While Education and Organizing is building the parts for a new engine the rest of the year.
If you don’t vote defensively, you are part of the problem. This is true whether you are in a multiparty system or the ‘American one’.
If you vote defensively, you are part of the problem. This is true whether you are in a multiparty system or the ‘American one’.
I get it. You love your favorite politicians winning by the margins instead of shifting American electoral politics left, as conservatives getting elected doesn’t make the populace magically more leftist.
I’ve read this about 4 times and I have no idea what it means
More people voting in the US → The political conversation shifts left as more progressive/leftists candidates are viable. A lot of elections in the US happen in small amount of votes, also known as narrow margins.
People not voting because not voting for the perfect candidate feels icky → As the conservative candidates are more favoured by people voting less, this shifts electoral politics right.
I would prefer to live in a world where Americans would vote between centre and left candidates, for instance, than centre and right (relatively speaking, of course) as they do today.
i never said don’t vote. I’m planning on voting for cornel west.
You do you.
Does this mean that your two party system is actually just a one party system?
They are both Capitalist parties. America doesnt have a working class party
Bruh hilliary was funded by anti abortion lobbyists. Funny how no one remembers that
You honestly think she’d put conservative justices on SCOTUS?
Based on all the shit she did with the border camps and immigrantion during her terms as secretary of state. Yeh
She wouldn’t of put Federalist Society memebers on the bench lmao
What a bad take. If regular normie DEMOCRATS had voted for her, she’d have won. She failed on so many levels.
Edit: or if she hadn’t rigged the primary, we would have had Bernie, and abortion would also have been legal. Reforming the DNC is harm reduction.
I think a lesson the DNC definitely learned is never rig a primary if you can’t rig the general. (And at this point, it wouldn’t matter if they did, they’re going to get accused of it by the Right either way)
I basically gave up any notion I had that Hillary was on the level (not that I had much of one) when they did the vote count early that day, Bernie one, so they just pretended he didn’t and did the count again later that same day.
And second, yeah… the Media kept parroting that Hillary was a sure thing (Even as Nate Silver begged people not to trust his own site’s polling)
I actually knew people who skipped voting altogether to go to a “Hillary Won” party… The look of shock on their faces would have been funny if not for the horror of what happened on that night. I think the most tragic was a friend of a friend who was bullied into suicide that night.
Her parents told her that “Trump won” and she’s “Not allowed to pretend she’s a girl anymore”, and made it clear they’d point to Trump as justification to reject her trans identity… She killed herself very shortly after, it was…
Look when Republicans win, the consequences are literally deadly. That’s not a threat, that’s a warning about how dangerous America’s true enemies are.
Reminder that someone online arguing that you shouldn’t vote for Biden because of whatever pet grievance is either a Russian agent or an idiot playing into their hands
“Pet grievance” is one of my new favorite euphemisms for genocide.
Voting does nothing other than reform the capitalist regime. It doesn’t matter whether this cycle’s presidential figurehead is blue or red. Give it a few decades and you’ll see how the US will still be sowing death and destruction across the world, as it always has. The presidential race that liberals get so rabid about is nothing more than kabuki theater.
look, I can understand the argument that you must vote for the most effective way to contain an evil. It’s a good solid argument.
However it starts taking damage almost immediately when:
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The plan to fight the evil is using the most disliked president in recent history to win a popularity contest.
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They pre-emptively destroy any and all opportunities to find a better candidate to win the popularity contest against the evil.
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They refuse to debate anybody just like the evil they want to defeat. Making it impossible to verify they’re the one for the job.
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They forcibly re-schedule the primary schedule to delay any signs that this plan might be a terrible idea.
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Their age is seriously in question, their mental acuity is in question, and they also decide to dodge being in a completely unscripted environment for two hours while standing.
Certainly with all this you can at least understand why someone would rather vote third party, because this Biden option is not making me feel any safer.
At what point can we stop pointing the finger at the voters and start pointing at the guy they’re “supposed to vote for”? Is there a point we can ever point that finger at Biden? Or is it like Trump,where we need to vote for him “even if he were to shoot someone in the street”?
Is there a point we can ever point that finger at Biden?
Point fingers all you want as long as you vote to keep the rapist, insurrectionist, self-admitted wannabe dictator out of power.
Yeah Biden is only the first one so 1-3 = 2 so he’s good candidate
It works better when you have an idea of what the President actually does and what direct action would mean.
Almost everything we would want to do is at the local or regional level. Want higher density housing? Your mayor and city council control that with no say from the President. Better public transportation? Same, though the President can try convincing Congress to pass grant funding for it. More and better bike lanes? Same thing. Get rid of anti-homeless architecture? All city level stuff.
School lunch programs? State government can stop it if the wrong people are there. Expand Medicare? Same. Better rail networks? Same. Ban gay conversion therapy? All state government.
Foreign policy is the one thing where the President does have a lot of control. That’s actually the exception. I like Biden’s approach on Ukraine–getting most of Europe to go along with sanctions at all, especially after Trump destroyed our soft diplomatic power, was amazing. His approach on the Gaza conflict is far less amazing, to put it mildly. Other than foreign policy, the position is mostly advocacy and horse trading around funding priorities with Congress. Soft power for the most part.
A bad President, especially combined with a bad Congress, sure as hell can stop the local agenda items, though. Pull the grants for cities to implement public transit. Pull Medicare expansion entirely. Don’t provide school lunch program funding at all. Put judges in power who rule arbitrarily in favor of conservatives with no care for precedent.
What voting for Biden is for is to make sure the federal government doesn’t overrule things built locally and regionally. That’s it. The rest needs direct action on the part of all of us at different levels of government.
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Yeah? Like our devotion to repeatedly voting in neolibs like Carter, Clinton, Obama, and Biden has had nothing to do with tilting the political spectrum to the far right?
I’ll probably pull the lever for Biden, but I don’t blame anyone who doesn’t. Based on the results of recent decades of leftists holding their noses to vote for the neolib, even if Biden wins something much worse than Trump will arrive just in time for the 2028 cycle.
Reminder that not everyone who disagrees with your guilt tripping self righteous nonsense is a Russian bot. Some of us actually use critical thinking and can see a pattern that must be broken.
If people think an “evangelical” is going to handle the conflict in Gaza on the side of the Palestinians better than Joe Brandon they are sorely mistaken and/or misguided. 45 wanted a straight up Muslim ban ffs.
Evangelicals want this conflict, because in order for Jesus to come back and rapture them, the mosque on the Temple Mount must be destroyed so the temple can be rebuilt, which is step one of their prophecy. That’s the real reason they pretend to care about the Jews.
They truly believe this is their end times, and worse, a few years ago their perfect red cow they’ve been waiting for these thousands of years was certified; if that cow dies before they get the chance to sacrifice it to rebuild their temple, they may have to wait another thousand years.
It’s a death cult and they’ll kill us all.
And how quick all these Hamas and Houthi cheerleaders forgot Ukraine too. A country that would not exist anymore if Trump had won 2020.
“Forgot”?
No, they think Ukraine is a fake Nazi state run by a Jewish drug addict puppeted by the globalhomo Western imperialists.
In other words, insanity.
Yeah, I’d rather deal with someone who enables Israel’s bad behavior instead of someone who not only cheers it on but offers to help make it worse. There’s at least a snowball’s chance of convincing the enabler to stop enabling.
What if I think people should still vote but they should be ready to be unhappy with the outcome either way and that it won’t actually provide meaningful change?
Then I’d understand and mourn your cynicism, but not think of you as a bad citizen.
Damn. I don’t particularly like being a citizen of anywhere, let alone a good one.
Citizenship is responsibility - participation in the civic life of a polity. That’s what being a citizen, and not simply a subject, means - to have the right to a share in the direction of the polity. Like it or not, if you’re active in exercising your influence to influence politics instead of abrogating that power to the elite, you’re a good citizen of wherever you live.
There, there. It’ll be alright…
Okay but what if I only vote as a joke?
In that case, you can be a bad citizen.
Good. I don’t want people thinking I approve of nation-states or anything like that.
Is abortion being nationally illegal “meaningful change”? Explain how that’s not meaningful for us stupid people.
Sorry, I should have been more specific. Meaningful positive change. Our government is great at fucking shit up.
Ah i see, so positive change is worth pushing for, but avoiding calamity isn’t and you through throw away your vote instead. Insightful political philosophy.
Did you miss the part where I said people should still vote? They should just drastically lower their expectations.
I will be very different levels of unhappy with a too moderate democrat than a wannabe dictator.
Your vote matters.
If 100% of voters voted liberal in the upcoming election, the one after that would have way more left leaning candidates.
Your vote directly matters.
except when I’m the minority in my area and my vote gets thrown in the trash
It still matters. It pushes candidates towards you ever so slightly.
The two party system isn’t good, but it works fine as long as people fucking vote.
I don’t honestly see why that would be the case. If they’ve already won, why bother changing?
Question on more left leaning candidates - do you think there’s a possibility a progressive party can actually gain traction?
I like the thought of revamping the Green Party as it’s goals seem more relevant than ever, though they have to shed the kooky perception they’ve gained.
If they aren’t even winning in state elections, aren’t even winning in house elections, aren’t even winning in senate elections
They don’t have the voting base for president.
“If Poliece voted for Hillary in 2016…”
Hillary Clinton is/was not obliged to anyones vote and should have run a better campaign to attract leftest by doing bare minimun actions like supporting trans people or election/education reform. She also could have chosen a different candidate for running mate rather then the complete personality void that she ended up with as a sop to some imaginary “moderate conservitive” that was simpathetic to humanity over their net worth.
But she didnt. I wish she ran a better campaign as well, we may have been better off with her in office in 2016, but the issues that trump brought into focus in our society were not caused by him. They have been here the whole time.
The whole “you didn’t vote for Hillary so Trump is your fault” is a typical liberal statement. Just like how their solution to plastic pollution wasn’t to regulate the producers, but to get everyone to recycle things. And then if an individual didn’t recycle that person was bad, but they ignore the massive industry doing.
Same with health care. Their solution wasn’t universal coverage, it was making sure every individual had to buy health insurance, and then fining the individuals who didn’t. No action against the massive, inefficient industry causing most of America’s health care problems. Nope, it was passing the buck off to individuals yet again.
The Clinton campaign sucked. It was so dull the news shows would rather show an empty Trump podium than a speech by her. I thought the reason Clinton won the primary was because people wanted adults in charge who knew what they were doing, but clearly they didn’t because she lost to a reality TV show con man.
Similarly, if the DNC hadn’t absolutely SCREWED my boy Bernie, we also wouldn’t be in this complete shit-hole.
A socialist will never be elected. When anyone gets close, the entire capitalist world immediately forget their differences and unite to make sure it doesn’t happen.
Happened to Sanders.
If you want read a more heinous example, it’s Jeremy Corbyn. A genuinely good man .
No, Bernie is one of the reasons that we’re in this shit hole.
He ran against a Democrat and pulled votes from Clinton/Biden.
He ran as an independent but changed his registration to run on the democratic ticket.
Uhhhh no. He didn’t pull any votes because he wasn’t even on the ticket during the general election and he endorsed Hillary. Also, considering how unpopular Hillary was she should have picked Bernie as her VP. Picking anti union, milked toste Tim Kain was a joke.
They did…
You can’t have a woman for president, after a person of color or the assholes will think you’re too woke.
But people did vote for Hillary, IIRC, she won the popular vote by like 3 million votes.
So it wasnt a lack of voting that gave trump the presidency and repealed abortion rights. It was the mecanisms and institutions that are part of your electoral process and that only seem to exist in order to dilute your democracy (e. voting districts, electoral college) that gave trump the win.
Perhaps people would be more willing to vote if their voices were actually heard.
Note: this year has 366 days
Oh, what’s the last day for? Can it be guillotine day?
I would prefer torches and pitchfork day
But the radio is on the wrong station!! I can’t participate to keep the motor running unless changing the station is top priority.
Vote local, vote often, and try to help people be able to do the same. We’ll get better candidates if and when we start voting them into smaller positions first. Republicans are generally more likely to vote locally, and this allows them to gerrymander the voting districts and control stuff from the local level up. Change your town and state officials to be more progressive, and they’ll support more progressive policies and politicians at higher levels of government.
Anyone I like enough to vote for would be someone I like too much to subject them to what being in government is like.
OP, you HAD to know that wasn’t going to go over well here.
Just wanted to remind everyone of the consequences when we let the greater evil win. Downvotes mean nothing to me.
That’s what Hillary said too.