Image Transcription:
A tweet from the George Takei Twitter account which states:
"A Democrat was in the White House when my family was sent to the internment camps in 1941. It was an egregious violation of our human and civil rights.
It would have been understandable if people like me said they’d never vote for a Democrat again, given what had been done to us.
But being a liberal, being a progressive, means being able to look past my own grievances and concerns and think of the greater good. It means working from within the Democratic party to make it better, even when it has betrayed its values.
I went on to campaign for Adlai Stevenson when I became an adult. I marched for civil rights and had the honor of meeting Dr. Martin Luther King. I fought for redress for my community and have spent my life ensuring that America understood that we could not betray our Constitution in such a way ever again.
Bill Clinton broke my heart when he signed DOMA into law. It was a slap in the face to the LGBTQ community. And I knew that we still had much work to do. But I voted for him again in 1996 despite my misgivings, because the alternative was far worse. And my obligation as a citizen was to help choose the best leader for it, not to check out by not voting out of anger or protest.
There is no leader who will make the decision you want her or him to make 100 percent of the time. Your vote is a tool of hope for a better world. Use it wisely, for it is precious. Use it for others, for they are in need of your support, too."
End Transcription.
The last paragraph I find particularly powerful and something more people really should take into account.
Hoo boy. Against my better judgment, I’ll wade into this pool.
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If voting for either party gets you the same result, fascists wouldn’t be so focused on elections and trying so hard to take the vote away.
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Withholding your vote doesn’t do anything. When has losing an election pushed either party left?
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Voting doesn’t prevent you from engaging in other forms of direct action.
Both parties suck. People will needlessly suffer and die under either one. But there are also people who will suffer and die under one part but not the other. Our democracy is fundamentally flawed, but voting is a tool at our disposal, and we’re in no position to turn anything down.
Before Obama, I could still remain quiet when people said “voting for anyone is implicit approval,” or whatever - and for the most part, they’re right - voting is a pretty low level of change.
I voted for Obama because even if he is a bit of a tool, he’s black, and now a huge group of minority kids saw someone who looks like them in the white house. I voted for him not because of the “HOPE” on his signs but literally to give black kids hope. (And yeah, for the most part, it’s false hope, just like it is for white kids, welcome to the club.) He was a positive symbol and, if it’s a symbol who is also a centrist Democrat, that’s better then a centrist Democrat that isn’t a positive symbol. And a shit ton better than Mitt Romney or whoever the other guy was.
And then Trump happened, and any respect for the “don’t vote” viewpoint drained out. If you still think both parties are the same at this point, you might want to start asking yourself what else is going on with you - because “not great” is not identical to “fucking terrible”…
Biden isn’t doing what I want him to do - health care, income inequality, corruption in Congress, etc - but the infrastructure bill isn’t a bad thing. It’s actually a good thing, we need it. We need a lot more, but 1 > 0.
Also, to be blunt… we’ve seen this before. We know from recent history what happens when the DNC nominates the safe, centrist, establishment candidate, who fails to appeal to voters and loses to a Republican. That was 2016. Hillary Clinton lost to Trump. And who did the DNC rally behind right before Super Tuesday? That’s right… Joe Biden.
Withholding your vote doesn’t do anything.
Well, not anything good. But it’s mathematically equivalent to half a vote for the major party candidate you like least.
Personally I’d much rather have the candidate I like the least have a harder time winning
Ideally they’d even lose
Edit: Damn autocorrect changed my comment a lot with one simple wrong correction.
The amount of people in this thread who don’t understand how our voting system works is too damn high
You’re absolutely correct in your points
Especially the “against my better judgement” part, this comment section went to hell really quick
Permission to copy and paste this elsewhere for the future?
If you think it would help, sure thing!
It’s concise and matches how I feel about things, so hopefully it will help if/when I come across people talking about how not voting is actually the best choice
Thanks! I actually took time to make my comment shorter, so I’m glad I successfully got straight to the points. :)
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“Democrats have always fucked me over but I keep voting for them because the alternative is actively more harmful”.
No, I don’t find it touching nor powerful. This is a celebration of the failure of the 2 party system.
When you roll out the feasible alternative let me know. Until then, I’ll be voting for the candidate whose rallies don’t break out in chants of “kill f*ggots, kill all transgenders”
We need to get RCV passed at the state level in at least 33 states, then we can get rid of FPTP at the federal level, and actually force some change
oh if it’s that simple then lets just do that. surely we can bang it out in a weekend.
Thinking like this is the reason the 2 party system is still in place today
It is possible to fight for RCV while working within the system we have in the meantime.
Exactly. Strictly voting only means you’re complacent in the system, more needs to be done if we ever wanna see any real progress.
Of course, but you should also vote for the lesser of two evils come election time.
thinking realistically about the likelihood of getting ~= 80 million people to vote for any one third party, or thinking realistically about the likelihood of getting those two parties to agree to vote their own power away?
See, that’s the issue, you’re thinking within the bounds of voting. There’s other stuff you can do, like community outreach, or talking to local politicians, or protesting. Real change in America was never won with a vote, it was fought for on the streets.
Who says I’m not doing that too?
You don’t need 80 million people to vote third party.
What you need is enough votes to show as a big enough blip on the election results to make both the Democrats and Republicans sweat out of fear they may be losing their iron grip.
Change will soon follow
How many would you estimate you need and what’s the plan to get them?
Nobody said it was simple, but yes. Let’s do that.
Doing the easy thing is what’s got us to where we are.
can you pull it off in under a year? because in a year we’re gonna have a presidential election and one of the leading candidates is someone whose already been determined by a court to have engaged in insurrection and has said that he’ll have the military suppress protests starting day one and will replace 50,000 government functionaries with people whose only qualification is that they’re loyal to him personally. his friends tell me every day that god has commanded them to kill me 😀
I would surmise it would take between 15 and 40 years to get it passed.
Imagine if we’d started pushing for this in earnest 15 years ago.
Like they say, the second best time to plant a tree is today.
What might help to effect this change? If I’m not mistaken, a number of states are almost under single-party rule, particularly those that might benefit most from this kind of change.
Is it something that may be built up from a municipal to county to state level to then establish on a national level?
Back in the day the "Moral Majority’ took over the GOP by taking over the local offices. If the usual attendance at a meeting was twenty folks, the MMs would make sure to show up with 50. It took them a while, but they were persistent.
Nice idea, but it isn’t going to happen before the 2024 elections. First things first.
force some change
RCV favors moderates and promotes political stability. That’s kinda the opposite of a revolution.
That word “feasible” is doing a lot of work. No doubt the politician I want to vote for won’t be “feasible” for some reason, and the one you want me to vote for is.
which politician do you want to vote for, and what’s their path to victory that doesn’t involve making massive systemic changes to both the electoral system and the electorate in under a year?
Bernie coulda been feasible if y’all turned the fuck out for him instead of underperforming the share of millennials and zoomers in the general population, let alone the easy dominating share they could make in the DNC primaries.
I voted for Bernie. Twice.
Sure ya did priv
The news media collectively decided to not cover Bernie, while Bernie continued to win primaries every other candidate folded to Biden which torpedoed Bernies chances.
Why do Bernie Bros cite that as if it isn’t a bold faced admission that Bernie isn’t popular among people who actually turn out?
“Yeah well Bernie only lost because everyone else started voting for one guy instead of twenty!”
Also, you shit heads could have beaten that by turning the fuck out!
When it started to look like Bernie was going to win, the Dems went into a tailspin. It was a real mask-off moment.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
the Dems went into a tailspin.
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
Ok guy.
That is part of the calculus people are making when they express the idea they won’t vote for candidate A for reasons X and candidate B for reasons Y.
It is how voters can express their political will during the primary and electoral process. If a candidate can modify their position on X or Y because of voter concerns, that would be a meaningful part of the democratic process influenced by the voters. They’re trying to forge that alternative.
The real unfeasible alternative is actually just doing nothing and letting the donors buy their selected policies and voting for the lesser evil between them. That is just supporting the status quo.
When you figure out a means of political activity that doesn’t involve refining the capitalist regime as it stands, let me know. Until then, I won’t be voting for candidates who help slaughter innocent people around the world.
So you won’t use your vote to help less people die?
Ah, so you are never voting again.
That’s not what he said and you know it, shut up.
Ok
Ok. And your point is? Not voting isn’t going to do shit. You are not going to change the system by not participating. That’s a losing strategy.
Wrong. It’s “democrats advanced in fits and starts, sometimes stumbling and falling, but heading in the direction of the finish line. I keep voting for them because the other guys are trying to set off a dirty bomb on the race track.”
World’s oldest current democracy. It also has all the oldest flaws. USA and UK are stuck with a system that will always end up with two parties filled with wildly different politicians. Biden and AOC are both democrats. Trump and Romney are both republicans. What does each party stand for? Who the fuck knows? Republicans haven’t stood for anything for the last 10 years or so. Democrats have countered all that with “being normal and not rocking the boat”. Democrats are acting like your mom after her boyfriend beat her. “We can work something out later when we’ve all calmed down”.
What is really happening today is that the US has one party with politicians who actually do the job. The other party is an insane asylum where the craziest bitch gets the most attention. This means that every time one party has a popular vote the other party gets even more insane. And the first party, not wanting to alienate voters try meet half way. This is like your mom begging you to talk to your stepdad after he beat your sister. That’s how America got so far into neoliberalism, fascism and one election away from dictatorship. Multi party system works because it forces compromise and even if the government changes it won’t swing as hard as it did after Obama.
Democrats are acting like your mom after her boyfriend beat her. “We can work something out later when we’ve all calmed down”.
This is like your mom begging you to talk to your stepdad after he beat your sister
I hope this isn’t character development.
Winner takes it all it the biggest bullshit ever. Anything but popular vote is worth jack shit.
I mean straight popular vote is also winner take all just not skewed by weird slavery shit counting rules
Not based. This is the same sentiment I’ve seen on the politics community here on lemmy, and in snapshots of twitter posts posted to lemmy as well. Same boring rhetoric. “suck it up and vote for the lesser of two evils”
Unfortunately here in the US with our current voting system, voting for the lesser of 2 evils is the best strategy once it’s election day.
Primaries are for voting with your heart, election day is for strategic voting.
And who, exactly, has worked together to ensure that there are only two bad choices ever available come election day?
The Democratic party works with the party they (rightly) call fascist to keep out competition to thier duopolistic rule, even excusing thier own incredibly bigoted recent past.
Cooperating with the friends of fascism is not a vibe.
The system doesn’t actually require any collaboration to eventually become a two-party race. It’s pretty much statistically assured if voters behave rationally, but with limited information.
You’re starting out with the wrong assumption in your question. The question should be “why is it that there are only two choices?” And the answer is: because the voting system laid out in the constitution makes it an inevitability.
It’s not a coincidence that the countries in Europe with many parties have a different type of system. Statistical models demonstrate that their many parties and our two parties are a natural consequence of how our voting system works.
It’s bad enough being stuck in the situation we are, but wrongly attributing the cause to a vast conspiracy, involving both parties working together, just leads to the wrong conclusions about what to do about it.
In reality, voting third party instead of the party you most align with just helps the party you least align with. The GOP backs third party candidates that might attract liberal voters for a reason.
And? Do you want people to vote for Trump then?
Or maybe, just maybe, there is a third way? When it comes to politics, americans are as defeatist as russians are.
What is defeatist about it? It is about constantly participating in the system to make sure your views are still considered.
It means participating in primaries to make sure some of your candidates get picked even if others are going to lose. For instance, I’m going to vote in the primary because it will have a major impact on choosing a Senator of my state even if Biden is going to be the Presidential nominee.
It means choosing candidates in the general election that you can at least try to influence with protests and other actions after the election. I’d rather have a percentage of what I want politically done than nothing.
The alternative seems to be not to participate, which feels more defeatist.
Thw alternative is to choose people who would change the status quo of just having to choose between two candidates. Seriously, how is it democracy, if it’s the exact same shit going on year after year after year? One president is a democrat, one is a republican. Average that out, and it flip flops from one to the other. Neither change the status quo at all. So maybe vote in someone who will?
Thw alternative is to choose people who would change the status quo of just having to choose between two candidates.
If only it were that simple.
The President isn’t a dictator; a lot of decisions are made by other politicians as I noted. Hell, we are seeing what happens when you have a divided government versus one led by one party.
Also, there is voting in primaries. Again, the presidential candidate may be chosen, but there are other candidates as well and some may need your support and align with your interests.
And I get that you might have an election with a candidate you may not love like Biden or you find out that a candidate is a piece of shit like Simena. However, I’d still rather show up and get a chance to affect the choosing of my leaders rather than not.
Not voting is defeatism.
Live and served here. I’m aware of the song and dance. Just saying George isn’t providing some sort of revelation. It’s the same bullshit every 4 years
You could also organize outside the electoral system. In fact it’s the only way to keep politicians accountable
If you got the money for that I’ll be down to be your campaign manager
Who says you can’t organize if you vote?
Organize and get people to loudly push for some things you want in our country AND vote
Doing both is important
Edit: I accidentally a word
Welcome to politics. Strategic voting is the name of the game, especially with FPTP voting systems.
“suck it up and vote for the lesser of two evils”
But that’s the smartest thing to do in a two party system
You’re the people he’s talking about and you’re oblivious.
And you’re blocked.
Lol
Saying democrats or voting got black people rights is a slap in the face of those who literally fought for them.
I’m sure black people would have gotten better rights if no one voted for the lesser of 2 evils.
People fought for the rights, and politicians who supported those rights won elections because people voted for them.
It played a role. Because the Democrats and President Johnson were in charge during the Civil Rights movement, we got the Civil Rights Act. Because the Republicans and President Trump were in charge during the BLM movement, we got jackshit (on a federal level). This stuff matters.
The parties didn’t have unanimous ideological consensus within them back then, that’s really only been a thing during the last 30 years.
Great illustration of this from Biden during a campaign event in 2019:
At a New York City fundraiser Tuesday night, Biden told donors he has reached across the aisle throughout his career. “I was in a caucus with James O. Eastland,” Biden said, according to a pool report. "He never called me ‘boy’; he always called me ‘son.’ "
“Well, guess what? At least there was some civility,” … “We got things done. We didn’t agree on much of anything. We got things done. We got it finished. But today, you look at the other side and you’re the enemy. Not the opposition, the enemy. We don’t talk to each other anymore.”
Those “across the aisle” politicians he pointed to there were James O. Eastland and Georgia Sen. Herman Talmadge, both racist segregationist Democrats.
I fully agree that politics have changed, I’m just arguing that having a sympathetic President and Congress in office makes it significantly easier to get legislation passed by protest.
Generally I agree with the idea that “great people don’t make history, but sometimes history produces a great person.” There’s a few points in US history where individual people’s decisions did impact a lot though, thinking of Andrew Johnson during reconstruction. The economic system now and what America is to the world isn’t really up for debate anymore, some have referred to this as the post-political era where more and more issues are culturally focused since both parties are consented on the economic system where meaningful change actually happens. Obama really embodied this because he was so powerful a figure yet change didn’t really happen, he’s like the best case scenario in this current arrangement, and look what happened after him… all of this is part of the slide to the right because it’s via the economic arrangement consented to by both parties that this happens.
With Civil Rights era I think the battle was really won in the courts and through labor organizing. Economic pressure was put on the system in this way and the system had to deal with it. Then you had those individual moments of bravery, like after segregation laws were struck down, “Freedom Riders” tested the laws by riding desegregated busses to the south, getting mobbed and jailed but unable to be formally charged.
Wild how he doesn’t even mention the possibility of voting for a third party. I mean I get that there a reasons one might stick with the “lesser of two evils” approach, but this tweet makes it seem like there just isn’t any other way.
Wild how he doesn’t even mention the possibility of voting for a third party.
Why would he? The US voting system makes third party candidates an impossibility. It’s not a viable option.
To elaborate a little further: Our First Past the Post system makes third party candidates a spoiler candidate for the party they most closely resemble
Say you’ve got 3 people running for a position. Person A and Person B are fairly similar but differ in some key points, Person C is the exact opposite of Person A.
The election happens and this is the result: Person A gets 30%, Person B gets 30%, and Person C gets 40%. Person C wins, even though 60% of people didn’t want Person C.
This is why third party candidates are usually considered “spoiler candidates”
Where fourth party?
Down the street, at the house with the big tree. Look for the large number of cars and the thumping music.
Can’t miss it.
I think that logic is employing the “best of two evils” ideology again. People should vote on the person that better represents them and person C is the one that represents most people. Voting against people they dislike is not the basis of democracy!
No, it’s a well fleshed out theorem and is mathematically correct
That’s because FPTP is a terrible voting system. Tactical voting is the only realistic solution a voter has to the FPTP problem.
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Well, sorta but also not really.
Neither party seems to have any interest in reforming the voting system to something more representative. So in that way I guess you could say they are colluding, but more reasonably they simply share a common incentive.
But it really is the system itself that makes third party candidates basically impossible. It incentivises people to vote strategically, not for the party they want but rather against the party they don’t want. That system is eventually sure to collapse into a two-party system.
I understand that. What baffles me is how willing he is to accept the FPTP system they have in the US, especially with his history. Given the beginning of his tweet, you’d think he’d conclude with an appeal to reform the system, to make it viable to vote for third parties. Instead, he acts as if the system was a constant of the universe, not a man made one that can quite easily be changed. He lays down the perfect argument for a reform of the system, without actually speaking out in favor of it. Thats whats wild to me.
And who should be the one to actually do the reforming? Everyone always asks for reform in the system but no one actually wants any specific entity to do it.
That’s because unless they get rid of the first-past-the-post system, it’s 100% wasted.
Unfortunately, FPTP also keeps the existing dominant parties complacent in only having one enemy, so they don’t actually have to try very hard. So changing it is unlikely to gather a lot of steam, either. “Lesser evil” sucks, but is ironically a lesser evil than just throwing away the vote entirely.
I disagree with this mindset.
In a purely hypothetical scenario say 10% of people vote for the third party candidate, and this candidate has policies which neither of the two main parties have, say more green policies. When the results come in and one of the main parties lose by 5%, they’re going to start thinking about adopting a few more green policies to capture some of that third party vote for the next election.
Voting third party can absolutely change the policies of the main parties, it happened in the UK with UKIP - a party which had less than 10% of the vote and no chance of a majority, but it spooked the big parties enough that they promised a referendum on EU membership.
Sadly this doesn’t work if one of the parties is threatening to do all they can to break down the democracy before you get your chance to see the results at the next vote.
A vote for a third party candidate is a vote for Trump.
I live in a state that has reliably , by a wide margin, given all of its electoral votes to the same party for over 40 years. Voting third party and helping them get 20% of the popular vote so they have a spot in the debates next election is literally the only way for my vote to matter.
This is 150% never going to happen so Trump thanks you for your vote.
I live in Connecticut you idiot, all of our electoral votes are going to the democrat even if I voted for trump directly. It’s amazing that you people have such strong opinions on the electoral system yet know next to nothing about it.
There aren’t any third party Presidential candidates in America who deserve 20% of the popular vote. None of them put any effort into winning congressional seats or pushing alternative voting to make themselves viable. They’re just a bunch of grifters and fools who only show up every four years to beg for donations instead of doing anything useful to fix our political system.
Do you believe there are any major party presidential candidates who deserve my vote?
Bernie Sanders was the best-positioned potential third party candidate in probably the last 50-100 years. Why, then, didn’t Bernie run as a third party candidate? Because it’s not a viable strategy in the FPTP way we run elections here. He knew that it would be the worst option.
There isn’t a viable “other way”.
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To make it true? That would be the federalists and the democratic republicans. To keep it true? Well that would be the winner-takes-all system the US has. Blaming a single entity for systematic issues will never work the way you want it to.
If the democratic party died tomorrow, a new party would take its place and it would be just as terrible as you believe the DNC is now.
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Reading comprehension isn’t your forte is it?
Go look up Biden’s long and storied history of voting against LGBT rights and then tell me how he’s okay now because something something excuses.
Go look up at the fucking betterment of the lgbtqia community over the last 20 years and then come back and tell me that voting any other way than for Democrats, even when many of them individually are shitty like Sulu is talking about, isn’t the right thing to do in an imperfect world. Goddamn.
Fucking idiot.
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He does. A “protest vote” is the same thing as throwing away your vote for a third party in the general election for president.
He doesn’t mention protest votes though, only not voting out of protest, which is something entirely different imo. Not voting can be interpreted as satisfaction with the status quo, while a protest vote is the opposite, a clear statement of rejection of all available choices. Not voting is quiet approval, a protest vote an active display of discontent.
Also, I disagree that a vote for a third party is a protest vote. I usually vote for a fringe party, but I’m not doing so to protest the system or ruling parties, but simply because I think they are the best candidates.
Finally I don’t agree with the idea that I am throwing away my vote by voting for an unpopular candidate. If anything, I am doing the opposite, I am making my will known. The people who decide that this vote has no worth are the ones throwing away my vote and they are the ones undermining democracy.
Vote for the most useful option, then go make a difference in local politics or wherever you can actually influence anything. Limiting your interactions with politics to whining isn’t going to change anything for the better and is definitely not going to get rid of Republicans nor Democrats.
This is the way. Even if you think voting for the “lesser” option is demeaning, it does no harm if you continue to use direct action as well
Not to mention how alot of that “direct action” is performative at best (Cash me on insta with all my best makeup and then never even working a food kitchen once because actual solidarity isn’t sexy) while voting actually shifts the national convo over a concerted sustained effort
Yeah tbf most people probably just skip voting because they feel helpless anyway and then don’t even go to a single protest.
[…] go make a difference in local politics or wherever you can actually influence anything.
I agree, however I think most anyone that may only be grumbling may find themselves doing so as they’re stuck on the question of, how do I get involved? Where do I get started with any of it?
The answers will vary by locality and how they’re organized, but some direction (that is, examples) is better than none.
If you’re able to go to your town or city hall hearings, there’s that. There are even some interesting/sad/entertaining videos of some from recent times that have been recorded and uploaded online for public viewing
I think using a vote strategically is fine, but I also think not voting out of protest is fine.
The point of voting is it is your choice, and the logic for how each individual determines how to use it is not my concern.
Each vote accounts for so little impact on the political process that individually they are literally meaningless, but at the same time, that sentiment being held by too many people literally breaks the concept of voting from functioning entirely. It is almost paradoxical.
I think it is best to keep moral arguments and opinions about how other people vote to a minimum, and try to keep the conversation more about the candidates themselves.
Choosing not to vote is doing far more damage. Your protest is saying, “I don’t mind if you’re oppressed, my life is fine as it is.”
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Rugged individualism weaponized.
You have to spoil your ballot of you want to not vote in protest.
Every ballot that is cast is counted, even spoiled ones. But if you don’t cast a ballot at all, it cannot be counted and no one will ever know of your “protest”.
The only valid way to protest by not voting is to spoil your ballot.
I think using a vote strategically is fine, but I also think not voting out of protest is fine.
It’s amazing how you contradict yourself in your first sentence.
In a democracy, if there is no alternative we have to vote for the lesser of the evil. It’s better to keep things worse, than to make it more worse, if there is no alternative. If an alternative is there, then absolutely. We should all be encouraging an alternative system in a democracy. But if nothing’s is available, then this.
That’s the logical answer in the short term, but it also makes you a “safe” voter that the Democrats don’t have to care about in the long term.
Don’t promise them your support in advance. Be a “swing” voter and make it clear to the party that if they want your vote they’ll have to earn it.
On the safe voter part I agree. Never promise anything. Ask question on what developments have the parties brought to a place.
BTW I am not American, but democracy is democracy doesn’t matter the place. Earth is Earth.
Then let me be the first to apologize for whatever evils the American State has done to you and your compatriots in my name.
That said, elections are fundamentally not a process for selecting leaders. That’s merely the method by which they accomplish their purpose, to legitimize the State’s claim to power.
There’s no option in the “democratic process” that represents those of us who see a State as illegitimate. It’s most obvious when you consider the elections in North Korea or Russia, but “democracy” as implemented cannot be “democracy” as we are taught to understand the term. Without a “none of the above” box that no government ever provides (because it would defeat their purpose for holding elections), our only choice is whether or not to participate in our own disenfranchisement.
No need to apologise. There is no hatred between the general public of any country. It’s the warmongers who spoil the relations.
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“Not trying to incite anything.”
says only incorrect, inflammatory things
profit??? (from being a paid actor to incite discord, because I don’t want to believe an unpaid idiot is posting such horrendously idiotic takes unprompted)
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There is no more tolerance on the left than there is on the right.
Hahahaha you centrists are so fucking stupid
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This image shows a comic book scene depicting Captain America punching a red masked super-villian with a large swastika on his chest. A balloon of text above the villains head reads “SO MUCH FOR THE TOLERANT LEFT”.
Oh if we are just going to pull things out of our ass in the hopes it makes things true I’m a multimillionaire and my wife and I are set for life! See, my statement has just as much truth as your little made up victim complex statement.
You are all so predictable. Pwnd. Lol
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Sure I’ll take it.
Have a great day!
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This upcoming election I’m voting for independent or 3rd party. Fuck blue or red.
Republicans keep their hold on power by systematically disenfranchising voters who disagree with their policies. In a perfect world, voting for a third-party candidate that has no chance to win might have some positive impact; in our world, it means you’re doing the Republicans’ work for them.
There are only two choices that matter, unfortunately. Voting third party may as well mean not voting at all. Vote in primaries, vote locally and vote for whoever is for voting reform.
This is how democracies die. Fascists come to power when their opposition fractures. I’m not telling you what to do, I’m just telling you how it is. Choose wisely.
Dems should band together and all vote for someone in a third party to show current party leadership you are no longer putting up with their choices and don’t need them. Vote wisely.
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So basically I’m voting democrat so our government doesnt start killing (more) vulnerable people. What a great system
Shoo, they’re breaking out the pablum early this time.
Rather than doing your duty to the democrats, why not recognize the weakness their propaganda indicates and use it to force them to take policy positions you want to get your support?
Because only a priv would understand the current situation as an opportunity to force concessions?
You’re fucking admitting to all of us that your brain is in the space of leveraging that people will die to make them satisfy your demands, which means you probably expect to be fucking fine and dandy once us Queer folks PoC and Women are done being punished for prioritizing our own survival over reminding you once again that Biden passed the most impactful climate legislation in a generation, the most impactful welfare and infrastructure legislation since the great society, made a strong push to codify roe that died in the Senate, and has used his relatively pro-israel public appearance to get dozens of Palestinians held hostage in Israel freed and won Gaza the ability to access their offshore natural gas once the war is over.
If you feel confident to negotiate, negotiating is an act of betrayal. Show literally an ounce of the solidarity you so often demand of the rest of us.
First things first: I will never vote for joe Biden for any office. Never have and never will. You’re not gonna convince me to.
With that out of the way, you can use the fact that a party which doesn’t line up perfectly with your values needs your support to get them to take action that you want. It’s not cruel or a betrayal. If you think there’s something the democrats can be doing better, now’s the time to get it because they need you.
There’s not a single reason to just vote blue no matter who to use a turn of phrase from years past. If you think Biden and the democrats are doing a good job then push them to go even farther. If you think they’re doing a bad job but better than a different party, push them to do a better job.
What’s great about using elections as a time to try to get concessions is it gives people who feel left out by parties a chance to be brought in. If the party makes good on their promises then they can get voters for life!
Doesn’t a better democrat party with new support sound better than slogging out to the polls to vote against someone?
Imagine being such a priv that you have to make it between for or against a candidate instead of being for all the people who’ll be put in life threatening danger when you don’t show the solidarity you priv self proclaimed holier thans demand from us lowlies for whom the difference is lived every fucking day.
Does Biden providing aid to Israel suck? Yeah. You know what sucks more? Having TruckNut McGee feel comfortable calling my Palestinian ass that lives here right now a Sand Nigger and socking me in the street before telling me to be grateful he didn’t bring a rope.
That’s what you support when you don’t vote, or when you vote third party. That’s not shaming, that’s not bullying, that’s the mathematical fact that your non vote is the same as voting for what happens without it, and the moral fact that being fine not voting or voting third party is admitting you live where you’ll be fine whatever happens to us lowlies you deign to tone police and negotiate with as if we’re on equal terms.
MLK wrote the Letter talking about white folks who talk the talk but hesitate or even get hostile when asked to walk the walk and show solidarity, you are the fucking picture of that Ally on Paper ya fuckin’ priv.
What is a priv? You’ve called me one about a half dozen times and I don’t know what it means.
Voting out of anger or protest is what got Obama elected twice, Trump and Biden once…so far.
This would all be resolved if America just changed first past the post voting.
We’ll only change it with enough push from citizens
Push for a new system (like ranked choice or STAR) in your state for state elections and we can likely make it popular enough to get it to the national stage
Or if the debates weren’t managed by a private entity owned by the other two parties.
Canada has first past the post voting, and 3 active parties. My province has first pas the post and has 4 major parties (with a 5th one that is close but can’t get a representative in). I’ll agree that ranked voting at least would be a lot better.
And it’s a disaster in Canada. The only reason the Conservatives ever take power up there is because of the giant vote split between NDP and the Liberals. Look how the conservatives are heavy favorites to win their next election despite every poll showing them with less than the combined votes of the Liberals and NDP: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_for_the_45th_Canadian_federal_election
I mean you assume that a significant number of NDP voters would vote for the libs if they weren’t there (or maybe vice-versa). I’m really not sure of that.
Yes I definitely assume that. Maybe not every single person since who knows what goes on in people’s heads, but generally we should expect the voters for the two left of center parties to prefer the other left of center one to the right wing one. Particularly since presumably if there was a single party representing those voters it would probably be somewhere in between them ideology-wise.
Sorry for the late reply, the lack of a red envelope makes me not notice replies.
People on election day have to decide if they go voting at all. This is a big deal, it’s what most of the campaign in the ridding is focusing on changing (you want to make sure all of your voters go vote, that is top priority in an election).
Having a party that is a bad fit for you is demotivating and likely to reduce turnout. That is what I mean by “likely to vote”. It’s not the right wing option that people will go for. It’s the comfort of staying home and not bothering to vote for a “lib” if you’re a progressive, or for a “commie” if you’re a lib. For some people, the NDP is already too far right…
So yeah, some of the support of the NDP would transfer over to the liberal party, but definitely not all. And that’s not to mention all of the crazy people who can go from NDP to tories at the drop of a hat (voters have shallower roots than the base, or have irrational hatred of specific politicians or parties) or who would just vote Bloq Québécois or something else.
