I have problems with people who abstained. The hard thing is, how do you change voter behavior?
I’m stayin’ in the race!
I wrote the comment below on a thread that got locked while I was writing. TL;DR: Any bonehead who thinks that every single voter is politically-engaged and fully-informed, and that 6 MILLION of them all made a rational, reasoned decision to sit out the election is dumber than they look.
Oh, well, 18 months, what a slog! /s
Look, I’ve spent close to 30 years now detailing that this fucking insane “lesser evil” slide-to-the-right thing that Democrats were doing was going to end in evil. (That is, fascism.) Either the Democrats themselves would become what we feared, or the greater evil would happen to win.
Guess what? I was fucking wrong. I admit it now. I didn’t guess that BOTH would happen simultaneously. It was bad enough more than 20 years ago when my Senator was the only vote against the PATRIOT ACT. It got worse when Obama decided to abolish due process and the rule of law. But by 2024, Democrats were straight up aiding and abetting the biggest war crime of all. Jesus jumpin’ Christ on a pogo stick, how did we get to a place where that is the lesser evil?
Y’all couldn’t vote for Nader in 1996, because “he can’t win.” Well, guess what, bucko, we had to change course somehow. He, or a spiritual successor, had to win, or we’d get… well, look around. It was clear even back then. We had to at least try something different, other than the lesser evil every time.
As they say, the best time to change was then, and the second-best time is now. But, no, Kamala Harris couldn’t change her mind on genocide to win. No, sir! We have standards of evil to maintain, you see. Meanwhile, the billionaires weren’t going away. The wealth inequality wasn’t shrinking. Late-stage capitalism wasn’t on track to make the serfs’ lives better. The climate crisis would still loom. Charismatic fools like Rogan et al. are still young. So the choice in 2024 was fascism now, or fascism later. 2032, most likely, when the partisan pendulum would predictably swing the other way. 2028, possibly.
Is it any wonder that many voters felt overwhelmed, hopeless, defeated, and declined to participate, through the fabulous power of denial? Politics is depressing, the system is big, my vote is inconsequential… Y’know, denial, that power that we’ve all honed through a lifetime of practice—knowing the horrors of industrial meat production and still ordering a burger, knowing the role of CO2 in the climate disaster while waiting in the car at the drive-thru window for it, knowing the causes of cardiovascular disease and still eating it?
Knowing that someday, eventually, we have to fix our political system now that radicals have found its cheat codes, but still browbeating those disengaged voters that they are the ones responsible for this calamity. Yeah. Denial.
The same denial as 30 years ago. This election has been a long time coming. A year and a half? Get outta here.
This push to demonize the strawman protest voters is an ongoing propaganda campaign to cause poor people to infight.
Well, no, because I’ve been asking myself the same question for a while now. And I don’t have that agenda. Lol
Strawman?
6.27 Million more people voted for Biden in 2020 than Harris in 2024. That’s not strawmanning, those fuckers stayed home and that is exactly why we are in the current situation.
Let’s say you’re completely right. How does insulting people’s poor choices 4 months ago help us in the present? We can’t create resistance and solidarity if we hold grievances from the past.
Because some people, mostly just tankies and anarchists pretending to be moral abstainers, are unapologetic about helping elect fascism. By exposing and shaming them, onlookers will reconsider their own stance.
There are actual Nazis in this administration, and you’re worried about “tankies?” Get it together man.
The Tankies are promoting abstaining to help elect the actual Nazis and it fucking worked, so yes I’m worried about the fucking Tankies.
Tankies want 1 thing: “the end of US Imperialism” which is to say for us to all off ourselves so that NATO stops getting in China’s way.
Are the Tankies in office? Prioritize and Organize.
Well…
2018
“He’s now president for life, president for life. And he’s great,” Trump said, according to audio of excerpts of Trump’s remarks at a closed-door fundraiser in Florida aired by CNN. “And look, he was able to do that. I think it’s great. Maybe we’ll have to give that a shot someday,” Trump said to cheers and applause from supporters.
2020
Our relationship with China has now probably never, ever been better," Trump said, adding that he gets on well with President Xi Jinping. “He’s for China, I’m for the U.S., but other than that, we love each other.”
2025
U.S. President Donald Trump said Thursday that he has “always had a great relationship” with Chinese President Xi Jinping and that he looks forward to “getting along with China.”
Yeah, fucking looks like it.
Or worse, to exacerbate racial tensions, is one possibility I fear.
Honestly, the election was three months ago, and we have bigger fish to fry right now. My default assumption now is that anyone still trying to relitigate the Gaza voters is a Russian troll trying to sew division among the left.
Haha no hate I just think it’s funny you arrive at the same “Russian troll” conclusion as the people trying to relitigate the Gaza voters :Pe: i think i misunderstood your comment, retracted
This push to demonize the strawman protest voters is an ongoing propaganda campaign to cause poor people to infight.
This is a real propaganda campaign
Only speculation, but I believe you are right. This only started 2 days ago after Trump’s Gaza comments. It’s disheartening how easily it is to sway online discourse. Jokes on them, this only motivates me.
It’s also possible to run thousands of parallel chatbots to atroturf sentiment these days.
They will even scour the internet automatically to insert themselves into any slightly relevant conversation
you replied to me twice. i absolutely agree with your first sentence and i believe that the second sentence is applicable to other people—it’s possible you here just misunderstood my position due to my own inclarity
Like anything, it’s probably a mix. There were plenty of actual Americans on the pro-Gaza side, and there were probably some Russian trolls as well. Now, there are some actual Americans trying to vent about the election. But it would also be naive to think a fair number of them aren’t Russian trolls. It’s not like the utility of manipulating an adversary nation’s political discourse ends after an election.
Since there’s no practical benefit to relitigating this old fight, however, it makes sense to just dismiss anyone bringing it up as a Russian bot. There’s nothing to be gained by reopening this old wound among the left, but there is plenty to lose.
Genuine question… see my third to most recent post. It’s rhetorically identical to content I posted before, during and after the election. Based on what you see there, do you think I am a paid or otherwise illegitimate troll?
I mean, people say the same thing about pro-Palestine posters. Logically, what’s good for the goose is good for the gander.
i don’t know what that means but thanks everyone for the downvotes i guess
Seems like this is more of a candidate problem than a voter problem - Joe and Kamala were very aggressive to anti-genocide voters and protestors - Gov Shapiro even wanted them arrested
Vote shaming will not get these voters to your side, but you know what will - candidates who will listen
Vote shaming will not get these voters to your side
This is beyond voter shaming, though. This is asking what the fuck were they thinking.
Emphatically correct based on everything I learn. I could never imagine changing my vote based on shaming and I don’t know why so many choose that tactic anyway, even after the thing is over.
This is why the aftermath of the election has been particularly frustrating to me - a LOT of comments are just shitting on Muslim voters and kind of acting happy that trump is so terrible - often ‘liberal’ voters.
What the heck? We have to keep the doors open and politicians have to get them through the doors
Same experience here. It’s deeply unsettling.
How do you change voter behavior?
You don’t. If you want someone to vote for you, you need to provide something that they want. The point of democracy is not to change the people to fit what the rulers want, it’s to change the rules to what the people want. If you can’t do that, the people don’t want you.
It’s also to appeal to candidates , which doesn’t get talked about enough in the case of Gaza
Joe and Kamala did nothing to appeal to those voters, going so far as to cancel a Palestinian speaker at the DNC who agreed to have her entire speech vetted
so why arent we pointing the finger at them?
I keep ruminating on this argument, and it gives me deeply split feelings.
On one hand I keep thinking, voters need to grow up. Voting is how the populace gets to engage in self governance, i.e. politics, and as the aphorism goes, Politics is the art of choosing between the disastrous and the unpalatable. Things that are easy aren’t solved by politics, and the voters need to accept that you’re often not going to get what you want and in governance you often have to settle for choosing the thing you hate the least.
On the other hand, I keep thinking I’m making the classic leftist mistake of demanding everyone should do what I think is right, because I am right, and then being frustrated when my rightness isn’t blindingly obvious to everyone.
Like the lady says, It’s like rain on your wedding day…
Americans are impoverished and uneducated, Democrats are not, but they should be fucking smart enough to know you can’t use big words or complicated ideas with poor, distrqcted, and uneducated people.
You force through policies that put money in their pockets, that tangibly improve their lives, or you piss them off even more and give them a minority to attack as a distraction from your lack of policy.
The Republicans understand this.
This is how you appeal to the impoverished and uneducated, and that will be the majority of the American voting population until a couple decades after we offer free education
To paraphrase Donald Rumsfeld: You don’t run for office with the electorate you want, you run for office with the electorate you have.
Well that’s a lie, with voter suppression and gerrymandering you can have your dream electorate!
Well then, our troubles are deeper than we know.
On the right as long as you talk a good game on lowering taxes they’ll put aside any and all espoused convictions. See how quiet the Libertarians got when Roe v. Wade was overturned. Turns out any time I spent debating the preeminence of personal liberty and the NAP was a big fat waste of my time. Alas.
On the left we have an electorate that “…would rather be right than president,” and it turns out they get to be neither.
Most Americans align closer with progressives than any other group when it comes to policy. But messaging has been coopted by the Republicans to make people instinctively hate “socialism” because of the Red Scare Propaganda.
But Democrats block progressive policy because it makes their donors angry.
So really there’s nobody willing to represent the majority
I’ve become pretty skeptical we know where the majority is. The question determines the outcome of the survey. The measuring stick is flawed and error bars are many times larger than the difference being measured. Frankly, the thing being measured has more dimensions than are being measured.
And it’s worth remembering how the party got here. The left and labor coalition failed to beat Nixon twice, Ford’s losing had little to do with the left, and it utterly fell apart against Reagan. The Democrats only started to get traction at the national level by going to the center, using the DLC playbook. I’m as angry about the abandonment of labor by the Democratic party as anyone, but the reason for it is not a mystery. By the same token if the left doesn’t build the structure for a more left leaning Democratic party to operate no one should expect the party to move.
The hard thing is, I don’t know what that structure looks like, but it’s not enough to be “correct”.
YOU’RE skeptical.
Stop projecting because you are too lazy to go learn about the world around you.
I’ve read it. Many times from many outlets reporting on more than one survey. The first time I found it comforting.
However it’s not hard to find conflicting data. Methodology determines outcomes of these surveys, every time.
Today I’m less comforted. But ultimately, for what it’s worth, I don’t think we’re that far apart.
Saving. That survey is hard to find if you don’t search the right terms.
And yet they would not turn out to nominate Bernie… Talk about lazy.
Despite all the emotions in this comment section, this is still my conclusion as well.
They were on the correct side of the value system, but could not bring themselves to agree to the tactical compromise.
Genuine question, why should I keep agreeing to a compromise that every time I look back has run farther and farther to the right and away from what my values are. You can say protest and advocate for change but when that happened they where shamed arrested and expelled. The railway union was forced into an unfavorable contract by the democrats. At what point is it that this compromise is less a compromise and more a pacification, and me lending my support to another right wing extention? Where is the red line? are individuals not allowed to have positions where if you support them they will not suport you? or even if you get enough of them?
why should I keep agreeing to a compromise
*Motions broadly at everything* Is this not enough to look past your ideals in a rigged system?
Look, I get it and I share your values. But come the fuck on. You guys got had by the One Issue being pushed around while everyone else told you not to and now the US lost everything and there’s lasting damage and many more people will end up suffering and dying for many other reasons. 20/20 vision now says Harris was the right choice all along. It’s frustrating.
I mean it is not one issue, I have multiple issues, I had one issue that was the straw that broke the cammels back. I needed enough cleared up, or my none starter cleared up first.
Second if we have the same values, why did you compromise on them, and how are you able to sleep with them so compromised.
Third we had more than 2 choices, I would not say of the multiple people running Harris was the best, HECK Harris was not the best potential Dem nominee, she flat out ended her be neighborly and the GOP is wierd because her C-Suite brother in law asked her to stop. She had a good start, and she chose the right VP but threw it away to appease the rich.
The ratchet effect is real and people should abandon both parties.
That being said there was 0% chance someone besides a D or R would win the 2024 election, so D was the objectively correct choice for anyone who isn’t rich.
That being said the protest voters didn’t actually impact the election in a meaningful way, and the insane pushback against them now is part of a propaganda campaign to keep the poors fighting.
I like you. Welcome to Lemmy.
I only care and am arguing because it seems like it is the harshest button issue, and while I agree its meaningless and they likely did not swey the election too much, I want, in the cathartic emotional way for someone to either admit that, or admit that harris did a bad stratagy because she abandoned the people to the left of her to get people to the right, because it cannot be nither.
The economy has and always will be the number 1 issue.
Also for regular Americans “the economy” means their own financial situation.
I mean I know for none voters this cited Gaza but I think as always Economy was over all number one. I also think it is worth pointing out that we where not doing great over bidens term, so lots of people would vote for anyone who just said it would be better even if it was not fleshed out because it was not good.
I yelled, but voted Kamala, and encouraged others to do the same. I always wanted to try and push the democrats to not be Republican lite and actually taking a meaningful, impactful stand on fucking anything besides being very passionate about not inhabiting Trump’s body. I wanted to see the democrats say “you know what? Genocide is wrong, whether it’s our allies doing it or not, and this is genocide” instead of “well, we’re going to keep handing them bombs, but we promise to wag our fingers at them while we do it”. I don’t want to hear your goddamn excuses, there’s always some fucking excuse why the democrats just had to spill all their spaghetti. I just wanted to do what I could to push them to show some intestinal fortitude and do the right thing, and I honestly believed (and still do believe) that that would have motivated more voters to turn out than purely relying on “less bad than him”.
No, I don’t regret trying to make the world I want to see; one without genocide. I do resent the democrats for insisting on doing the wrong thing, getting mad at people like me for having the absolute audacity to call them out on it, and still not having the fucking self awareness to be ashamed of doing the wrong thing.
I do resent the democrats for insisting on doing the wrong thing, getting mad at people like me for having the absolute audacity to call them out on it, and still not having the fucking self awareness to be ashamed of doing the wrong thing.
Fucking.
A.
Thank you for sharing, genuinely. The way other conversations here have gone, many probably thought you were a Russian bot or something for yelling that you cared about human rights atrocities funded by your taxes. :(
The hard thing is, how do you change voter behavior?
Give them something to vote for. You can write articles of many paragraphs to analyze the course of the election, but in the end it boils down to this: The DNC pissed off too many of their voters and offered nothing in return.
Exactly this! You can’t just “lesser of two evils” your way through life as you slide towards hell. “Lesser of two evils” isn’t a choice, it’s a hostage situation.
Choosing the bigger evil ain’t the way out of it though. Unless you are an accelerationist that believes things have to get worse before it can get better.
The DNC platform was free medicine, money out of politics, and taxing the rich.
If they could have resurrected a Unicorn live on stage and it could have magically cured cancer in the radius as thanks: people would still be shitting on them all over the internet.
I think they offered more than most people see on social media. Their messaging isn’t great and I’ve seen a lot more left-leaning youtube channels talk about them but not outside of that.
Then again, I’m also not American so I don’t know.
Lastly, the non-voters are as much to blame in my opinion. If you didn’t know you should have voted, that’s on you.
Giving subisidies to green energy companies and improving the GDP doesn’t tangibly improve people’s lives in 4 years and that’s what people wanted.
It also takes longer than 4 years to rebound everyone out of the spiral Trump left the nation in. I think messaging around realistic goals and checkpoints could go a very long way to allowing people to understand no President is going to save everyone in a single term, or probably in 2 terms, especially if they have a crater to climb out of just to start at zero. Real change is a long term goal, it would take multiple administrations working towards a goal.
Americans are not educated enough to understand any of that.
They’re hurting finantially, so they get mad and vote out the incumbent.
Democrats push policy like the avg american went to their ivy league schools.
Yeah. No matter how I look at it, this seems to be the only real solution that would have helped.
The time for voting is over. It’s time for fighting now, and I don’t think “I told you so”s are helping us unite and work together right now.
Both can happen at the same time. We don’t need to love our ally to fight against a shared enemy. Especially when you feel your ally helped empower them.
Can they though? I mean to some extent maybe but I think it needs to be carefully articulated and respectful. The typical one line takedowns are just signals of tribal affiliation, they don’t persuade anyone and just increase animosity between us.
I agree.
I have a (conspiracy) theory that those “genocide Joe” and “killer Kamala” folk are astroturfing for MAGA.
Okay so this may come across as crazy, but myself and many other people didn’t want to vote for a candidate that supported ethnic cleansing, even if they were on “our team”.
I get that; I do. But there was no better alternative. I’m all about changing our electoral system, but at the time of an election is not the time to do it. How is Trump better than Joe of Kamala?
He’s not, don’t get me wrong. But at the end of the day, Kamala Harris still supported genocide. If I voted for her, I’d have been voting for this fundamentally evil policy. Frankly, I’m not interested in doing that, and I stand by that.
There was definitely a large amount of foreign influence pushing that narrative.
Yup that is a conspiracy theory and super not cool of you.
It’s mostly information warfare from the various social media. There have already been a few analyses showing that pro-Republican anti-Democrat sentiment was algorithmically pushed on tiktok, Facebook, X(obviously), Instagram, YouTube, etc. I do believe a lot of people even here on lemmy were Russian/Chinese just stoking the flames because a divided america is good for them.
I think there are significantly more “useful idiots” than actual state actors trying to sow division. Most of them probably had good intentions, they just refused to listen to reason.
It’s a funny and depressing situation that Lemmy users are so adamant that no one could possibly have a different perspective than them and if they do they must be Russian assets.
Despite those exact positions being reflected in real human American/western political voices–when it shows up in our special little space suddenly it’s spoooooky foreign astroturfing. I believe the kids call that behavior “cope.” XD
Oh there’s certainly real belief too but the “loudness” is certainly amplified beyond what it would usually be. A lot of those accounts have been entirely silent on the conflict since the election which is suspicious to me.
Can you cite a few of said accounts so I can take a look? For me, I still see a lot of pro-Palestine sentiment. But to me, it makes nothing but sense that after the election people stop talking about… the election, y’know? You’ll notice MAGA voices also stopped talking about the election too, haha.
I got better things to do than go back and find them. Just a trend I noticed. I still see pro Palestinian sentiment (which i agree with) but i don’t see the level of blame assignment Biden and Dems got. I see some outrage about like the golden pager but not about rereleasing 2ton bombs. For people who seemed so single-issue its odd.
I mean yeah why would anyone talk about the election anymore unless they’ve got some new take or perspective on why dems lost.
Can you cite a few of said accounts so I can take a look?
They won’t, it’s a talking point they were always going to deploy and has nothing to do with evidence. Of course, political discourse was always going to die down after the election, and there’s also several accounts they’re not seeing because they got banned (lol). BlueAnon isn’t based on reason.
Of course there’s absolutely evidence of pro-Republican, anti-Democrat manipulation. But find me evidence algorithm manipulation of pro-Palestine anti-Democrat sentiment. Otherwise you are doing some pretty hateful fearmongering.
The “everyone on here is a Russian bot” narrative here is so embarrassing. Get real.
I certainly didn’t say everyone just that they’re here and they enjoy stoking the flames. Propaganda is everywhere from all sides.
The “sides” are not even remotely the same
> Pretending we didn’t see it happen already
Allow me to remind you of Rally Forge’s “America Progress Now” and Jeff Ballabon’s “Jexodus” as two recent examples.
Cite a proven example of pro-Palestine manipulation, and we can discuss it. Otherwise, no.
Both examples you provided are trivial as they don’t interface with literal apartheid or genocide. This is a significant difference being overlooked, and without evidence, I have no reason to believe this conspiracy.
New “Leopards Ate My Face” dropped. In this fun twist, however, after seeing the Leopards Eating Faces party feed people’s faces to leopards multiple times, the user continues to give the party the benefit of the doubt when confronted with the likelyhood that it’s happening again.
So no example, got it. It’s fine for you to engage in fearmongering and unevidenced cynicism. I choose not to. My regards. Free Palestine.
There’s a big difference between being realistic and fearmongering. For instance, if there was no history of domestic and foreign entities utilizing astroturfing to undermine democracy and people were saying it’s happening now, that’s fearmongering. Considering that there is, however, and that it seemed to work last time, it’s naive to assume that it wouldn’t happen again, especially when similar patterns of behavior emerge, including the presence of a new hot-button topic that can be utilized. That’s realism.
We can now say that anyone who could and didn’t vote for Harris in magastan is a genocide enabler.
Now that you got you dopamine, feel better?
Great, now it’s time to stop pushing propaganda that makes poor people infight.
I’ve been saying since the election that anyone who voted for Trump or abstained in protest is complicit in Trump’s regime of terror. Trump and his staff spent months on the campaign trail telling the public exactly what they would do when they took power, showing everyone exactly who they are, and now they’re doing all of it. No one has the luxury of claiming ignorance.
Probably not helpful to be this divisive with your anti trump allies. Whether in your eyes the abstention voters made a mistake or not, we’re going to need all the solidarity we can get to oppose/survive this administration
We can’t change the past, so the only choice we have is to work together to start fixing this situation. I understand why they did it, but they refused to think about how their actions would affect the larger outcome. We shouldn’t let abstention voters forget the role they played in getting us into this mess while we encourage them to make better (or at least less bad choices) in the future.
These people pretend to be allies until the next election season where when they don’t get exactly what they want, rabidly push everyone to not vote or vote fascist.
“These people” are strawmen you have been fooled into hating
Are they allies? They ushered in trump on a red carpet
deleted by creator
But but but, how were we supposed to know? We were too busy not paying attention to anything important!!
That’s not how logic works.
Yes it is and it’s such a good example of logic that its archetype is now a formal part of game theory in the prisoner’s dilemma. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisoner's_dilemma
So, the 80 million nonvoters in 2020 voted for Biden? I voted for Biden and Harris. That does not imply my consent for genocide. Complicity is only maintained through inaction. When I denounce the genocidal action, my complicity ends.
Since we’re erroneously referencing logic thought experiments, the trolley problem refutes the prisoner’s dilemma.
The thing about the dilemma is that you need to realize that the prisoners are rational, feeling people. They have good reasons to do what they do, often enough. Often their goals are good ones, compassionate ones.
They aren’t trying to scheme or sabotage one another. But they wind up doing that, because the only success condition is mutual cooperation.
That didn’t happen for us, and the outcome is boolean, pass or fail. Any move except sticking to the coalition and acting to cooperate would have doomed the effort completely, and we didn’t do that. So, here we are.
Where in the Wikipedia article does it mention “voting for the lesser evil “ is an archetype for the prisoner’s dilemma? I’m willing to change my mind, but I need actual reasons to do so.
A better understanding about the logic of voting:
Thank you for this. It’s always nice to have valid reasoning backing up something you find so obvious lol
Not even close. Did you consent when voting for Biden that his administration could do a genocide? I hope not. This logic implies that we have a moral obligation to vote, which eliminates the free-will of individual choice.
To put it another way. If I am morally obligated to choose the lesser-evil, then that eliminates the freedom of choice. Let’s say you are in a coma during election season. Are you now complicit with everything Trump is doing because you couldn’t vote? Of course not.
By conflating voting with moral obligation, this syllogism affirms a conclusion from a negative premise.
A vote is a preference, a choice. It carries no burden of complicity. This is separate from ideological support. If one voted for Trump, but then regrets that support, they are no longer responsible for Trump’s actions.
Like most people… I live in a state where my “vote” literally doesn’t matter at all.
It’s hilarious how “adults” assume that voting actually matter and that there’s a meaningful difference between the two flavors of the state.
It’s hilarious how people still think that something good will happen as a result of inaction. But no, all your refusal to participate said was that you are fine with the outcome either way. That you trust others to decide this for you. Refusing to choose doesn’t negate the results. Just as doing nothing won’t create something. If it helps, I can explain it in simpler terms:
• You can’t get an answer if you don’t ask the question.
• You won’t ever get anywhere if you don’t make plans to ever be somewhere
• You can’t rightfully expect any change for the better if you’re not willing to do the bare minimum it takes to make it happen.Even simpler:
• No vote ≠ no election.
And additionally, do you not understand that saying “but I live in a red state! My vote doesn’t matter!” Only proves to everyone that things like gerrymandering are effective ways to manipulate votes? Because, congratulations… you’ve inadvertently discovered exactly why they do it!
Blue votes in red stats are FUCKING VITAL.
You know, it’s sadly funny in a very bleak way- how you all excused your poor decisions as “making a statement!” and “sending a message!” when the messages you should have been sending is that you will do WHATEVER THE FUCK IT TAKES to stop a rapist felon that laid out exactly what he intended to do to us- from taking away the rights of your brothers, sisters, and others. Even if it meant voting blue in a red state.
But you didn’t. So sit down, accept your responsibility, and if you’re fucking lucky, you’ll be given the chance to do better next time.
About 3 million voters who voted in 2020 decided their vote “didn’t matter” in 2024. Kamala lost the popular by 2 million.
Always always vote, even if you think it’s pointless.
Presidents aren’t elected by popular vote
No, but it at least prevents the appearance of a “mandate.” Trump claims that he not only won the popular vote but also the electoral college so that means we’re all totally cool with whatever he wants to do whatsoever.
They have less of an argument if more people voted against him, but our stupid system still gave him power.
No, but it at least prevents the appearance of a “mandate.”
This is such a liberal take. They would have acted exactly the same whether they had the ‘spirit of the nation’ behind them or not. Stop picking fights of symbolic victories.
Republicans have not cared about the decorum that the democrats have been trying to uphold since at the very least the second Obama term likely longer.
Democrats are refusing to employ the same tactics that the republicans use against them when they are in power.
No, they are not. But swinging the popular vote reduces their appearance of the public mandate. And Trump also only won by relatively small margins in a lot of the swing states for the electoral college (30k in Wisconsin, 50k in Nevada, 70k in Michigan, etc), where such additional votes matter even more.
Every single vote on the board counts, whether or not you think it does. Not voting is intentionally silencing your voice for no reason.
If everyone who thought like you got out and voted, the results would come out very different.
The adage for as long as I can remember has been, Democrats fall in love, Republicans fall in line.
I desperately wish that liberals realize that reality is the arbiter, and no amount of wishing more folks would fall in line will work.
It’s an ironic saying because the support for Trump is based entirely on emotion. The Democrats are the ones making the decision based on pragmatism.
That adage is pretty much the opposite of true. Republicans make demands of their politicians, and have no reservations about loudly denouncing them as “RINOs” if they don’t follow through. The biggest third party candidate in history was Ross Perot in '96, because Republican Bob Dole was seen as too moderate and mainstream. Part of the reason that the party establishment didn’t stop Trump from getting the nomination was because they knew there was a credible threat that he’d run third party, while the Democratic establishment resisted Sanders, because they knew he’d fall in line anyway.
The reason the adage exists is, ironically, because democrats are more prone to shaming voters who step out of line. From what I’ve seen, in right-wing circles, complaining about RINOs and shitting on the Republican establishment will get much less pushback compared to the opposite. Those who try to lecture and vote-shame are more likely to lose credibility themselves than the person they’re criticizing.
Of course, because the party has received the message and fallen in line, there’s less internal dissent, which is used to push the message that “Republican [voters] fall in line,” used to pressure Democratic voters to fall in line.
They were mainly upset that we don’t have a choice to not support genocide.
Which just betrays their utter ignorance of US history. Slavery and genocide built this country, of course we’re gonna support it.
From what I have seen they seem pretty aware of the history of white supremacy and genocide. I don’t know that this is particularly good analysis.
Expecting it to change any time soon was their naive mistake.
Sure, the material consequences if you, specifically, live in a swing state. I do, so I voted for Kamala. But this take, applied outside of states that were up for grabs, is asinine. But hey, nuance is for people who don’t want to just keep trying the same failed approach to presidential elections every 4 years and would rather bitch about anyone less moderate than them.
But this take, applied outside of states that were up for grabs, is asinine.
What take? Philly D’s post question or my own response to it? (/gen I am just missing what you are referring to promise!)
I took your response to be supportive of Philly D’s post, but sorry if I misunderstood.
Yeah no worries I was more looking to genuinely engage with the question he asks. No blame before the question is answered :)
I guess your title really gets to the heart of my take on this. If there aren’t material consequences for most of the people who voted third party I really don’t understand the anger a lot of people feel towards them. In swing states sure, but for the rest of the people? It just doesn’t make sense to me unless there’s some fundamental misunderstanding about how our elections work.
It’s sxephil! Haven’t thought about that guy in like a decade
