren't so cliche I'd call you Vlad.
That was a lot of words to not even attempt to answer a very simple question
Bad-faith, accelerationist
I like the self awareness displayed by calling me bad faith and then immediately reiterating the thing you just made up about me and decided was true based on what seems to be a deliberately bad interpretation of my original comment.
So what do you suppose we do? Start a revolution against the biggest military on earth? I believe America needs to stop having a two party system, this way there is more chance someone like Bernie gets elected. But alas who will vote for them...
I already said this somewhere else but please vote, not voting for Biden is essentially like voting for Trump. And once Biden is in you can be as mad as you want against him, protest and shit, because Biden might actually listen, Trump would never.
No, it's not "essentially like voting for Trump". It's voting for the person you voted for. What is the fundamental difference between voting for Biden and voting for a different candidate in the event of a Trump victory? There is none. Do not shame the voters. Shame the politicians into acting in a way deserving of leadership.
So what if voting blue will end up with innocent people dying? Their sacrifice for my freedom will not go without honor. I will enshrine their lives with a statue commemorating their bravery in the fight for my freedom. The lives of innocent trans people, black people, and Palestinian children is a steep cost but it's one I'm willing to spend for me to go to Starbucks and get a latte for $9. Who's to say my life is worth more than theirs? Well Joe Biden made that determination for us, so I believe that's right! I'm glad it's a bunch of random black and brown people getting blown to bits for my right to vote, not me!
If the Dems keep winning the Republicans will have to slide left. It happened in the UK with Labour (unfortunately in the opposite direction).
When that happens, and Trump is not literally attempting to end democracy using project 2025, the plan of strong-arming the dem candidate into being more left is plenty feasible, and the risks are less dire.
It happened in the UK with Labour (unfortunately in the opposite direction)
This happened after Labour's entrenched power groups vigorously sabotaged Corbyn. Corbyn committed a somewhat serious blunder during Brexit, but he still had Labour well in the direction of defeating the Tories, and that might have happened earlier if his most spiteful opponents hadn't been inside his own party.
Ah yes, that time several years ago when the dems won last election, the republicans responded by "sliding left". When the dems win 2024 the republicans will also be very civilized and non violent and slide even further left. Non-whites and LGBT people everywhere in America will be safer the night Joe Biden is elected than the night before, you heard it here from HauntedCupcake first!
You mostly don't see it because they win inconsistently by a narrow margin. It would totally happen if the republicans weren't so popular and the Dems kept winning. Hence the hypothetical.
The main issue is convincing the populace, but my point is more that the US has a way out of fascism, the public just need to recognise and want it
Thats not going to happen. The small handful of swing states will dictate a pattern of both parties steadily and we'll just keep going lower. Im sorry but there's zero chance the US doesn't elect enough republicans for them to be forced to change policy. They're making gains.
whichever side we support stands a chance of winning. They aint gonna compete in a game of skill in November, they're gonna ask us who wins and we decide.
Yes, "we", consisting of statistically significant factions of the voting population. Campaigns take time and money, neither of which any candidates besides the two front-runners have enough of to be competitive. They're not gonna ask you who wins, you don't decide. I don't see 70 million Americans shifting to anyone else at this stage.
Is it a paradox to say that driving in circles around a roundabout is pointless because it doesn't get you anywhere, but driving along the route to a destination does? Driving is driving, does it work or not? Paradox! Smearing food on your belly doesn't satisfy your hunger, but eating it does. Does food satisfy hunger or not? Paradox!
If we had approval or ranked choice voting, voting third party would accomplish something. Since we have First Past the Past elections, voting third party is as effective as smearing food on your belly or circling a roundabout for hours.
Its pretty irritating everytime someone brings up ranked choice voting. They know its a good thing, they want it to happen. But its getting brought up to try and criticize my choice of candidate. You want ranked choice voting? You know who supports ranked choice voting in their election platform? My candidate! I am well aware of how shit FPTP voting is, Im not the one promoting it.
I'm not promoting it either, that doesn't change the fact that it is what we use. Voting for a candidate that supports RCV doesn't basically mean that the election you voted for them in becomes retroactively RCV, you act based on what the system is, not what it should be.
That's not how the system works. All voting third party does is equivocate approval for the two front runners. Do you approve of the insurrectionist fascist and the neo-liberal equally? Are they exactly the same to you? Do you think they are equally supportive of election reform?
The fascists with minority support only have power because kids who don't understand the electoral system either abstain from voting, or vote third party. If everyone held their nose and showed up to vote lesser evil, the Republican party would wither away into being a third party themselves and a progressive party could actually gain footing.
Your candidate doesn't stand a chance precisely because people like you keep pretending the system works differently.
If everyone held their nose and showed up to vote lesser evil, the Republican party would wither away into being a third party themselves and a progressive party could actually gain footing.
Hows that goin for ya? Making any progress in the decades you've been trying that for? 'If everyone just did this', yeah? How about if everyone just voted for the candidate that supports ranked choice? Just get everyone to do X.
Pretty well actually, considering the glacial pace inherent to changing a political landscape. It's made it onto the ballot in several states, and is used several local and state-wide elections here and there. The Fair Representation Act has been brought to th the floor in 2017, 2019, 2021, and again this year but it hasn't been voted on yet.
How about if everyone just voted for the candidate that supports ranked choice?
How's that going for ya? Elected a third party candidate to the presidency yet?
so Im looking into states that have implemented this, to see if electing democrats had anything to do with it. Looking at Alaska and Maine at least, democrats had nothing to do with it, they were citizen initiatives brought to election referendum, neither democrats or republican representatives introduced or voted on it. Notably, the Alaska state legislature has more republican members than democrats.
How’s that going for ya? Elected a third party candidate to the presidency yet?
I think you missed my point of us being in the same boat. You're not likely to get enough people to vote for people they dont like to crowd out republicans in Washington, and Im not likely to get enough people to vote for people they would otherwise love with a D or R by their name.
The Fair Representation Act has been sponsored by a Democrat every time.
It's orders of magnitude more probable to get the slim minority you're talking about to align D than it is to get the overwhelming majority I'm talking about to rally behind the same third party candidate. It's not even worth comparing, the concept is laughable at best. To even hint at that happening this election is bordering on clinical levels of delusion.
If you want to campaign for your candidate next cycle, be my guest. Start early, organize, fundraise and get the message out. Next cycle. This cycle, you're dividing the anti-Project-2025 voting bloc. This cycle, you run the very real risk of ensuring there is no next cycle. Remember that.
Yes, a democrat, with single digit cosponsors out of hundreds of democrats in a democrat controlled house the last time it was brought up. If the democratic party wanted ranked choice voting, we would have ranked choice voting now. the democrat controlled house didnt even bring it up for a vote. That's the thing, it's republicans=conservative and democrats=progressive for you, but a large number of democrats are conservative to me. I dont think a fully democrat controlled congress passes ranked choice voting. I dont think they pass lobbying reform. Hell there are democrats that still vote against minimum wage increases. I dont think a fully democrat controlled government looks much different from the one today.
What's gonna be different next cycle? You think Trump's going away? You'll be right here again in 2028 telling me democracy is at stake if I dont vote for your choice.
Don't forget that it's not ok to vote for your candidate because they don't already have enough support, therefore there's no way to ever reach the threshold where it'll be ok to vote for them.
It's only ok to vote for the neolibs that the billionaires approve after a promise that nothing's really going to change.
Even in a state that's so blue the Dems have no chance of losing, voting for or writing in someone left of the incumbent will still be deemed a vote for the red team.
Republican and Democrat are the two biggest parties by a large margin, but a few other smaller parties exist. Plus, some people run as an Independent. They're not affiliated with any party at all.
Edit: I never meant to imply the other parties had any chance at winning an election in a meaningful way, which is what these replies seem to think I was saying. (They don't have a chance, honestly.) But other parties do exist, including a party in which you can "vote green". That is all I'm saying.
In a first past the post system of districts with single representative candidates, it almost always resolves to two viable parties. That's the way it's been for basically all of American history.
The parties can change, but the shape of the system remains constant: a vote is only effective when cast for the largest opponent of your least desired candidate. It's unintuitive and discouraging.
The parliamentary systems used in much of Europe, for all their flaws, do allow for more robust and diverse representation.
Greens in America aren't in a position to govern. Even if Stein got enough electoral votes through the work of 30-60 literal miracles, she'd be totally unable to govern effectively. You need a deep bench and more of a base in the other branches of government to form a party that can effect changes and run this country
Then we can use third party candidates to determine who the power actually goes to. At the end of the day. America is so bipolar split tlboth parties are now completely at the mercy of anyone who can garner 10% support. RFK Jr at this point can literally be the decider or who becomes president and who doesn't. Maybe we can use that as a tool of power to force the 2 parties to open the voting system up or have their power cockblocked from them every election cycle.
No, this is not how it works. Please look up the spoiler effect.
I can't vote because I don't live there, but am in the imperial core of countries, so it would be very nice to not have fascists in charge, considering we literally have prosecuted whistleblowers reporting on warcrimes at the behest of the US government. We're your little bitches whether we like it or not.
Y'all really do need to be hyper-focused on pushing for sweeping electoral reform, for sure.
In the meantime though, voting for a 3rd party under your system is basically a vote for the person you don't want.
Vote Biden if you would dislike having Trump more. If you don't want to do that, then yeah, you're basically admitting you're cool with the outcome of Trump presidency.
Please don't waste your vote, your vassals beg you.
Look up the spoiler effect. Please! This vassal is begging you.
The question under your system (please inform yourself about first-past-the-post) isn't who do you want to win, it's who you do you want NOT to win.
If you vote for your third-party candidate, it's equivalent to not having voted at all, if they have no chance of winning.
You're going to get Biden or Trump with how people vote (spoiler effect, look it up), one of those is going to win, make your peace with that.
So, which would you rather?
I am happy to spell out in greater detail why voting for a third party candidate is a waste of time under your system, happy to chat if there's still any confusion about it.
first, i think it will be helpful to recall what a myth is: it's a story we tell to explain the world around us. the spoiler effect is one of those stories: it explains, for some people, why clinton won in 1992. but analysis of the facts of that election find that, in fact, perot hurt clinton's margin of victory.
this myth is persistent, and reinforced by multiple media sources and even academics, but there is no way to actually produce a test of the theory of its existence or its mechanisms. so while you might like to tell this story, even if only to yourself, to justify voting for people who do bad things, to pretend that this myth is objective fact, that it is a natural law, is either misguided or dishonest, depending on whether you actually believe the myth.
The question under your system (please inform yourself about first-past-the-post) isn’t who do you want to win, it’s who you do you want NOT to win.
wrong. the question is "who do i want to vote for" and i want to vote for the person i want to win. incidentally, i don't want to vote for someone i don't want to win.
If you lived somewhere with a decent preferential voting system, you'd be right.
You don't though, and it's not misinformation to say that under a first part the post system, voting for a third candidate that is not going to win is a waste of the influence you have. CGPGrey explains it well
🤦♂️ It's a "law" in the mathematical/scientific sense. It is a model that explains something.
You're just spouting smart sounding words without actually proving anything.
Please, please, do explain how the spoiler effect is wrong.
Tell me how when you have first past the post and a two party system, voting for a third candidate who won't win isn't just making it more likely the candidate you'd like less to win.
Please, would love to hear you well reasoned and sound argument.
it argues that a certain type of election system tends to lead to a two-party system. however, from a critical perspective, this theory might be untestable. why? because someone could argue that any outcome can be explained by the theory. for instance, if there are more than two parties, it could be said that the system still favors two but this is just a temporary exception. this kind of reasoning makes it very difficult to disprove the theory, turning it more into a statement that's true by definition than an actual hypothesis based on evidence. similar arguments have been made about economic theories that rely on assuming everything else stays the same. to be more than just a statement, this theory would need a way to be tested with evidence and potentially proven wrong. that way, it could be a useful theory for understanding political systems instead of just an unfalsifiable claim.
The evidence is all of the first past the post systems that trend toward two dominant parties. There are 1000s of example elections, and the elections which don't conform to this are just as bad, because the winner will win with even FEWER votes than 50%. If you have 5 candidates and people are voting fairly evenly between them, you can win with just over 20% of the vote. I hope you can believe that, that's just the mathematical reality (that I'm really hoping we don't have to debate over, it's a fairly simple mathematical problem).
The myth is that what you have can actually provide voters with a meaningful choice. That's the media narrative, that first past the post is meaningful and gives the president a mandate because people voted for them, but it most certainly doesn't.
it seems that you are already trying to explain away exceptions rather than accepting that this myth lacks predictive power and may not, in fact, accurately explain any past elections at all.
Do you think anyone other than Biden or Trump will win? If you do, then your choice is clear, and as much as you question the existence of the spoiler effect (which is not being spread much by the media in the US, it's being spread by detractors of the current voting system), it doesn't really matter. People will vote towards those two candidates (hope we can agree that this is the likely outcome).
If that's the case, voting for a third candidate is as good as not voting because if your candidate doesn't win, and you COULD have voted for your next choice (why ranked voting is so much better, and it's the voting system letting you down), then the candidate you most don't want (assuming 3 candidates) has a better chance of winning (since you didn't vote for your second choice).
You say this isn't provable because it's about people's beliefs and it can't be tested, but sorry, elections are about human choices, beliefs are at play. I don't think it's a coincidence that democracies with ranked choice voting have more first preference votes to smaller parties, and that it's overwhelmingly so.
You can't really escape the fact that even if people just voted for their favourite candidate in first past the post, people would win with less than 50% of the vote (unless you're saying that the votes don't add up to 100% then I dunno what to say)
you're missing the crux of why it's not provable: there is no test for it. it's not that it's "about beliefs" is that you can't conduct an experiment to determine the validity
ask yourself: what test can we make that would disprove the theory?
maybe i'm just not smart enough to come up with one, but i can't conceive of one. an untestable, that is, an undisprovable hypothesis, is an empty tautology. or, at least modern epistemologists and critical rationalists have treated them this way.
maybe disprovability isn't a necessary facet of sound scientific theories. i tend to agree with popper, though.
Okay, the test would be that we have first past the post (single winner elections, like for president, or local electorates with single candidates elected, not proportional voting, which is better), produce elections with a spread of votes across many candidates, and don't consistently trend towards two.
This is definitely testable and disprovable, it's just that the outcome is overwhelmingly the case I have described, the spoiler effect leading to two dominant parties. There may be outliers and times where a third candidate does win, but these are the overwhelmingly rare exceptions.
we need to define terms like "consistently" and "trend". but even once you do that we still have the problem that you're already explaining away exceptions. this theory is not disprovable because there is no outcome that you would say actually disproves it. you would say we just need more data.
I'm not explaining away exceptions, they're called outliers. In any set of data there will be deviations. When I want to plot some viscosity data and get a few random points on my chart that don't line up with the rest of the curve, I'm still very confident that my curve is close to being accurate, as long as I have enough data points.
We have enough data points on first past the post elections.
For it to be disproven you would show first past the post elections don't have to two party systems in the vast majority of cases (which isn't the reality).
Now, you can try and handwave this away by saying, "oh but that's what people were TOLD TO BELIEVE, so you can't prove it". That's why we have not just the correlation to rely on, we have maths.
And you can't (I hope you don't) really disagree that you either have many candidates, who then win with less than a majority, or two parties, which then necessarily means the third smaller candidates can't win, and so people then vote for one of the larger parties so their vote counts. That's the binary state of affairs, there are no other options, the reality of maths doesn't allow for anything else, the votes add up to 100% ¯_(ツ)_/¯
I'm not saying we need more data though, we have the data, plurality voting overwhelming results in two party systems. This is disprovable and I'm totally happy to change my mind based on the evidence and data.
I'm not straw-manning, you said before with regards to looking up the spoiler effect "I have. it's not a natural phenomenon, it's a story that the media tells."
Apologies if I misunderstood what you were saying there.
I’m not straw-manning, you said before with regards to looking up the spoiler effect “I have. it’s not a natural phenomenon, it’s a story that the media tells.”
in that context, the fact that the media says it and academics say it is a reason some people might believe it. i'm saying even if you do believe it, it's an undisprovable claim. it has little explanatory power, and ultimately, yes, is a myth.
Then Ms 8h account with their full name (deeeeefinitelty not a shill, deeeefinitelt a genuine user. Yeah people on Lemmy toooootally use their full name as if it were facebook), I'll just have to conclude you're trying to sway leftists not to vote for Biden, so the world ends up with trump.
Okay 👍 Please do explain your whacky logic though. I came to the conclusion you're a troll because you're not really engaging by explaining your position beyond: "I don't wanna, it's a lie! The media is lying!!"
Go learn maths, go understand the mechanism behind the spoiler effect. Go look at the literal mountains of examples of it in play. Unless you think it's just some massive coincidence that every first-past-the-post system trends towards two parties.
I'm very keen and willing hear to any actual logic you bring to the table to justify your belief.
Sorry, that's my bad. Your initial response was quite frustrating.
Emotions are high because this election affects people around the world, and hearing that you don't care enough to make a difference, is not very pleasant.
if the difference i made put biden in power, i would feel terrible. same for trump. so i will vote for someone i do want to have the office for 4 years.
For sure, I wouldn't like voting for either, also.
Just that if they're not equal, then that means you have a preference. And I hope you will act on that preference and make a difference, instead or just making yourself feel good that you've voted for the candidate you liked best.
You've been robbed of that choice by your voting system.
Well I suppose for voters like you, then yeah, go vote for your candidate. Just seems odd that you're saying you don't think their equally bad, but instead of then making a difference to ensure the less bad option wins, you'd rather make yourself feel good for voting for someone you like best.
May the gods have mercy on us mere vassals who are watching from the sidelines.
Stay safe in these troubled times friend, and thanks for engaging, even if at times it got a bit heated and apologies for offence caused.
As an outsider it's really annoying when someone just doesn't understand the reality they find themselves in.
A third party isn't in the cards, it never is, but it especially isn't right now. The only way to get a third party elected is to change your voting system, but that's a process that takes years, decades even. It's really not as easy as wasting a vote with a third party, it takes a lot more effort. And the only way to start or continue that process right now is to vote Biden because if Trump wins you might not even get another election to vote in.
And Trump has a good chance of winning because the republicans aren't having such discussions. They know what to do, and come election day they'll all march in and do their job, like they do every time. Remember that he only won last time because people like you felt icky about voting for Clinton.
If you allow me a moment of catharsis, I'll just add that if you Americans once again subject the world to more Trump insanity, I really hope you get to feel the worst of it.
he only won last time because people like you felt icky about voting for Clinton.
he won because people voted for him. I voted against him, and I'm going to again. and I'm voting against biden just like the last time. you're characterization is patronizing and dismissive of real concerns.
lol, you're so free in the freedom land that you taking an un-awful option from the trainwreck gets you hate from the cult on both sides of the mainstream political parties.
if a political party wants to enter the parliament, they gotta get at least 2% of the votes. so if you vote for one of the very unpopular parties and they only get ~1.5% you've effectively wasted your vote completely (This is how it works in my country - of course things are different in the US)
Things are even worse in the US. For president you need to get a plurality of the votes (more than any other candidate) nationally (let's ignore the EC for now) which means that any vote not for the two candidates who stand a chance is wasted.
But also in their congressional elections they set up the system so to get in you have to get a plurality in some district where only one representative will be sent each time (FPTP). So even if your party has 15% nationally, unless they can win a plurality in some districts, they won't get any representation.
Thats why 3rd parties are pure vote wasters in presidential elections and in Congress you only have a handful of independent reps who somehow win their districts without party backing.
Cobtrast that with most of Europe (including Denmark(?)) where you have proportional voting for a parliament and then parliament forms a government. You can vote for your green party and while they might not get to be Prime Minister, they might be needed for the parliamentary majority to form a government and get the environment ministry. Win! Or they might just exert slight pressure in parliament directly, which is where laws are made. Not a loss!
The poor 'Mericans, meanwhile, are screwed. The only reasonable choice is between the two major parties at the elections. To turn that oil tanker they have to get involved in those parties and try to affect which candidates are put forth and then the party even skips that step entirely if they happened to have won the last presidential elections.
It's unfortunately a bipartisan system with the shitty electoral system that needs reformation. It's barely a democracy, but there is a clear option out of the two, and for now, ensuring Trump is not president again is a step in a better direction.
I never liked Biden since the Obama years and I now hate him quite a bit. Sadly voting for him at this point is simply necessary, because if I am not in a good enough state to survive then I cannot support the Palestinians nor Ukrainians.
I don't get this attitude. Obama was literally against gay marriage. Biden's policies have been so much more progressive than Obama's and yet nobody I know likes him more. I'm not a "fan" of Biden but that's because it's weird and creepy to be a "fan" of government officials. He does a lot I don't like but if you literally hate Biden I don't forsee any president ever meeting your criteria.
The vote I cast in 2020 was against trump and not for Biden. I feel pretty good about that decision considering what happened afterwards. I'll vote against Trump again as many times as it takes.
This particular vote is an "A\B" question. No matter what you do A or B will be chosen. All other "choices" will be ignored and will have 0 effect on the outcome. The only thing that matters in this vote is who wins.
Not voting at all, or even voting for C, both have the exact same results as voting for whoever wins.
So if you choose not to vote, and Trump wins, then you created the same results as if you had voted for Trump.
If you wanted to vote against Biden but did not want to vote for Trump then you should have voted in the primaries to defeat Trump before he was the only alternative to Biden. In fact, of you had blocked Trump from being nominated again, Israel would not be doing what they are doing. Israel actively wants Trump in power, so that is why they are doing this now.
Yeah this isn't even like a complicated idea; I don't get why people have trouble with it.
As a practical real world example: in the 2000 election, Bush won Florida by 537 votes. (the exact number is questionable because of the recount and the bullshit that was Bush v. Gore. Which we can and should be very angry about but also doesn't change the conclusion here).
97,488 Floridians voted for Ralph Nader.
Now, I'm gonna assume that people who voted green care about like. The environment. And I'm quite sure that Nader was more progressive on environmental issues than Gore was -- Gore would probably have been a boring and relatively centrist democrat. But by voting for Nader over Gore we didn't get Nader, we got Bush.
If even 1% of the green voters in Florida had held their noses and voted for the candidate who they maybe didn't align quite as well with but had an actual shot at winning, we could have had a president who actually recognized climate change as a threat almost a fucking decade before we did,instead of a climate change denier. Would it have fixed everything? No! But we'd be a hell of a lot better off than we are now.
Exactly. This is what I cannot understand from all these "true hyper-leftist" people. You do realize that the future of the USA is at stake here, and that our system is fundamentally rigged to not allow any real alternative as a choice, right? Your brain-dead "BIDEN BAD VOTE THIRD PARTY" is just going to enable Trump and then you'll never be able to vote for anyone ever again as you are forced to participate in alt-right Trump rallies every single day and post on the Trumpernet about how much you love Trump. This isn't much of an exaggeration -- this where they want to go if Trump wins.
You're not supporting Biden. This isn't how our vote works. You're voting for the person less likely to fundamentally fuck our country up. And in case you still don't quite understand who this is, that is Biden.
Nah, everyone is free to hate. However, support from others on this planet against Trump is also important. To some degree we all affect one another and his rise into the seat again would directly impact a LOT of people, even outside the U.S.
BUT
I'm hoping that there is now enough anger and frustration for us to carry the momentum past the voting gates and straight into very strong pressure towards all politicians. This IS fixable. The message is there, even if it will result in violence from our militarized police force.
This is ignorant fear mongering. If thats the way the system works as you say? Then its our duty as citizens to destroy the system entirely. If thats America then this is not a democracy and its certainly not a democracy worthy of being preserved. IF that is the system you claim Joe biden stands to preserve? Then we SHOULD let trump come in and tear the whole thing down.
I think trump is a fundamentally morally detestable character. Butt iv lived thru 1 trump presidency. Hes backwards, hes an ass. Hes not a good leader. But hes not the end of everything as we know it. And I'm not giving more power to a corrupt party of beaurocrats who continue to lie to my fucking face while selling me out to corporate interests behind my back and completely hollowing out our countries economic capability all the while refusing to make good on any of their promises and funneling all my tax money to foreign wars while we bleed for healthcare. Fuck this countries "democracy" the fact you even believe we live in a democracy is hilarious. Congress has a 14% approval rating. Our representatives do not represent the will of the america people. They represent the will of their largest financial donors.
I get what you're saying, but I'm trying to parse what is actual "things that can / will happen under a Trump presidency" vs "what the democrats and liberal media want us to think can / will happen under a Trump presidency". I'm likely voting Biden simply because I saw what a shitshow the Supreme Court became (and will be for quite some time) under a Trump presidency. But I also notice Biden did fuck all about it so part of me wonders if the democrats are doing nothing for the simple fact that they have a fearmongering device setting the up for the next election. I mean, honestly the state of politics in the US is just pathetic.
I feel the frustration, and agree with it. But the choice you’re describing does not exist. The options aren’t “fucked up status quo” with Biden and “start over fresh” with Trump, though. The options are “fucked up status quo” with Biden and “way fucking worse corporatism, inequality, treatment of any marginalized/minority group, personal freedoms, bodily autonomy, religious liberty, foreign relations, healthcare, education, environment… oh and let’s just completely give up the little voice we have” with Trump.
All the stuff that pisses you off about the corrupt bureaucrats in the Democratic Party exists across the board in the Republican Party, but worse.
I could see somebody voting for Trump hoping that the world ends more quickly and rebuilds so that their great-grandkids, if they exist/survive, might live in a better system. But the price for placing that unlocke unlikely bet is to fuck up the system now and in the near future, negatively affecting tens of millions to billions of actual people.
Ignorant? Look up Project 2025. Then tell me I'm exaggerating. You are either laughably ignorant about our situation, or you're a Trumper trying to convince people that everything will be fine when it will absolutely not be.
Vote blue in 2024, then push better agendas and vote true left next time. Because I can guarantee you if Trump wins, you won't be voting any more.
The largest current of leftists aren't saying you cannot vote for Biden, and that you should vote third party, but that ultimately change comes from outside the electoral system.
Unfortunately unless a revolution falls into our laps and magically solves all our problems, the modicum of control we have over the steering of this ship is limited to voting and advocating for others to vote
They’ll never accept that, because they fundamentally see nothing wrong with the system. They want to preserve the broken machine, even if it doesn’t work for them. They think changing the oil will repair it, when it was designed to break.
More like we don't want to crash our only car when we don't have another means of transportation, and oops, now we can't get to work.
It's great to say "the system is broken and must be replaced." I agree! But nobody who says that, me included, has ever had anything resembling an actual plan to replace the system or to prevent something even worse from taking over once the system is destroyed.
Everyone gave the GOP shit for screaming about how Obamacare needs to be "repealed and replaced" but never saying what it should be replaced with (though that was because the "replace" part was a lie and they just wanted to go back to the bad old days of people being trapped in a job or entirely unable to get insurance because of a preexisting condition). It's the same thing with people saying the entire system of government needs to be replaced.
It's all well and good to say "choose another system of governance" but how do we implement this change? What is the mechanism under which we can replace our current system of government with Swiss democracy, without the old government just saying "lolno" and bombing it to shit? The only method I can think of is a constitutional convention, and right now we're closer to the right wing being able to call one and rewrite it to take pur rights back 200 years than we are to leftists implementing Swiss democracy.
Like... I would be thrilled if that were within the realm of possibility, but as it stands any possible options for dramatically overhauling our system of governance is more likely to lurch us straight into permanent hard-right minority rule by a bunch of fascists. That's what I mean when I say I've never seen an actual plan by leftists to overhaul the system--it's all arguing about what the sexy end goal should be, without bothering to talk about the boring minutiae of how to actually get to it. So far as I can tell, the "plan" to make all these needed changes, so far as any thought is put into it at all, is just a silent assumption of either "we lobby our politicians and they do what we tell them and nobody opposes our ideas" or "we do a violent revolution and kill all the bad guys without harming the good guys and we definitely win and accomplish our goal without someone else taking advantage of the chaos to do a fascism instead," depending on how radical the change is.
without the old government just saying "lolno" and bombing it to shit?
Make sure the old government doesn't have enough votes.
options for dramatically overhauling our system of governance is more likely to lurch us straight into permanent hard-right minority rule by a bunch of fascists.
Not the point. Trump needs to be defeated, and the way we're going to do that is voting for Biden. There's no other way. It's not going to happen. You are absolutely deluded if you think there is another way.
After we fend off the Trump bullshit, then, yes, we have to make actual change to push us much further left. I don't get how all the ultra-leftists cannot fathom this simple fact.
Because Trump is still a fucking threat, you assclown. His cronies are still in office. We are going to have to keep fighting this fight where it needs to be fought, then when that fight is done, THEN we push to the actual left. Is this so goddamn fucking hard for you "LOL DONT VOTE BIDEN SO TRUMP CAN BE PRESIDENT AGAIN" fucktwaddlers to understand?
I dislike them both. I think they are both horribly corrupt with different ideologies. I won't support either of them. I'm voting for RFK jr. The only sane and reasonable choice in this election.
Right? "the only sane choice"? The antivaxxer? The "covid is a bioweapon" guy? The "I don't think we need a ceasefire in Gaza" guy. That guy? What a fucking joke.
I want to up vote you for the chuckle you gave me, but I did that once with Trump and too many people took it seriously, and he ended up being the president.
This precise sentiment has gotten me told off a few times now. Usually with someone yelling the word "Genocide" over and over so I can't get a word in. People are so fucking dumb it's actually unbelievable.
Whatever my frustration, I just want us all to work together even after we get Biden a second term. The only reason, ONLY REASON, the GOP have their power is honestly because we can't stop slap fighting long enough to plant a foot in their asses. This would also work for the Democrats. We do have two feet. Whatever our perspectives and opinions, there is a single neigh universal truth we can all accept:
Putlers troll farms are maximally amplifying the Gaza tragedy in order to divide the west. The tragedy that his Iranian friends probably started for him.
Or… hmm yes of course Putin trolls love the Palestinian genocide as it distracts from Ukraine but maybe just maybe tax payers are existentially fed up with the US committing a genocide with their money and lying straight faced to tax payers about the impossibility of doing anything about it?
If not voting helps Trump then it helps Biden too. Trying to paint people who don't like Biden as Trump supporters is a propaganda meme that's trying to gaslight us all.
Asserting this is obtusely ignoring the context that conservative voters have no qualms about voting for someone grossly immoral.
There aren't conservatives out there saying "Yeah well I was gonna vote for Trump but he supports genociding Palestinians".
The fact that conservatives don't have this problem and everyone else does means that, yes, you are enabling Trump by not voting Biden. The "logic" necessarily does not work the other way around, even if you say it like some sort of clever gotcha with a complex emoji.
so the so-called third party voters get to vote for their candidate and another candidate? why doesn't everyone vote for so-called third parties, then? twice as many votes!!
Why indeed? The fact is that not enough people vote for third parties for it to matter by an order of magnitude.
Conservatives don't vote third party. When we do, we split our own vote in the face of a party that has their base on lock.
Because that logic is abundantly obvious, people don't vote third party enough to make a difference. It's a self fulfilling prophecy. And it's so effective at actually splitting the vote that both parties have attempted running spoiler candidates in the past to do just that.
Why doesnt everyone just vote third party? Because enough people who could are afraid that it will mean degrading democracy by handing over the reigns if it doesn't work, thereby creating the very problem that they are afraid of.
Then how the hell did Trump win in 2016 and nearly win in 2020? He is literally antithetical to everything conservatives say they are, yet they still fucking turned out and voted for him instead of someone else.
Only one explicitly right wing 3rd party was even an option in 2020, and Jorgensen ran libertarian, which is an ideology conservatives as a whole tend to reject. As evidenced by the ~1% of the vote she got.
Gee thanks officer. I stated something that was correct to within 99% of my claim and cited a source. Good thing you were there to correct the remaining 1% for the poor readers out there who might have mistaken that error as significant
Vote splitting is not a myth. It's just math. Let me explain with an example:
1000 people at a conference are deciding where to order catering and hold a vote:
490 people want Mexican and do not want Asian
510 people want Asian:
480 people want Vietnamese, would be satisfied with Thai, and do not want Mexican
30 people want Thai, would be satisfied with Vietnamese, and do not want Mexican
The restaurants on the ballot are:
A Mexican restaurant,
A Vietnamese restaurant, and
A Thai restaurant.
If the people who want Asian recognize the strength of their combined numbers, then they can tip the scales by all voting for the favorite between Vietnamese and Thai. In this situation, we get 490 votes Mexican, 510 votes Vietnamese, and 0 votes Thai. This time Vietnamese wins and the majority of people, the 510 who prefer Asian, are either happy or satisfied with the result while only 490 are disappointed.
If everyone votes for their favorite, then we get 490 votes Mexican, 480 votes Vietnamese, and 30 votes Thai. In this case, Mexican wins and the majority of people, the 510 who prefer Asian, are left disappointed while only 490 people are happy with the result. The vote has been split and the result is that the entire conference is worse off for it.
By the way, the ratio of 480 Vietnamese to 30 Thai is irrelevant as long as neither value is 0. That ratio can be fixed to any positive value and a situation can be described in which vote splitting occurs with that specific ratio of Vietnamese supporters to Thai supporters. That's why vote splitting isn't too uncommon - any number of people voting Thai has the potential to split the vote. The one caveat is if literally every Vietnamese supporter decides to vote Thai as well; in that scenario, no vote splitting can occur. Unfortunately, that doesn't happen in practice because it's easier to convert the Thai supporters who are smaller in number than it is to convert the Vietnamese supporters who have greater numbers.
If you want examples from history, there are plenty. Our electoral college amplifies the effect since it breaks one federal election down into a large number of state elections, any of which can exhibit vote splitting. Other people have linked to them in this discussion and you can find more elsewhere online.
One day y'all will get the point that this entire ideology is in and of itself fascist.
"We aren't fascist we just stripped you of all other choices and move the goalposts anytime someone gets close to inclusion then blame you for wanting another option while shrieking that only WE can save the country but also we won't save it either cause we haven't had a platform other than 'slightly less right' for over a decade or two now."
One day you will get the point that the reality is that we as voters don't make the rules.
Yeah, you're right. We're boxed into this shitty ass system. Grandstanding about how shitty it is doesn't magically create a solution.
We vote for the least worst option and try to make progress towards a better situation in the future. It's either that or we fall to actual fascists who would rather take the vote away.
We already have "actual fascists." Reread your comment, even by YALLS OWN EXPLANATION, our vote was taken away long before we were born. Nothing but performative bullshit so you can claim to be the "good guy" as we're further and further clamped down on.
What you actually mean by "take the vote away" is "take your status quo" away. Biden and dems have been pushing legislation to take away all the hassle of nuking leftist organizations and to make ANY criticism of Israel something that let's them strip a school of funding and accreditation if they allow it - but y'all don't mind any of that "actual fascism" because it doesn't affect your personal day to day life.
You can fly your pride flags all you want but you're throwing Palestinians under the bus to protect your warmongering corporatist status quo, y'all are starting to throw trans people under the bus to protect it, and when the time comes you'll do the same to gays and POC all while screaming about the "lesser of two evils."
^ Someone who sees the problem and offers no solution, just like everyone else with their position
You can fly your pride flags all you want but you're throwing Palestinians under the bus to protect your warmongering corporatist status quo
There are no good guys. Only bad guys and much worse guys. Guess you want to virtue signal your way into the much worse guy so you can feel better? That's great, but maybe when we're lynching lgbtq folk as well as Palestinians you might consider looking in a mirror and wondering if your inaction made things worse.
Or, more likely, you'll complain about how doing something doesn't matter while the actual fascists you can't tell the difference between set their sights on another marginalized group.
There are solutions, you just don't like them and in proper faschie fashion you ignore them and claim that anyone left of biden is advocating for not voting (as you're doing RIGHT NOW. "Wondering if your inaction makes things worse." "You'll complain about how doing something doesn't matter")
That's literally fascist tactics but you also love the other fascist tactic of asserting that ONLY YOU can save the country so you have no choice but to spread disinformation swearing up and down that leftists do nothing but tell people not to vote (which I've literally NEVER seen, by the way, not that fascists care about reality.)
My food is done so I'm blocking you now. I don't owe my time to fascists or people who argue in bad faith, and your both (of course, they go hand in hand)
Ah yes, the old "my solutions are the only ones that work" Good luck with that.
By the way, deciding that everyone but you is a fascist is a great way to not have allies.
spread disinformation swearing up and down that leftists do nothing but tell people not to vote (which I've literally NEVER seen, by the way, not that fascists care about reality.)
Bro. Look around. There are people saying they won't vote democrat here in this comment section, much less the whole of leftist lemmy.
Block me, I don't care. There's no point in arguing with someone virtue signaling as hard as you are anyway.
Hope you don't mind being blocked back. I don't have time to argue with an idealist basement dweller about some imaginary solutions that make him feel better
"Nooo you don't understand I'm definitely going to defeat fascism by doing absolutely nothing ever. You just don't understand the benefits of political apathy"
so if you currently think "im not gonna vote", then you're giving trump a head start
A majority of the non-voters are more likely to vote for the democrats. thats also why the republicans are making it as difficult as possible to vote. coz they know, the more who vote, the less likely they are at winning
No one here WANTS to vote for Biden, but it's literally the only way to make sure Trump isn't president, unless you want to go ahead and change the national bipartisan system by November.
If she had bothered to campaign in the Midwest and had just generally been a much better candidate, more people would have.
It's the job of a politician to earn votes and faithfully represent the priorities of the majority of the voters. People like Hillary, Biden, Schumer and the rest of the Dem leadership seldom do either.
It’s also the job of the electorate to educate themselves on the consequences of their vote (and non-vote). Don’t act like nobody knew who Trump was, what he had already done, or was listening to what he was saying.
Again you are completely taking Biden out of his responsibility. Why do you want to vote for a guy that rather wants to lose to Trump, than provide decent policies around basic human rights, like the right not to get genocided?
Biden and the DNC rulers are a group of psychopaths. They will not care as long as they get the money form their rich donors, who don't care if Biden or Trump is doing their bidding.
Again you are completely taking Biden out of his responsibility.
Ve done nothing of the sort. If you think anything I’ve said even comes close to that, you’re hallucinating. Or lying.
Why do you want to vote for a guy that rather wants to lose to Trump, than provide decent policies around basic human rights, like the right not to get genocided?
That’s such a loaded question and so absurdly fallacious on its face, I’m not going to even dignify it by answering it, but I will say that you clearly don’t care what I want, just to push an agenda.
But, since you didn’t ask, what I want is for Trump to lose, and that math is simple: any vote not for Biden helps Trump, and no matter how much you dislike Biden, Trump will be 1000x worse. We know, because Trump has promised that.
Biden and the DNC rulers are a group of psychopaths.
Compared to Trump, they’re saints, and if you can’t see that, you’re clearly incapable of rational discourse on the matter. Or you’re clearly here to feebly undermine confidence in Biden in support of Trump.
Either way, your argument is transparent, fact-free, and little more than Fox News fodder.
By voting Biden you declare your support of his policies. That is the fundamental way of how democracies work. You vote your representative because you think he is representing you.
By attacking anyone who says you shouldn't approve of genocide as your representation you abolish your representative from his responsibility of not supporting genocide and instead blame it on the people who think that genocide is never an acceptable representation for them.
For you individually as a citizen there is only one legal way to hold a politician responsible. And that is by denying them further support in the next election. Now if it comes to group action through demonstrations, unions, lobbying etc. that is great and even better to do. But if it is down to you and the ballot the only direct thing is to declare before what your political demands are and vote accordingly. If your demand is "genocide is okay" then you will have to make that up with your consciousness, the victims and survivors and eventually towards future generations.
By voting Biden you declare your support of his policies.
Wrong. But if telling lies makes you feel better about voting for a literal fascist (or doing nothing to stop him) who promises to be a dictator from day 1, don’t blame me for trying to stop that when it’s clearly what you want.
"I don't like Biden's support for Israel's genocide so I'm going to make it more likely that the guy who would support Israel's genocide even more gets into office."
It’s also the job of the electorate to educate themselves on the consequences of their vote (and non-vote).
It actually isn't, no. Nobody is paying them to do that and, in the case of millions if not tens of people who are amongst the working poor because of the kind of economic policy the Dems have been putting out ever since she and her husband remade the party in their own image in 1992, they aren't realistically able to with neither candidates nor mainstream media helping them sort the wheat from the chaff.
When you're already working 60 hours a week trying (and often failing) to make ends meet on top on whatever family commitments you may have, you can't be expected to have energy left to fact check candidates and media outlets for free. It's simply not that voter's responsibility to keep powerful and well-paid people honest.
Don’t act like nobody knew who Trump was, what he had already done, or was listening to what he was saying.
Then maybe Hillary and the media shouldn't shouldn't have done all they could to make sure he became the candidate!
That the fascist ever got anywhere near the nomination, let alone the presidency itself, is hundreds of times more the fault of the rich and powerful people paid to prevent it than the people they failed to convince to vote for an evil, however lesser it would have been.
It actually isn't, no. Nobody is paying them to do that
That is the worst and most entitled excuse for the abandonment for any and all personal responsibility since I heard my 3-year-old niece try to convince my brother she should never have to wipe her own butt because he will always be there to do it for her.
Clearly, you didn't understand what I was trying to explain any better than your niece would have.
If anyone's abandoning personal responsibility, it's the awful candidates who don't do their job and then blame people who suffer for it much more than the candidates ever will.
I'm not saying that it's a good or even neutral thing to not vote for the lesser evil when only evils are available. Of course that's had.
I'm saying that it's the responsibility of the candidates to not be evil and to convince enough voters of it that the greater evil doesn't win.
Clearly, you didn't understand what I was trying to explain any better than your niece would have.
I understand that you’re trying to blame others for something that’s your own responsibility: educating yourself, and the consequences of your own actions, such as your vote
And while you whine about candidates “not being evil” and refuse to vote for Biden, you help the far more “evil” Trump win.
But I’m sure, just like my 3 year-old niece, you’ll find someone else to blame for the consequences of your actions.
I understand that you’re trying to blame others for something that’s your own responsibility: educating yourself
Clearly you don't understand since that's in no way what I'm doing. I DO educate myself about the candidates, their policy positions and their trustworthiness at every election. I'm saying that not everyone CAN s that since they already have more to do than can be reasonably expected of them.
and the consequences of your own actions, such as your vote
Again, not myself I'm talking about. I'm gonna be at my local polling place come election day no matter how much I have to hold my nose and suppress my gag reflex
I have it easier than just tens of millions of working poor: I don't have to work long hours on election day. I don't have children I'd need to get someone to look after and my local polling place isn't understaffed and the only one available to hundreds of thousands if not millions of people.
Voting isn't easy for everyone as it is for me and evidently also you.
And while you whine about candidates “not being evil” and refuse to vote for Biden
Again not once since I turned 18 23 years ago have I missed a chance to cast my vote
you help the far more “evil” Trump win.
Nope, that's you lot with your insistence that everyone shut up and obey your crappy candidates and never demand good choices.
A good candidate would beat the orange man-child in a landslide ten times out that ten. Only awful candidates lose to him or barely scrape a win.
Clearly you don't understand since that's im no way what I'm doing
It’s the first thing you said in your first reply to me. lol
Again, not myself I'm talking about.
When it’s your vote, of course it is. you’re just trying to deflect responsibility for that (and educating yourself) onto others. It was the very first thing you said to me.
Voting isn't easy for everyone as it is for me and evidently also you.
And
Nope, that's you lot with your insistence that everyone shut up and obey your crappy candidates and never demand good choices.
Making up stories again as an excuse to blame others for the consequences of your actions.
And you’re hallucinating again if you heard anyone say that you can’t demand good choices. But you’re also delusional if you believe that helping Trump win by not voting for Biden will accomplish anything but the opposite.
It’s the first thing you said in your first reply to me.
Said it in third person about other people. Learn how grammar works.
When it’s your vote, of course it is. you’re just trying to deflect responsibility for that (and educating yourself) onto others
Again, it isn't. As I told you at length, I've never not voted and have always researched candidates before doing so.
What I'm trying to get through your thick skull is that other people don't have the time, energy and easy opportunity to do that, which makes it important for candidates to be honest and good enough to be worth going through all that trouble while already running on fumes.
Both Biden and Hillary have failed that part of THEIR job abysmally.
It was the very first thing you said to me.
Again, learn fucking grammar 🤦
Making up stories again as an excuse to blame others for the consequences of your actions.
Of the dozens of times you were dropped on your head as a child, how many would you say were intentional?
And you’re hallucinating again if you heard anyone say that you can’t demand good choices
You didn't literally say so, but you're implying as much by telling everyone to shut up and fall behind awful choices such as Biden.
But you’re also delusional if you believe that helping Trump win by not voting for Biden will accomplish anything but the opposite.
Again, never said anything of the sort. You shitlibs REALLY love using that strawman every time anyone points out how Biden is throwing the election and thus American democracy.
You’re the only one who puts the words in anyone’s mouth, and repeatedly lied and hallucinated to make your absurd and fallacious argument. The comments here bear that out. Once again, blaming others for the consequences of your own actions.
If anyone's abandoning personal responsibility, it's the awful candidates who don't do their job and then blame people who suffer for it much more than the candidates ever will.
Don't bother. They don't want to understand that and will continue to just ignore that point while screaming. Everyone who doesn't want to vote for their candidate is a "tankie facist" to them anyways.
“No you!” is yet another argument I’d expect from my 3 year-old niece. But it doesn’t change the facts, and your comments are still here for everyone to see.
Nor does it change the fact that your vote is your responsibility alone, as are the consequences.
I'm just pointing out your obvious projection. That you automatically call that "no you" rather than consider whether I might be right only confirms my point further.
I'll bet you dollars to donuts that the poor niece you keep defaming is actually much more reasonable than you are. Possibly better at reading too.
You should go do something fun in stead of just repeating the same misconceptions again and again.
Maybe play some Fallout New Vegas or watch Barbenheimer back to back?
Another argument I expect from my three-year-old niece. But it doesn’t change the fact that you are responsible for your vote and the consequences of your own actions.
Not job, DUTY. Otherwise I get your point. I'd like to add that it is also the duty of those more educated to try to educate others in a non-hostile, factual, and rhetorically effective way in order to bolster the numbers of people who can make informed/educated decisions on these things.
I honestly regret not voting for Hillary. I didn't vote for Trump either, I voted third-party because I thought Hillary was going to win, and even if she didn't win, what's the worst Trump could do, huh? So I figured it wouldn't hurt to vote for a third-party with the hope they'd get enough points to be on the debate stage during the next general election.
Granted, my vote probably wouldn't have made a difference. Tbh, considering I live in a state with winner-takes-all voting, I'm not even sure my vote actually matters now; but I'm still going to vote for Biden. It's better than assuming he'll win and risking another Trump victory.
Yes, I know I'm not the main character and I'm only one person. I know that changing my vote alone won't make a difference. However, whatmightmake a difference is if I talk about my reasoning in a public forum. Then, people might stop, read my post, and change their minds. Now, it's not one vote, it's two. They might spread their view as well, and two votes becomes four. Four votes becomes eight; and eight becomes sixteen. As small as that sounds, sixteen votes can make all the difference in an election. There are elections that have come down to one or two votes.
I did the same thing, in a solidly blue state, with the same thought processes; I voted for Jill Stein. Even after Trump won, I figured he couldn't fuck it up too badly. I even thought he might manage to get one thing right (I'm very solidly pro-2A), but nope, he couldn't even do that.
Biden isn't nearly far enough left for me. But I'll vote for him without even a hint of hesitation, because he's so much better than the only realistic possibility. And I live in a purple state now, so it might end up mattering.
Ok with genocide. Otherwise relatively progressive. Has passed major important legislation.
Ok with genocide. Wants to be a dictator. Appointed half of the Supreme Court majority that took away women’s right to abortion. Will probably strip more rights if elected. Cut taxes on the wealthy and will probably do it again.
You can throw away your vote, but come inauguration, you will have a president who is ok with genocide.
I think some of these people have to be trolls. We're basically in the trolley problem where the trolley is headed for 100,000 people, and if you pull the lever it will only kill 1. You can't abstain from pulling the lever and act like you're completely innocent of the deaths of the masses.
the trolley problem tests you ethical framework, it does not have a prescribed solution. your answer to it helps you understand your own approach. deontologists never pull the lever.
I've asked folks who aren't voting for Biden what they think the odds of their vote reducing genocide in the real world is, and all I've gotten is crickets.
Given that there doesn't seem to be much confidence there, the real world results are likely trump or biden.
Trump has folks in his party alluding to nukes when saying Palestine has to be ended quickly, even trump himself has stated that Israel has to end the war quickly. Therefore I suggest that Trump will result in far more lives lost than Biden.
Folks on Lemmy are typically left-leaning.
This means that a Lemmy user voting third party could've been a vote for Biden, which in a binary choice results in less lives lost. Yes, I know, Biden centrist, etc etc, but he's to the left of the absolute insanity that is the republican party.
However instead some folks value a clean conscience over real world results, and vote third party/abstain. If these votes would've otherwise gone to Biden, then they have made a trump presidency more likely, which has the real world effect of resulting in more lives lost.
I'm fine with people voting with their conscience, but I just want folks to acknowledge whether or not their vote makes a trump presidency (therefore more genocide) more likely. Most people just seem to think "I'm not voting for genocide so my hands are clean and I'm good!" and stick their head in the sand.
So, you’re okay with not having a clean conscience? Or, other voters should be okay with not having a clear conscience? If Biden winning is more important to you than having a clean conscience. Vote for him. But don’t pressure people that choose to have a clear conscience.
You're implying that asking people what they think the real world results of their choices are is being the thought police? That seems a little... diluted.
If you’re okay with people voting their conscience, then you can’t be upset when they do that. If you are upset when they don’t vote your way, that’s the policing of thought.
I'm fine with people voting with their conscience, but I just want folks to acknowledge whether or not their vote makes a trump presidency (therefore more genocide) more likely. Most people just seem to think "I'm not voting for genocide so my hands are clean and I'm good!" and stick their head in the sand.
I'm not upset if they do, nor do I expect them to vote my way. I just want to encourage them to discuss the real world effects of their choice. I just want to make sure they're internally consistent in their reasoning. For example, another commentor said they've voted for third party since 2008, and my response was for them to simply carry on doing so.
You can label discourse as "thought policing", but then that casts an extremely wide net that cheapens the term as used by Orwell.
People who are choosing not to vote for Biden are doing so because of a genocide that is happening NOW. You want to question them on contingent hypothetical real world results of a Trump presidency that may, or may not, happen in the FUTURE.
You’re trying to scare voters by telling them a dragon 🐉 is outside, when a venomous hydra is already in the room with them.
You’re concern trolling and “just asking questions,” it reeks of desperation.
People who are choosing not to vote for Biden are doing so because of a genocide that is happening NOW. You want to question them on contingent hypothetical real world results of a Trump presidency that may, or may not, happen in the FUTURE.
Oh so they can reason about a hypothetical future if they vote third party, but they can't do so if it's about a trump presidency? That's hilarious. Or are you saying they unable reason about a hypothetical future at all?
Holy shit my man I'm asking folks to tell me what THEY think is going to happen as a consequence of their actions. If their reasoning is so shit that that question shakes them to their core, get good.
Unlike voters in many other industrialized countries, Americans tend to vote from this “retrospective” perspective. Studies show that Americans view elections – especially presidential ones – as a referendum on the past performance of an officeholder, a political party or the current administration.
Do you think retrospective voters use the past to try and inform reasoning about the future?
IMO there has to be some level of this happening, otherwise retrospective voters would only have an opinion on those that already have served, and would be essentially picking from those who have not served at random.
From my perspective, they are implying that your belief that voting third party or abstaining gives you a clear conscience makes you a self-centered, arrogant fool. Because the result of your action (or inaction) will increase the likelihood of the more bad thing happening.
To me, that's not a clear conscience. That's ignorance. That's explicitly choosing to ignore the consequences of your (in)action. That's short-sightedness to the degree that someone would expect of a preschooler. One with behavioral problems.
That’s a lot of words to say you are okay with genocide. I’m not gonna castigate voters for voting against a candidate that enables it. Maybe I’ll change my mind once I get to middle school. It depends on how long recess is.
Our choices this election are genocide with a side of an untoppped baked potato, or genocide with a side of radioactive flaming diarrhea.
There is no third option. The third option is that the waiter brings you one of the two and you have to accept it.
At least one way, we get a bland potato. It sucks, but that's the way this restaurant is run. We can't just get up and go to another restaurant. But, maybe if we can just find it to ignore the genocide (which, by the way, the chef is really limited in what they can do without the support of the rôtisseur, especially when he gets a couple line cooks to side with him), we might be able to have no genocide next time we come back. Otherwise, we're all gonna get sick being close to all the radioactive diarrhea and the whole place is gonna get shut down.
I should've been more explicit - what I posted is focused on folks who are single issue voting here.
EDIT: If Palestine is the only thing someone cares about, voting third party is likely actually hurting their cause. However you are choosing who to vote for based on many additional issues, which is why this doesn't really apply to you.
Voting third party right now also just perpetuates both parties. There are enough people in this country to elect anyone from the major parties, so a third party can’t win unless one of those parties collapses. The only way a party collapses is when it consistently loses elections.
The republicans won’t consistently lose elections as long as progressives don’t vote for democrats, so both parties will continue on. The majority of the people in this country are left of center, so the only way republicans win is by suppressing votes, and one of the ways they do that is by propping up progressive third party candidates.
If we truly want a progressive party, making sure republicans never win elections is the way to do it. Then either the Democratic Party will shift left and republicans will regroup under a new less extreme conservative party, or the Democratic Party will shift right as it absorbs all the republicans and a new progressive left party will rise. Both ways result in a more progressive set of major parties.
If your morality prioritizes staunch adherence to standards over harm reduction, you have a stupid sense of morality.
It’s the kind of morality where someone would rather let a child die than push them out of the way of a speeding car, simply because pushing them would harm them.
Your morality should lead you to making decisions that result in the least harm. Look at it this way: if all of the people who voted third party instead of Hillary because Hillary wasn’t [insert moral standard here] enough had sucked it up and voted for Hillary, access to abortion would still be legal nationwide. (This assumes enough people to get her elected voted third party over moral objections.)
Trump is the worst president in my life time, by a huge margin, and he’s even more in favor of genocide than Biden, demonstrably. So if your sense of morality causes you to help put him in charge of our country again, in my mind, you’re a fucking moron.
I’m not talking about drug harm reduction. I’m talking about the reduction of harm. Put another way, aiming to reduce the amount of harm your actions lead to.
That’s a nice platitude, but there are only two outcomes, no matter how much you might wish there was a third. Your options are to help, abstain, or hurt. Abstaining means you’d rather not help, so again, in my mind, you’re a moron.
Third party candidates are only viable when one of the major parties collapses, and the major parties only collapse when they consistently lose. So, if you actually want a viable third party, you should vote for the major party you dislike the least. Otherwise, you’re just perpetuating both.
Rebellion? I don't like hearing such a word from you," Ivan said with feeling. "One cannot live by rebellion, and I want to live. Tell me straight out, I call on you--answer me: imagine that you yourself are building the edifice of human destiny with the object of making people happy in the finale, of giving them peace and rest at last, but for that you must inevitably and unavoidably torture just one tiny creature, that same child who was beating her chest with her little fist, and raise your edifice on the foundation of her unrequited tears--would you agree to be the architect on such conditions? Tell me the truth."
"No, I would not agree," Alyosha said softly.
"And can you admit the idea that the people for whom you are building would agree to accept their happiness on the unjustified blood of a tortured child, and having accepted it, to remain forever happy?"
"No, I cannot admit it.
Ok cool. Your choice is between genocide, and genocide but worse. You can proclaim how righteous and moral you are that all the pain everyone around you is feeling is not your fault, because you merely threw your vote away, but that won’t change the outcome, and it won’t make you anything but a moron.
“And can you admit the idea that the people for whom you are building would agree to accept their happiness on the unjustified blood of a tortured child, and having accepted it, to remain forever happy?”
But then if Trump wins because you didn’t vote for either, then you’re ok with Genocide+ rather than Genocide light. Meaning you have to vote for the lesser of the two evils if no matter what you do the majority are voting for the only two who are likely to win.
You’re either incredibly stupid, a troll, or are being obstinate on purpose.
Genocide light? Seriously?!? If the other guy is stupid, you are stupid+
There is no democracy if you are supporting genocide. There is no election worth voting on if the outcome is same fucking fascist, just with different colored flags. And don’t give me the lie how you’re gonna do something about a ‘genocide light’ if your guy is elected. Fuck off
This whole country needs to stop sucking Kissinger’s dick and change this bloodthirsty, greedy fascist system.
Ask the people in Gaza what they think about "Roe got overturned".
After all said and nothing done, we are paying for those bullets that murder their children by accepting and even promoting a system that gives us braindead mouthpieces for weapon manufacturers to vote for.
Why do you think I’m upset that you are voting for Biden? You should vote for whomever you want. I’m voting for genocide Joe and I understand the implications of that. What I won’t do is plead with others to do the same. It is their choice, not mine. I understand why someone would vote for Biden. But , I also understand others have different priorities and material interests. Forcing, or shaming others to vote your choice is not democratic… it’s authoritarian. And isn’t that what we wish to prevent?
I’m an American, I’ve been drowning in piss my whole life. You want me to hate you for voting for Biden, even though he is helping a genocide. I won’t, because I understand you have your reasons. Or you want me to hate others because they won’t vote for Biden, because he’s helping a genocide. I’m not gonna do that either, because I support their cause.
Your anger is better directed at the institutions that allowed us to arrive at this juncture.
November is quite cold where I’m at, we like to go hiking or skiing. Or staying in and watching movies. A nice dinner with friends? I hope I gave you at least one good idea what to do in November.
But you can go out and vote for a sociopath and genocide denier or for a racist rapist and when those clowns start killing and bombing some other people somewhere on the globe, you can just blame the Chinese or Icelanders for making you vote for a lesser evil…
Small problem. A person who is against genocide would not be okay with a genocide under Trump either, so why should they be okay with a genocide under Biden?
The outcome of the election is going to be Trump or Biden. NOBODY ELSE IS GOING TO WIN.
So given that you have to choose the person less likely to escalate the situation, the saner one of the two.
I’m not saying it’s good I think it’s fucking abhorrent, but there is no choice.
To be abundantly clear about my stance on Palestine. I am out every weekend protesting in solidarity with Palestine. I am spreading awareness of the issue wherever I can and I am taking direct action against the companies that support the genocide.
Let me ask you this. What do you think is going to happen if you don’t vote?
If a genocide is going to occur regardless of the vote, then the vote doesn’t matter.
Let me ask you this. What do you think is going to happen if you don’t vote?
In regards to what? The genocide? Project 2025? Healthcare?
If people want to vote for Joe Biden to preserve LGBT and minority rights, that’s their choice. If someone wants to not vote for Biden because he is aiding in a genocide, that’s their choice.
It’s egotistical to think that my priorities are more important than others.
Dude people ain’t voting for Biden for any reason. They’re voting against the lunatic that tried to incite an insurrection. The dude that has the mentality of a child.
That’s it. Trump is a sociopath and people don’t want him in charge of nuclear weapons.
As to the rest of your comment. Yes you can do what you want but alls people are saying is Trump would far worse in every regard and not voting against him is basically saying your cool with that.
Does that make sense? I don’t mean that in a condescending way, I’m really wanting to know if you understand my point of view and the consensus of this thread. And the majority of people.
If you’re not voting Biden who are you voting for?
If you want to me to say that I’m voting for Biden, I will. The question everyone should be asking themselves is why do they need that validation. Is it only okay to vote for Biden if everyone else does? If I change my mind in the next six months, and decide to vote for Cornel West or Jill Stein, is it not my choice? The people that have decided to not vote for Biden because of the genocide aren’t gonna be persuaded by randos pressuring them on the internet. It’s not their fault he is helping Israel do a genocide.
I literally said in my last comment it is your choice do what you want.
I’ve also covered, ad-nauseam, that the only person getting elected is a genocide supporting one and one of those is less dangerous than the other.
How many times do you want to ask the same questions to get the same answer.
I DONT SUPPORT GENOCIDE.
I DO SUPPORT PALESTINE.
ISRAEL IS AN APARTHEID STATE.
WE THE PEOPLE ARE POWERLESS TO STOP IT.
BIDEN OR TRUMP WILL WIN.
BIDEN IS LESS FUCKING INSANE THAN TRUMP.
BIDEN IS A GENOCIDE SUPPORTER.
Hypothetically, I think there would be no difference than what is occurring now. The rhetoric from his administration would be more belligerent though. If you take the genocide out of the equation, Biden is clearly the better choice. Unfortunately, it is part of the equation.
Trump and the other Republicans will say a lot, but they aren’t going to act any different than what Biden and Blinken are already doing with Palestine. The only difference is the symbolic language the Democrats use to assuage their voters. What are they going to do, send more arms and money faster?
Trump and the other Republicans will say a lot, but they aren’t going to act any different than what Biden and Blinken are already doing with Palestine
Muslim travel ban, Golan heights, and Jerusalem recognition + US embassy adoption there suggests that there are real world acts that the administration would do differently to me, what do you think?
What are they going to do, send more arms and money faster?
Precisely, afaik he doesn't give a shit about the people of Palestine, he's more worried about Israels bad PR and wants them to end it fast.
EDIT: just to check, did you read the JNS article? It's pretty bad, and he spells out exactly what he wants to do... A small excerpt is below.
“On day one, we’ll restore our travel ban. We had a travel ban because we didn’t want people coming into our country who really loved the idea of blowing our country up,” he said. He called the ban an “amazing success.”
“We didn’t have one incident in four years, because we kept bad people out of our country,” he claimed.
“I’ll also be implementing strong ideological screenings for all immigrants coming in,” he
said. “If you hate America, if you want to abolish Israel, if you sympathize with jihadists, then we don’t want you in our country and you’re not going to be getting into our country.”
Trump also said he would cancel student visas of Hamas sympathizers.
“The college campuses are being taken over, and all of the resident aliens who joined in the pro-jihadist protests this month, nobody’s seen anything like it,” he said. “Come 2025, we will find you, and we will deport you.”
...
As president, Trump would “put every single university and college president on notice,” he said. “The American taxpayer will not subsidize the creation of terrorist sympathizers on American soil.”
That last bit is actual government thought policing.
It's definitely not working, but all evidence I've seen suggests it's right.
Do you agree with me that "Biden is bad, but trump will be worse" is a correct statement?
I think the tiredness you're referring to is a result of people voting emotionally and not logically, or just being exhausted with this whole shitstorm.
I'm starting to suspect that the arguments seem as nauseam because I'm trying to reason people out of a decision they didn't reason themselves into - i.e. they're voting emotionally, and not logically. Inconvenient questions get ignored, and we're left with very surface level arguments.
I particularly saw some users comments reflected in this excerpt in the retrospective voting article you shared:
In his classic book “The Responsible Electorate,” the late Harvard University political scientist V.O. Key Jr. suggests that judging a president’s or his party’s performance in office presents a perfect opportunity for the voter to play “rational God of vengeance or reward.”
Perhaps they're voting this way to try and recapture efficacy in a world where they feel they have very little.
You seem genuinely interested in this topic. One I spent a considerable time researching last year and left me disillusioned. A study that may help is from professors Adam Dyne and John Holbein: Noisy Retrospection: The Effect of Party Control on Policy Outcomes. It’s quite a read but demonstrates:
Our results suggest that voters may struggle to truly hold government coalitions accountable, as objective performance metrics appear to be largely out of the immediate control of political coalitions.
Simply put, in large elections with millions of people, our votes count very little.
We should still vote. It matters for local elections, but when it gets to the state level and higher, the impact of our votes have little to no effect.
So.... What do you think are the odds that your third party vote improves the situation in Palestine?
If your third party vote makes it more likely that Trump wins and results in more bloodshed, that is a choice you contributed to, and blood is still on your hands.
virtue-signalling
: the act or practice of conspicuously displaying one's awareness of and attentiveness to political issues, matters of social and racial justice, etc., especially instead of taking effective action
The argument for voting against left-wing or socialist candidates on the grounds that they can’t win and are therefore helping the right wing into power has, of course, been a time-worn argument in the United States against bucking the two-party system. Engels, in an 1893 letter to an American colleague, pointed out that in the United States, the formation of a workers’ party is hindered by the "Constitution…which makes it appear as though every vote were lost that is cast for a candidate not put up by one of the two governing parties." isreview
A tribe holds a vote to either cross a bridge to side A or stay on side B. Staying on side A means you won't have much food. Going to side B means you still won't have much food, but also most of the food is poisonous.
Part of the tribe (Group C) says "I don't want to starve, I refuse to vote in a way that accepts malnourishment as a solution!" Group C also opposes eating poisonous food. This partial group votes to try and find a better source of food (option C).
48% of people vote A. 49% of people vote B. 3% of people vote C.
Surprise, surprise, Group C had 0 impact on the starving situation AND helped facilitate the eating of poisonous food.
I agree with you. If we could get the entirety of the democratic party to vote green/left, that would be super helpful. We both know that's not happening in America because of the broken electoral and political system. If we could suppress option C, we wouldn't be having this conversation at all, but there would surely be other complaints to be had regarding that matter.
In the end, the Group C votes are equivalent to not voting, which translates to having 0 impact on the outcome of vote. This exemplifies complicity with either option A or B.
Sorry, you're right. My story doesn't quite match the election dynamic. In the hypothetical, Group C should be extremely aware that they cannot win the popular vote, since most tribe members are either unaware of or have no faith in option C.
In which case, yes, continuing to vote for option C is complicity with outcome A or B.
Definition of complicit denotes otherwise. If making the right choice is unpopular, that doesn’t make you complicit with another choice. You’re conflating the two choices. Why is it Group C’s fault the other groups can’t get their shit together. Stop bullying people to vote the way you want. It makes you look weak.
Cool, I'll give you a pass on the genocide, but you will still be as responsible as anyone who voted for Trump for all the other terrible things he said he will do that you are doing nothing to prevent.
I'm not going to tell anybody what to do or who to vote for but one of two things are very likely to happen at the end of this election:
Biden is re-elected. We continue with the status quo. We have a chance to make small incremental steps toward a better future.
Trump is elected. Two Supreme Court justices retire and Trump appoints two more. At that point he will have appointed FIVE of NINE Supreme Court justices. We have already seen what they're willing to do. Imagine what they will do in the literal decades to come.
Choose what you want to do, but take responsibility for your choice. Vote in your local elections. Big changes can happen from the ground up.
It's the federal judge appointments that matter and almost nothing else. Most of what he does can be undone except for that.. It would cause a generation of damage.
Sorry, you will get big changes voting for Trump. becasue too much is already in place to make those types of changes happen. I dont agree with these changes, but to say they are the "same" is a dangerous opinion.
The person at the top is needed to green light policy.. those lower down present such policy.. While this can seem boring it is important, since while by definition the president will be at the center of their party. If the party you vote for is most interested in vetoing everything of the other party.. even if they agree with the law in general, there is no progress.
Of course you must do more than just vote for the least bad president to make the change happen.. However if you can't at least do that you own the results os the OP said.
"But take responsibility for your choices"strikes me as hilarious. Voting is not public. In a democracy with private polling,hardly anybody takes responsibility for their choices. Actually, zero percent. That is why the elected president is never popular for like the first year in office. Wouldn't it be lovely if people assumed their responsibility for making choices, though? I would be on speaking terms with so many people from my past if they actually learned from their own stupidity.
It's not, it's discouraging voting for the guy that counters the "boof bleach" incest loving fell who "only will be a dictator for a day". You know, the unified Reich vibe that you totally are against lmao.
There’s a contradiction. If you are allowed not to vote in a democracy, and you don’t like any of the candidates, then, how can it be misguided to withhold your vote?
No it isn't. You have the right not to vote but participation should be encouraged as it's what gives everyone a say. Seems pretty simple to me. I'm not even saying they don't have the right to discourage people but if you have lived through the last 8 years and do it, you're a REALLY slow learner.
I am really slow, so thanks for taking the time. But, let’s say you’re a socialist, and both candidates are capitalists. So you decide that neither candidate upholds your interests. How would any “encouragement” to vote change your mind?
In the case where neither candidate represents your political positions, not voting is an act of rebellion.
Well enjoy the 4 years of Trump this buy's you, let me know how clean your hands feel afterwards. It'll be impressive to hear the mental gymnastics. You know if the accelerated climate change doesn't kill us first.
I’m voting for Biden. But if he loses, I won’t blame voters like you for berating fellow citizens for wrongthink, and depressing voter turnout. I’ll blame the duopoly system for giving us shitty candidates.
I voted for Gary Johnson because Hillary sounded awful in 2016 and I 1000x regret it. Fuck this system for making me choose between bad and worse, but yes obviously I have to choose bad over worse.
we'll all be doing this for the rest of our lives thanks to this system and it still leads us to the same place that the worse option does, but at a slower pace.
It doesn’t lead us to the same place but slower, at least not everywhere. One party has rolled back abortion protections, equal rights protections, bans books, and a host of other regressive policies. Democrats didn’t do that. Democrats might keep status quo, but the Republican agenda is literally to move us backwards to a worse place (though if they wanna move us back to when the highest marginal tax rate was 90% I could be onboard with that part at least).
And the Democrats are just watching that happen. Doing nothing to stop it. Now the Democrats are cheering the police on while they brutalize Pro Palestine protestors. The second they think they can jettison minority support they will. They've shown they're willing to support morally reprehensible actions. It's just circumstances that place them closer to minorities for now.
They are not in control of the House (which is in control of the purse strings) and "have" a razor thin "majority" in Senate (minus DINOs and plus veep).
And they don't have SCOTUS. And Trump had a record number of lower court appointments (because McConnel slowed a huge chunk down in Obama's final year, not just Garland).
So, are you suggesting that Biden act unilaterally? Because that is fascism. That's what we're trying to avoid here.
The funny thing is, Republicans would. They have no respect for the law and order that they claim to hold near and dear.
And that's what the election is, really. Fascism, or status quo.
Biden isn't the only hope. He's just a part of the only hope. Dems must not only hold the executive but also gain seats in both house and Senate.
Because here's the other thing (that nobody is talking about), and that's the Biden v Trump is only a very small part. One third of Senate, and all of the house, are up for vote this year. It's quite possible for either party to end up with a significant majority in either or both houses.
I would much, much prefer the current democratic party to be in control of two branches, than the current Republican party being in charge of two. All three? Fuck.
Ahhh the paradox of liberalism. We can't do anything for fear they'll do something in return!
I want them to grow some balls. I want them to withhold funding for federal programs being misused. I want them to arrest police officers and school officials on civil rights charges that are already on the books. I don't care if SCOTUS walks in and undoes it all. Every time they do that they add more weight to the reform SCOTUS position. I want them to look at bad police departments and tell them they can't get free military equipment. I want to see the modern equivalent of the 101st escorting a black student to school.
This idea that we can't engage until we have everything lined up perfectly is just an excuse to do nothing and watch trans kids get killed. But it's okay, we voted for the blue guy!
That’s not true at all. Biden specifically has protected more public spaces and land, while Trump specifically attempted to lease / sell / make available more of it to corporate interests. Net neutrality is being restored after it was rolled back under Ajit Pai. We can be frustrated democrats don’t do enough, or aren’t further left, but to say they keep the status quo at the regressive place republicans want to take us is demonstrably wrong. So while maybe they won’t expand affordable care beyond where it currently is, they’ll at least keep it where it is and restore it if possible. If they won’t add new parks, they at least protect the ones we have and cancel corporate interest on existing ones. If they won’t raise the taxes heavily on the rich (which is where I think they’re most guilty of “status quo”), they at least won’t give them trillions in tax breaks like Trump did.
That’s not true at all. Biden specifically has protected more public spaces and land, while Trump specifically attempted to lease / sell / make available more of it to corporate interests.
Net neutrality is being restored after it was rolled back under Ajit Pai.
I'll consider it an accomplishment when you can speak of it in the past tense.
We can be frustrated democrats don’t do enough, or aren’t further left, but to say they keep the status quo at the regressive place republicans want to take us is demonstrably wrong.
I live near the Texas/Mexico border. Democrats just recently adopted what is essentially Republican policy regarding border security. Republicans did the predictable thing and moved to the right, and now Republicans' previous position is Democrats' reasonable moderate stance.
When Trump said that he wasn't going to support a nationwide abortion ban and instead let the states decide, Democrats said he was just pretending to be moderate on the issue. And suddenly the patchwork of abortion bans is the moderate position.
Note that repeals of policies means someone had to have passed it originally. Guess who passed net neutrality originally? Guess who passed the clean water rule? Guess who passed affordable care act? Oh, it seems democrats actually do move us left.
I also live in Texas, a state controlled by Republican interests for the past 20 years. Let’s look instead at locations where a state flipped blue. Just by one example, Michigan then passed a statewide constitutional amendment protecting abortion. You may be upset that we have to get statewide protections passed, but we only have to do that because Republican judges went against some 50 odd years of precedent to force it. So democrats are actually enshrining the very thing that Republicans took away.
Look, you can troll all day and pretend that Democrats are just as bad as republicans, but that’s absolutely wrong on so many issues, and frankly I’m going to exercise my right to vote for the party that will protect the things I want protected and move us further left.
Like logically, you should vote for the furthest left candidate that can actually win the election at every level. Anything less than that and you’re contributing to moving the country to the right. Reap what you sow and what not…
That wasn’t my immediate assumption. That was a conclusion drawn after you repeatedly stated that democrats were moving right and basically did nothing good. Which is fine, and I probably shouldn’t have assumed how you would vote, though given the environment these days it wasn’t too audacious of an assumption.
By all means critique. But also please vote for the furthest left candidate that can win in every election you can vote in. Especially in Texas. This place needs so much damn help, and the Republican leadership definitely isn’t going to help (unless you’re ridiculously wealthy or own a large company). And get others to vote as well, because the only thing that will change Texas is to change the elected officials in charge.
By all means critique. But also please vote for the furthest left candidate that can win in every election you can vote in.
Already do. Unfortunately, my party does shit like pull the funding from progressive candidates to make sure they can't win (Michelle Vallejo), so I only get to vote for centrists.
Absolutely. But if we can flip Texas from right and alt right to centrist then we may actually get progressive candidates in other areas (and frankly, if we flip Texas blue we will see a shift in policies from republicans to the left). And, perhaps by some miracle, we can get star or ranked choice voting, but that absolutely won’t happen while republicans are in control here.
Here’s to a better Texas (lifts shiner [but prefers one of the many smaller microbrews here])
Absolutely. But if we can flip Texas from right and alt right to centrist then we may actually get progressive candidates in other areas
We'll get as far as centrist and then the party will protect incumbents like Henry Cuellar. (Notice that they're not protecting Bowman because he's a progressive.)
Here’s to a better Texas (lifts shiner [but prefers one of the many smaller microbrews here]
If you ever find yourself in the Rio Grande Valley, I'd recommend the Padre Island Brewing Co.
I see it as damage control while these grassroots attempts at major system changes take hold. We're holding off the assault while we wait for the calvary to come, but they are coming. We just have to not blow their chance.
Yeah but I'm mad Max and even though I make no effort to better anything now, if everything falls apart I'm going to all of a sudden have motivation and rise to the top, because this is my story and I'm the main character!
Or what you can do is what you're supposed to do: work from the ground up. Presidential vote is not the place to drastically change things. As long as we have fptp, the vote for president is always going to have to be a strategic "vote for the candidate that sucks less."
Face the facts, if everything falls apart you're not going to end up on top of you're on the bottom now. It's just going to be even more shitty for you, and you'll then end up in another shitty system.
The idea is to implement the change locally and work up. That takes time and effort tho. If you want the system to work better, vote strategically federally and then work locally to get the people you want elected.
Hillary won the popular vote in 2016 by a nearly 3 million vote margin, I don't think you need to feel any regret over your one vote going to someone else you actually wanted to vote for.
Also, even if she'd lost the popular vote too, it ain't the voters fault that the DNC keeps deliberately sabotaging the good candidates in their primaries to give us turds.
I appreciate the sentiment but I think my regret is more tied to the fact that I very much fell for the white supremacist men’s rights activism and homophobic rhetoric of the time, and me voting for Gary Johnson over Hillary feels like a symptom of that fact as well, and I deeply regret falling for that bullshit.
Like it or not, Clinton destroyed sanders. The DNC definitely showed a bias for her, but by no stretch of the imagination was he sabotaged. This narrative is the same BS that trump supporters spew that the media was unfair to trump which is part of the reason he lost.
The reality is that sanders just doesn't (unfortunately) represent the average Democrat. People like Clinton and Biden do.
That's kind of a circular logic though; the DNC alienates voters who don't like their blessed candidates. If they didn't do that, and more leftist candidates like Sanders were welcomed, then the "average Democrat" might look a bit different.
You know there are other offices than president right?
You want a further left president, you're going to need to show that a lot of people want a further left president, by having a lot of further left politicians in state and local offices.
You don't just jump right to the Whitehouse. The presidents politics are a reflection of the politics of the whole party, not the other way around. IDK if you watched the GOP primary debates in 2016, but it was very much an "everybody sucks here" kind of event. Each candidate might have been a little more reasonable on one of two smaller issues, but all in all they were much the same. The only thing different Trump had was charisma and campaign stamina.
No reason you can't vote for more progressive candidates for presidential primaries, but there's no sense in holding such a grudge when the party outlier loses. It's kinda obvious from the get-go that that's going to happen. And that's fine. There's nothing wrong with voting for a loser, and a popular loser can easily land a cabinet position where they could still have a very significant voice.
You know there are other offices than president right?
You want a further left president, you’re going to need to show that a lot of people want a further left president, by having a lot of further left politicians in state and local offices.
I've seen the Democratic Party put its thumb on the scale for centrists at the congressional level: Henry Cuellar. I've seen them pull the rug out from under progressives who manage to win the primary, also at the congressional level: Michelle Vallejo.
Progressives cannot do as you describe when the party shuts them out at the lower levels as well.
There's actual evidence of sabotage tho, such as Hillary getting early access to debate questions, Shadow company (not even kidding they actually fucking named themselves that, look it up) being run by DNC members being in charge of tabulating voting in some states, and more.
They were even taken to court for it and admitted to some wrong doing, but nothing could be done since apparently the DNC is a private entity and no laws are broken. Legally they can screw over any candidate they want.
Fuck this system for making me choose between bad and worse
Don't make me defend the US voting system but that is not how it works. Primaries exist and that's where voters make the case for a specific person. The large, general, national elections are for forming coalitions and compromising. This is what we do to decide who gets power instead of physically fighting. There will never, ever be a time when a single candidate is the ideal choice for a majority of Americans. Compromise is a core tenant of democracy and by definition it means nobody gets everything they want.
And while we're on the topic, 99% of leftists understand this. Anyone telling you "voting doesn't matter" or that "both candidates are the same" is just trying to reverse the progress that's already been made.
Most of what you said is spot on but you originally quoted about choosing between bad and worse.
I get what you're saying about the primary system, but even that is broken. Incumbents are almost never primaried. Typically the party will not allow it. There also needs to be consideration of what primarying an incumbent could mean. It's unlikely any of the challengers would win and in the process they would burn through campaign money and highlight weaknesses in the winner's record and character that could be used by the opposing party.
We do have a primary, but it may not always give the best candidate. If argue only a portion of people who vote in a general even vote in the primary.
Nobody thinks its a magic bullet, we're all looking for the next rung that leads us closer to a happy democracy. None of us are looking for instant easy solutions, we're trying to iterate and be better.
Obligatory: "Ranked Choice" is a specific use of ranked ballots. It's subpar. It beats what we're doing now, but anything beats what we're doing now.
What you want is a Condorcet method like Ranked Pairs, where the winner is whoever beats everyone else. RCV just picks whoever can scrounge together 50% first. RCV would not elect a candidate who is literally everyone's second choice. Ranked Pairs would.
The simple alternative is Approval Voting, where you let people check all the names they like. It matches Condorcet results... somehow. There is no good reason we're not using it everywhere.
Approval Voting seems to just dilute your vote the more candidates you vote for. Candidates will tell people people to only place one vote. What a silly system.
But ranked choice is easy to implement and in practice if everyone would put a candidate second they aren't likely to be knocked out in the first round. There are very limited practical examples where it doesn't provide the optimal outcome.
It also seems to have some level of support and momentum in the US and it seems to me like it'd be better not to get caught in the weeds fighting over which new voting system should be implemented there.
This is absurd. Take a look at the polls. There is only one 3rd-party candidate with double digit percentages. Do you really think JFK is taking more votes from Biden than Trump?
I never made any indication on how I'm voting. I'm just tired of this baseless claim that voting 3rd party only helps Trump. Polls excluding 3rd-parties show Trump significantly further ahead than those with 3rd-parties. Therefore, Biden's only chance of winning is due to JFK capturing conservative votes.
What is "how America works" in this context? You seem to be trying to make the point that 3rd-party voting only hurts Biden. I'm pointing to recent polling that shows that, when 3rd-party options are included, Biden's margins get closer to victory. You should be thanking 3rd-parties if you are hoping for a Biden victory.
A different way to think about it - most of the intended audience on Lemmy, and especially in this community, would've voted democrat instead of republican. So from the frame of reference of this post, most folks here claiming to vote third party did in fact have their vote "taken" from Biden.
Telling the DNC that you and most people will vote for him unconditionally is sabotaging his chances; the dems need to understand they cannot win if they continue the path they're on, and telling them otherwise is counterproductive.
Silencing criticism of millions isn't gonna win an election. Doing the things the people whose votes you need are telling you to do will.
Well, the problem is, the way the US sees it, keeping Israel as an ally is more important than Joe Biden. Yes, even if that means fascism comes humping an American flag. You can still be at the top of the postwar order with a fascist in charge!
If public sentiment is "everyone's gonna vote for Biden no matter what", they're not gonna change the course, and then be shocked when they get blown out worse than they did in 2016.
If the public sentiment is that we're gonna vote for Biden no matter what, then when the election comes we'll vote for Biden ....no matter what.
What you're describing is if the DNC hear "blue no matter who", but what they hear isn't reflective of reality. Meanwhile, what we want is for everyone to vote blue no matter who, but give the DNC a good scare into getting their act together.
So what we absolutely need to do is be critical of Biden when the DNC are watching, but stress the dangers of a Trump presidency when they're not paying attention.
And the DNC are not on Lemmy. So Lemmy is where we should say blue no matter who. We can go criticise Biden on Facebook or whatever boomers use these days. But there's no point in it on Lemmy, except when we're saying to vote for him in the election and kill him in the revolution.
The problem is that people are dumb, and plenty are legitimately not planning on voting for Biden now.
If and when Biden deals with Gaza, everyone with this mindset immediately needs to turn around and start sucking off Biden with previously unseen vigor and determination, otherwise this is only going to damage his chance of being elected. Hell, even then I still see some damage being done.
It just seems irresponsible to spread this message, especially when people like OP seem to genuinely believe it. Pick a less blatantly fascist opponent than Trump to do this with ffs
If and when Biden deals with Gaza, everyone with this mindset immediately needs to turn around and start sucking off Biden with previously unseen vigor and determination, otherwise this is only going to damage his chance of being elected.
There's tens of thousands of mostly children dead, and Israel is using famine and disease to wipe out the rest, no shit it damages Biden's chances if his actions come this late. Especially if Biden's answer to Gaza is ship Israel weapons more quietly while claiming to hold up shipments, while Israel starves Gaza out.
Then again, if Biden stops the money and arms to Israel, and sanctions Israel, and Trump responds by promising money and arms to Israel so they can resume the genocide, I don't see how anyone could not vote Biden.
What more can be done? We are already sending 100% of the weapons, money, and diplomatic support Israel needs. We're already bombing Yemen for taking actions to stop Israel and shooting down Iranian drones trying to stop them. Is Trump going to do the same thing, but be proud of it?
Shit I can't even say that, Biden is extremely proud of his support for Israel. Trump is simply going to be more obnoxious about it.
Lesser evilism isn't gonna win an election when your lesser evil is already genocide.
'Dislike' and 'support' are immaterial. Votes are all that matter. Sorry in reality no one cares about your super nuanced political position but if you're not voting for Biden in 2024 you're either useless or an actively opposing my civil and human rights.
Anyone that needs me to 'get them to vote' for Biden in 2024 is already a lost cause. I'm just talking about reality. Sorry if that triggers you, but not really though.
Yeah you should probably vote for Trump because... uh- idk- he is pretty popular with dummies and some of them are kinda hot and hot dummies are easier pickins if they think you're on their team. Get that dummy squish however ya gosta!
Meh- I don't have to coddle anyone. Anyone still 'unsure' about 2024 is either lying or hopeless. I guess if someone literally just woke up from an 8 year coma I'd give them a pass but that's about it.
Plus these conversations have a very niche audience of about 6 people, maybe one of which is actually an eligible US voter. But even so yeah- if Biden loses it's definitely because I didn't coddle the 'undecided' on lemmy enough ;)
And yet everyone on lemmy who says anything at all in opposition to Biden's support for genocide is a Russian agent whose merest opinion to the contrary of centrist orthodoxy is singlehandedly going to cause Biden to lose.
No, not everyone, but it would be rather naive to think that actual Russian agents don't exist.
Check out @archcomrade's profile. They don't even deny being a Russian nor do they ever claim to be American, despite doing literally nothing except posting "don't vote Biden".
Getting Trump to win is one of Putin's last hopes.
Well, you are useless if you can't manage to do the one thing to prevent America from becoming an authoritarian state. But go ahead and keep complaining about how mean people are to you.
Yep- sorry nobody cares what you think deep down inside, snowflake. Only matters how you vote. Biden or Trump- plus all the downballot stuff you don't care enough to think about. Pitch a hissy fit if you want but that's your reality.
Grown ups know that life is full of hard choices and that it's pretty damned rare that you get everything you want in any situation. We also tend to understand that there are many things that we cannot change or can only change a little, sometimes over a long period of time.
Choosing not to choose or "standing on principal" is often counter-productive.
Some principles ought to be inflexible. It's kind of the definition of a principle. I know what compromise is, and I know right from wrong. It's wrong to compromise on certain things. If growing up means forgetting that, then miss me with growing up.
What genocide in the world can I do anything about? My country does most of them, and I never support them. I've been protesting my whole life. I am always against genocide. That is a principle. Not one you seem to share, but to each their own I guess.
So in other words, you choose to be flexible with your principles because there's so much in the world you can't do much about. All you can do is chip away. You've chosen this particular battle for reasons, but not others. Conveniently ignoring the consequences of that choice.
Trump isn't in charge right now. There is a genocide happening right now. Trump has nothing to do with that. How can you not want to pressure the guy that has the power right now to do something?
Edit: I also find it hilarious that to you, his stance on Gaza is irrelevant when he is, in fact, running for president. Gotta love sticking your head in the sand so your own narrative makes sense.
Sorry if I am more concerned with the ongoing genocide supported by the current fascist in power, than with the potential continuation of the same genocide by the next fascist who may come to power.
You don't really need my answer, and I don't really need yours either.
No one said anything about not pressuring the guy, but right now isn't the time to be divisive. The US is literally on the brink of becoming a fascist theocracy, and Biden is the only one who can stop it.
It sucks that he's our only option, but that's life.
Shit on him all you want after the election, but right now isn't the time. The alternative is a guy who supports nuking Gaza.
What pressure are you putting on the guy? Guaranteeing him your vote is the opposite of pressure. It reads as endorsement or at least tacit approval of his policies. Assuming Biden actually cares to win the election, the best thing to do is threaten to withhold your vote. He still has five months to change voters minds. Let him see the polling, let his campaign see the mood on social media. Genocide is a red line, and it's a low fucking bar.
Yes, Biden supporting Israel sucks, but Israel isn't the biggest issue facing us right now. The existence of our country as we know it depends on the upcoming election.
Yes, there's that pesky reading comprehension again. I never said Biden didn't deserve criticism for his decisions regarding the Israeli genocide. But, he's literally the only person who can stand in the way of the US becoming a fascist theocracy.
Or I dont wanna vote for someone who committed genocide.
It's funny and sad to me how little thought seems to be put into comments like this. It's like you're taking this position to be cool and fit in. It's more of a personal branding exercise than a principled position.
Its funny and sad to me how much you decide to assume on my position, without first asking some questions or trying to understand. Whats also funny is my comment history exists where you can see some of the rational I have behind this position. Not that you'd agree with it but then you'd at least not be making a fool of yourself and saying that it is simply a "personal branding exercise"
Ok but what no leftie has yet explained is who has asked them to like Biden?
Probably nobody who votes for Biden last time or this time around thinks he’s “teh awesome”, we’re simply grown ups who are able to tell which is the least bad option.
Honestly lefties (if they aren’t just groipers posing as lefties) who think it’s a hot take to say Biden isn’t the optimal person to be President are all suffering from Captain Obvious syndrome while thinking they’re the cleverest people ever.
It’s cringe.
That’s how it is in a highly polarised country where every vote is needed to avoid the end of democracy and possibly domestic genocide on POC and immigrants.
Is there ever going to be a time when it is acceptable to criticize Biden? Because I very much expect that there will always be some criterion that must first be met before criticism is permissable.
You’re like the right wing chuds who loudly say “you’re not allowed to say things anymore” while saying those things.
Actually you’re no different at all from them, it’s true that if you go far left enough you’ll end up on the far right.
Unfortunately, the US political system does not have a feature to "dislike" all the candidates. Not without a major, probably bloody, revolution, anyway. Your choice is to support and pick one candidate, or let everyone else pick the candidate for you.
You can always write in your own candidate. Not that it's likely to sway the vote in any significant way, but at least it might help you feel better about your choice.
