Let’s take all that “You can’t POSSIBLY vote for GENOCIDE-adjacent person even if the alternative is LITERALLY A HUNDRED TIMES WORSE INCLUDING LOTS MORE GENOCIDE” energy
And apply it to “You can’t POSSIBLY sit around typing on the internet while the world is falling apart, let’s get involved in direct activism to make the US a better place instead of hoping that voting is enough which it definitely isn’t”
While also, yes, voting for “not the end of the world”
tl;dr - Vote and boo.
I’ll vote and boo. But I’ll be exercising my right to vote by voting third party.
There’s no law against that
Yet
Hey, Trump was already president for four years, and didn’t do this despite the exact same scaremongering back then. His actions in office were practically identical to Biden’s now.
We need to protect our democracy, as the ability to freely choose between policies is fundamental to the perpetuation of a liberal society.
On that note, you have exactly one viable choice to make and it will - at absolute best - kick the can down the road for two years. At that point, you will once again be told we need to protect democracy.
At this point we’re just hoping for the most damage mitigation possible.
What is the problem with Biden? As a non-American, I only notice how regularly Republicans block everything from the Democrats no matter how big the damage is and somehow the population embarrasses the Democrats for it or specifically biden… i.e. the same action against biden as from republicans or trump and that from the beginning. Why was Biden elected in the first place if both Republicans and Democrats use this to destroy democracy?
On the subject of genocide… Republicans and Democrats would apparently also be happier if the genocide took place against Israel, then increasingly against Ukraine and against the West. So that democracy in the West is destroyed further and further, especially by the fragmentation of their own shitty population.
You have no understanding… Republicans and Democrats both support Israel. You’re clearly very ignorant and I have no idea why you’re being upvoted for this nonsense ahh comment
When I talk about Republicans and Democrats, I am talking about the population and not just the politicians who represent them. Within the population there are protests etc. that further contribute to destabilization from both sides.
🙄🙄 that’s literally a Trump line. don’t speak on something you know nothing about
Well your first post you called me instantly ignorant now comparing with trump… while you ignoring what I wrote first “As a non-American, I only notice” while you ignoring stuff like the campus protest or the whole destabilization etc. But yea call me ignorant…
Yes, you admitted to your ignorance and kept yapping.
Trump literally said both sides caused deaths at Charlottesville even though it was the white supremacists who were the sole cause of violence. You are ignorant.
You are ignorant even on the 2nd repetition to ignore the fact that I reflect the point of view as a non-American (I never said I was familiar with the political system itself, but I can give my view of what my impression of America is.) . Even better you just absolve Republicans and Democrats of racism which apparently doesn’t exist in your opinion… awesome you just solved the racism problem you genius there is simply no racism in Republicans and Democrats… so simple damn.
We have to protect our democracy where there is no choice but to vote for Biden!
Yeah, it’s a negative framing, but it is true as well. By being held to ransom, our options have effectively been reduced to one. That’s why you gotta do the work locally and advocate the need to break apart this system before it breaks us all.
And vote in your local elections, don’t just tune in every 4 years!
I get the feeling most of the critics to this post don’t actually live in the US. When it’s you, your family and your friends in danger of being shipped off to the death camps, no amount of philosophical masturbation matters in comparison.
Then afterwords we pass electoral reform right?
so people can vote for the candidate that best represents them, with no spoiler effect because their vote is still counted against the republicans. Democrats believe in democracy right?
The liberal party in Canada campaigned on election reform and then when they got elected said ah actually nah that doesn’t really benefit us sorry
this should literally be illegal
Then afterwords we pass electoral reform right?
You wanna guess which party has been amiable towards electoral reform and which has been hostile?
I’m guessing both are amiable to reforms that benefit them and oppose those that don’t.
Allowing reforms which would ditch the two uarty system would hurt both parties. That’s why it will never be implemented by any of them.
That’s why it will never be implemented by any of them.
Yeah that’s why RCV hasn’t seen any progress anywhere in the US recently. /s
Given that both parties are now facing 3rd (4th?) party challenges, it might actually be in their interest to pass RCV. In the short term, it would reduce the spoiler effect, even if has a long term risk of undermining the duopoly.
I mean almost every implementation of it thus far has been by dems so yes actually that is well within the realm of possibility.
Electoral reform has to happen at the state level, and it’s most likely to happen in extreme Democrat strongholds. So yes, if enough people vote Democrat, eventually electoral reform.
Trust me, Republicans are not interested in electoral reform, except maybe to outlaw elections.
Thinking the Democrats (or Republicans) are interested in passing any meaningful electoral reform is pure delusion.
Can’t electoral reform be passed on a state level in the US? I know shit about the US but I heard someone mention that.
Yes, states control how elections are run in their state.
It has to be passed at the state level, or via Constitutional convention (ie, the ultimate “let’s completely change the structure of government” nuclear option).
We can do this on the state level! Many states currently have measures establishing ranked choice voting that all of us would do well to pressure our state officials to pass. Id love to see protesters camping out in front of state congresspeoples houses with signs about their local measure. No need to wait until after the election!
But yes thatd be excellent after November, as well
Seriously, why can’t they get a better candidate? 😕
Because in 2020 not enough Democrats voted for the better candidate.
Such a sorry state of state affairs.
because first past the post voting socks
Did you guys prepare a candidate capable of primarying Biden?
Do you think a political party that actively and willfully prepares an opponent for the current elected head of state that belongs to their party could survive for any length of time?
Of course, it’s worse than that. They clearly want Harris 2028.
Competitive primaries are a feature of any organization democratic enough (in the philosophical sense, not the “Democratic Party” sense). As long as you don’t actively fight for the leadership of the Democratic Party, they are going to continue screwing you and ignore any political demand that isn’t timid enough. Just my two cents as an European.
You people always let the mask slip when you mention Harris. You just can’t stand a Black woman being that close to the Presidency.
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They always could argue against Harris. She’s got some pretty big skeletons in her closet. But they never do. It’s always
“Wait, why is Harris bad?”
“Oh, you know”
Or you get the vague “unlikeable” stuff. They don’t know a damn thing about Harris, but they hate her guts with a passion anyways.
I can’t stand my party running a tough on crime prosecutor. Harris is an awful pick for high office and her unremarkable term as VP speaks volumes about how many policy decisions she genuinely has strong feelings about. She’s milquetoast, uninspiring, and would likely cost us another election.
Fuck off with assuming that everyone who disagrees with you does so simply because of gender or race.
I’m voting for someone better. It’s an option. They probably won’t win tho
Given the stakes in this particular election, I don’t think it’s a good option
What are the stakes? A genocidal maniac vs a genocidal maniac?
Found the white leftist.
Moghafil, you don’t get to use my people’s plight as an excuse to get out of your bare minimum duty to protect lives with your choices.
This is so much more than just a race issue, its also an LGBTQ and neurodivergence issue, while I may not like Biden, Trump and his crew have both said things and acted in ways that attack basically anyone that isn’t in the in group they deem as worthwhile, republicans have also been pushing forward increasingly hostile anti-trans, anti-abortion laws, and Trump as president would bolster their ability to harm vulnerable groups even more
I really hate Biden’s unquestioning support of Israel but holy fuck under Trump some of my friends might actually die, and others will lose their rights to be themselves!
Lets also not forget Trump and his fans pushing for things that could very well spell the actual end of democracy in the US.
Edit: I didn’t mean to subtract from the race issue, that’s also a big part of it, I simply mean to say that Trump is a massive broad spectrum threat to multiple vulnerable groups across the US
Also edited because apparently this isn’t readily apparent to some people: under Trump, the genocide of Palestinians will continue, I am very very much against this, the “holy fuck” line is not expressing that I think the genocide of Palestinians is secondary, but is expressing exasperation at the people who constantly insist that the only way to protest is to not vote not seeing the problem with Trump getting into power
While I’m at it, pretty much whatever the results of the election are, shit will probably hit the fan, I urge everyone to learn first aid, a good start is www.stopthebleed.org
You’ve got your head on straight. Screw these attempts to guilt you into voting how someone else wants you to
i like this one, this one is good.
Why isn’t there other options ? 2 is not enough !
Because our current voting system is “first past the post”. And that it eventually leads to an inevitable 2 party system.
This video is one of my favorites that explain this problem. https://youtu.be/s7tWHJfhiyo?si=ri9DbpvXxjyRonN3
Me exactly
I’ll vote if you do more than just vote.
You have no right to hold this over people’s heads, and even implying a tit for tat arrangement is suggesting that anyone who doesn’t “do more than just vote” isn’t doing their part. Some of us have demanding jobs, kids, family that requires care, or other demands that do not allow time for political activity beyond voting which has already been made extremely difficult in some areas.
In short: get fucked. Go vote. Don’t try to create some kind of one-upsmanship game that predicates your civic responsibility on someone else’s volunteered time.
This is extremely hostile. I was being cheeky. I want people to get more involved as much as other people want me to vote, that’s the point I’m trying to make. I’ll vote, and I don’t need you to try and scare me or shame me about it. Maybe ask yourself why this makes you so upset that you have to swear at a stranger over it. Seems like there’s something else going on that deserves your attention more than my dumb comment
It’s intended to be hostile. Maybe you were “being cheeky” (I doubt it) but it doesn’t read that way in a text format and a lot of people making those same statements are not. What makes me so upset about this situation is people like yourself not taking it seriously. We are, without hyperbole, looking at an honest to God threat to democracy and you are making if/then statements about your willingness to vote. Trying to shame people into being more politically active is the wrong way to do it.
I am tired of people treating this like it’s a game, and I am tired of people being flippant about voting for the lesser of two evils.
What makes you think being intentionally hostile toward someone would persuade them to vote? Wouldn’t it make more sense to try and educate? I said I was being cheeky, but even now you can’t resist calling me a liar. I really wish you wouldn’t, you know, I’m pretty easy to get along with, I tolerate other peoples opinions even when they disagree with me. I vote and I do much more than that.
If anyone is trying to shame, it is this group who descended on me within a 5 minute period with a flurry of down votes and open hostility. I’m genuinely sorry you’re upset about the state of the world, I’m upset too. so why should we try to upset each other more? It doesn’t make sense.
FYI that isn’t me down voting you. I don’t use down votes.
You have no right to hold this over people’s heads, and even implying that someone who does “more than just vote” isn’t doing their part. Some of us have demanding jobs, kids, family that requires care, or other demands that do not allow time for voting instead of attending the occasional local better-timed rally which has already been made extremely difficult in some areas.
In short: get fucked. Go do activism. Don’t try to create some kind of one-upsmanship game that predicates your civic responsibility on someone else’s volunteered time.
Nice of you to assume people who vote don’t do anything else to improve things.
How will you look back on whatever you’re doing right now if you, and people like you, don’t vote and lead to Trump winning? All that work for nothing because you refused to do the one thing that could help everything else you’re trying to do.
I didn’t say that, where did I say anything like that? Why are you trying to villainize me? I want other people to get involve as badly as you want me to vote, is the point I’m trying to make. Save your shame and fear. Try talking to me like a person and not, I don’t know, whatever demon you’re trying to make me out to be
That’s exactly what you said
“I’ll vote if you do more than just vote.”
You’re implying that you know they don’t do more than vote and that implies you assume the same thing of anyone that votes.
That’s an incredibly dim interpretation. I just don’t like being constantly lectured to about voting. It is completely valid to criticize this crappy system and yeah I think its okay to suggest that people do a little more than just vote every 2-4 years.
It seems like people aren’t getting as upset at the idea that I might not vote, as they are at the suggestion that there is some alternative to it, that democracy can be more than voting for one of two deeply corrupt candidates who uphold a deeply corrupt system. I will vote, because its easy.
Get hooked up with Election Science to switch your elections to approval. Pick-all-you-like voting really helps make people feel like they actually got to voice their opinion at the ballot box.
I have friends who are into this kind of electoral work. It would be an improvement.
Doubt.
Doubt what? That I’ll vote? Why do you doubt it?
I just want people to be more politically active so that they learn from experience. For some reason certain people get angry when I do, even if I do it nicely, even if I say please
Doubt what?
That you’ll execute on that specific conditional.
Its not conditional, I just want people to be politically active just as much as people want me to vote.
So my doubts have been confirmed. Glad you fell on the side of voting anyways.
If you think I’m being ridiculous, I could flip through my history and find a dozen folks who would unironically holdfast to the letter of your original comment.
What do you mean your doubts have been confirmed?
Look at the other comments on this thread, the incredible hostility my innocuous comment got. So that road goes both ways. If I reacted to the way I got jumped on here, I’d probably set up camp in the not-voting bloc too.
So is your vote contingent on whether people in this thread demonstrate that they have/will “do more than just vote”? If they don’t, will you abstain from voting?
I guess I’m unclear.
< someone who thinks going to grammable rallies and left signaling online counts as “more than voting”
Going to rallies is good, but I’m actually extremely skeptical of online “activism”. I actually don’t have a benchmark for what " counts as more," but I want people to have actual experience doing political work, which looks different for everyone. I find the most value in the discussions that come from regular working people, educating themselves and each other.
Why do you want me to be a hypocrite? Do you actually believe that nothing exists beyond the bare minimum? But I remember feeling this deep dark cynicism about politics at certain times in my life too. So hopefully you are on a road that leads you away from cynical otherizing and you discover the communities of volunteers that hopefully exist very close to you, so you are able to have some of these experiences.
At which point you might look back on these moments of cynicism with disappointment, as I look back on my mine. Its okay though, the system is supposed to instill these feelings of frustration and alienation into people, so it isn’t really your fault. But in order to build a movement we need people doing work they are passionate about and I hope you find work like that and join soon.
It’s more than nothing at all. Are you suggesting we should just vote and otherwise lay down and wait for fascism to descend upon us?
I’m saying that if you mother fuckers didn’t have to be dragged kicking and screaming to fill a piece of paper out every four years, we’d have never gotten this far with.
Forget Hillary, Bernie could have won the primary if y’all spent the energy on voting that y’all bring to whining endlessly about how your privilege blinds you to how much it changes for people who need it the most.
Gotta do an electoral reform? Yup.
Locking this post, the amount of reports and uncivil pissing matches is getting to be more than we can address in a timely fashion.
Every time one of these posts come up there’s a bunch of people who are always like but the republicans are way worse!
And it just seems like it’s a bunch of white people who have never actually been discriminated against and now they’re worried because these policies will finally affect them.
Whereas when black and brown people have been talking about how both parties have fucked us over for decades upon decades, we are told to shut up.
When white nationalists walk down streets with torches and actually kill people, there’s like 3 arrests. When an angry mob tries to overthrow the government, and livestream themselves doing it, and are all caught on camera, we have the slowest reaction of all time, and their jail terms for literal insurrection are just a couple years. When BLM did even more peaceful protests, they’re arrested and smeared.
When students protest genocide, they’re arrested and smeared. But when you send in police or a bunch of pro Israel goons attacks students peacefully sitting on some grass, silence. And that’s the democrats. Sorry, but one side being marginally less genocidal than the other, but still allowing all these corporations who pollute the world and kill people indiscriminately, is not that much better a choice.
Biden has seemingly lost the vote of the youth and of black and brown people in America. Those are THE two groups that put him in the presidency. White people actually voted pretty much for trump. 60% or so, white women even more so.
So people scared about students and brown and black people not voting for biden might want to just stop for a second and wonder why they keep asking us to save them instead of going and actually talking to racist grandpa and grandma in the back and getting them to vote for their own interests.
I’ve voted in every election that I’ve been able to - local, state, and national. It has done fuck all for me while a couple already rich people got ten times richer. Why should I keep voting for that?
Maybe it’s time the democrats realized that they could put plank from ed edd and eddy up there and it would get more votes than biden. It’s not our fault they fucked Bernie in 2016. Biden promised to be a one term president when he ran originally. So he can’t be trusted. He doesn’t care that 34000 brown men, women, and children are being killed by him. So why on earth would I care if he loses? It’s absurd. If white people wouldn’t vote for a fascist cheetoh you wouldn’t have this issue at all.
If people had a moral spine they’d realize that genocide is evil no matter where it is.
Republicans are objectively worse by every single metric. That doesn’t make democrats perfect saints.
And to your last sentence, please explain how Trump will actually improve the situation in Gaza.
I didn’t read any of the rest of it because those two bits were stupid enough to tell me all I needed to know
Yeah, how exactly independent are supposed to do something that reflects public interests for once if you don’t even consider voting independent?
Ah yes, policies that would have been considered downright progressive 70 years ago are apparently a dictatorship today.
Say what you will about American policies in the 50s, yes they were racist, yes they were sexist, and many other things. But I don’t believe it is really arguable that the US was a dictatorship at that time. Less democratic than it is currently, sure. Not a dictatorship.
Trump’s lawyer is currently arguing with the Supreme Court that a president could legally assassinate a political rival; and the majority of the court seems to be leaning toward agreeing. They (the GOP) seems to be aiming for instituting a Russia-like authoritarian government.
I wonder if there will be any self awareness when trump wins because they tried to push a candidate even they dont like. Really inspiring them swing states.
Why would there be? The first time Trump won it was when an unlikable Democrat ran. Anyone trying to teach the DNC to run better candidates by voting for Trump is just shooting themselves in the face.
