A more nuanced version of this is, if you live in a state that has 0% chance of swinging, feel free to do a protest vote. Voting for Jill Stein or write in Bernie Sanders in California or Wyoming will not change anything, on the other hand if you do funny votes in Pennsylvania or Georgia you are worse than MAGA people.
Even if you are in a Blue State, the US needs to overwhelmingly reject Trump both in electoral and popular vote.
Otherwise a Trump replacement will pop up in 4 years.
Yes, with electoral college that strategy is acceptable… buuuuuut…
DON’T sleep for a second on the downballot races, for House Rep., Senator, Governor, state positions, ballot measures (including on a woman’s right to an abortion), and everything else applicable to you on Election Day. DON’T stay home even if you don’t like your choice of President/VP or that your state won’t affect who will reside in the Oval Office.
Any of these other races can be close. Each has a piece of a government that has big effects on many of the issues you care about.
Politicians will always disappoint you. There will always be things left undone, done poorly, or done in a way you disagree with. Everybody needs to get used to this and learn we vote for the least bad, not the most good.
Voters will always disappoint you. There will always be things left undone, done poorly, or done in a way you disagree with. Everybody needs to get used to this and learn we vote for the least bad, not the most good.
In a perfect world, we should be voting for the person with the most solutions that would improve the world as well as country.
We shouldn’t be voting on those who’s likely going to be half-assed.
We don’t live in a perfect world. Someone is going to be president for the next 4 years, and at this stage of the game we have 2 distinct choices.
Also, what you called half-assed someone else might call the democracy process. Just because YOU want something doesn’t mean I want the same thing. Your vision for how to solve Palestine or Ukraine or improve wealth equality might be vastly different from mine. Just because you don’t get exactly what you want doesn’t mean the system is useless or not worth participating in. If you were to get exactly what you want, then I’d be getting walked over. If I get exactly what I want, then you’d say you are not being heard.
The only fair system is to elect a big-tent party and then work through dialog on trying to reach either consensus or fair compromise on the various topics. But we won’t have that option if we let the fascists get control and do their Project 2025 thing while ignoring us.
we should be voting for the person with the most solutions that would improve the world as well as country.
well, i would remove the whole world portion, because that’s an extremely broad brush and can cause problems. It’s better to just focus on having the best and most productive leadership possible, the more advancement you can do the better.
The difference is campaigns spend over a billion dollars these days and don’t even try to convince voters.
They do anything for donations to spend on fundraisers for more donations, and they just go round and round. Every revolution everyone involved skims a little.
If it costs over a billion dollars to beat trump in an election, maybe we should worry less about donations and more about votes.
Yeah, that too.
“To summarize the summary of the summary: People are a problem.”
Haha. That’s pretty good. The point I was trying to make is that it doesn’t make sense to me to hold voters to a higher standard of conduct than the politicians that they vote for.
Politicians will always disappoint you. There will always be things left undone, done poorly, or done in a way you disagree with. Everybody needs to get used to this
Why?
Why does everyone have to get used to and just blindly accept that the system is shit and doesn’t serve them or make their lives any better?
Why are you so comfortable settling for so little?
Why don’t you want better for yourself, and worse, think you get to demand the same of others?
(I don’t need your answers, these are all for you and those who agree with you to ask yourselves)
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This is an imperfect world.
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Democracy is necessarily the function of creating coalitions of compromise between literal millions of people, all with different interests and concerns.
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Politicians, as a career, self-select for ambition and ego, and that comes with certain implications in even the best of them.
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Jesus fucking Christ, is it really so little to not want to die or see my friends and family horribly oppressed?
is it really so little to not want to die or see my friends and family horribly oppressed?
well i mean it depends on what you mean by this, you will inevitably die, so, idk how you plan on getting around that one. Oppression is an incredibly broad and complex topic, or the simplest of them with no indirect explanation. The answer is the same though, do shit to change public sentiment.
Look, I will tick the Kamala box. I do indeed believe that Trump is a bad candidate and will oppress many people. But I don’t want people to feel like this shit is normal. Back in the late 1970’s to the 1990’s, nobody would have thought that both parties would end up supporting the same genocide, with one being a little less pumped. Or maybe even the 2000’s, when the War on Terror was thought to be conducted humanely. We have lived in an imperfect world before, along with millions of people, and politicians self-selecting for ambition and ego, and there was nobody calling to wipe an ethnicity off the face of the Earth. I’m not surprised at the Dem party, I’m surprised that there are fascists in the White House and I’m supposed to just accept it as a normal part of democracy. Well, I won’t! Both parties in the United States supporting a genocide requires voting to solve, but it’s purely abnormal! I’m not wanting a world any better than a world we used to have, one where the United States did not conduct ethnic cleansing!
We live in a nation with the Internet, fast food wherever you go, products that arrive at your door when ordered, touchscreens, full 3D videogames, V-Tubers, the Moon Landing, nuclear reactors, and the White House lighting up in rainbow colors to support LGBT+ rights–yet when asked to stop a genocide, it’s suddenly too much to ask. I would give up so much of these fleeting pleasures to protect human lives. Should I just become a lotus-eater, and neglect the outside world to “act humane”?
In what world will a politician never disappoint you?
I’m generally in full control of myself and even I disappoint myself - fringe third party candidates are not the political messiah some people think they are.
In a world where “politician” isn’t a career, or even a thing that exists, and instead people make decisions communally and horizontally. It’s called anarchism.
You not knowing or being able to imagine alternatives, doesn’t mean none exist.
I don’t understand how this is the argument against third party. Why does the candidate need to be the Messiah to be better than Kamala?
Cuz it’s democracy. If you wanted someone to be in office who would get everything done with no obstacles no roadblocks and no delays then you wouldn’t be looking at democracy you’d want a dictator. You can want that if you want but just be honest about it.
Lmfao, except you don’t have democracy. You have oligarchy and kleptocracy and plutocracy. You also don’t have a government that is “getting everything done without obstacles”, but pretty much the literal fucking opposite. The fact that the only alternative you can imagine to the current (non democratic, slipping in to fascism) state of affairs is a dictatorship is a problem with your lack of imagination and narrow view of the world (though granted, you were heavily indoctrinated that way), not a reflection of reality, nor the array of other ways that society can not only exist, but thrive.
There was good reason I told you people to ask yourselves these questions - you are the ones standing in your own way with your insistence of living according to a full blown fallacy because you’re just comfortable enough with the way things are, and are too scared of change, specifically no longer holding the privileges the current system grants you in exchange for your compliance, and the idea that you might not have anyone to feel superior to.
Until you’re willing and able to face that within yourself, I can’t help you, nor am Interested in hearing the mental gymnastics you do to justify your actively maintaining the status quo. ¯\(ツ)/¯
Because people in office are individuals and morality is relatively subjective. The only politician who will do everything you want and believe everything you believe is yourself. Run for office.
Right, as if the system isn’t very deliberately designed to withstand reform and will not hesitate to weaponize every tool it has at its disposal (from the courts to the media to the police and the other alphabet agencies) to assure no leftist ever actually makes it in to a position of real power (not that we would want to, since we believe the state should be abolished, not joined, for precisely the reason stated above).
For the however many’th time, you die hard liberals can tell yourselves as many fairy tales you want to make yourself feel better, it won’t change the reality - the system is not designed to serve you, but to keep you placated with nothing but an illusion of choice. Those with power and money wrote the rules, what on earth, and at this point in time with history unfolding right in front of our eyes as it is, again, makes you think that following those rules will ever work in your favour?
The only politician who won’t disappoint you on every issue is yourself. Run for office. No joke. Use your rights. Vote. Speak. Run for office.
Not using those rights is functionally the same as not having them.
I doubt that. My dad got elected to a town council and was pretty disappointed about what the system let him accomplish.
I’m sitting this one out too. Kamala has started to grate my mind because I’m not hearing her touch on things that I feel she should. It’s always been about identity politics and more undoing of Trump’s policies whatever is left.
I’m confident I’m going to wake up after the general election and to hear that Trump had not won, that’ll more than suffice. But it doesn’t make me hopeful in what Kamala hopes to accomplish in her 4 years.
- 1 day old account
- Airs grievances for Kamala but not Trump
- Completely writes off marginalized groups
- Generalizes Kamala’s platform to “identity politics”
- Fails to take into account polls and the last election as reasons to vote
- Fails to elaborate on what they care about, just that Kamala hasn’t talked about it
Sure thing, comrade.
I’m sitting this one out too. Kamala has started to grate my mind because I’m not hearing her touch on things that I feel she should. It’s always been about identity politics and more undoing of Trump’s policies whatever is left.
what the fuck else are you supposed to focus on, im not even sure the federal government has fully recovered yet?
This is the one way you’re going to unify a voter base.
“I have high standards, I’d rather have my clothes covered in dog shit than put on a non-Gucci article of clothing.”
How’s them standards going for you when you’re now covered in shit?
They revel in being covered in shit. Then they call you the real filth for not covering yourself in shit.
In other words, not unlike Republicans.
You joke but they legit just are republicans who insist they’re leftists because they’re wearing a coat of red paint over that shit.
Like 9/10 times they’re some bougie white kid who never experiences the difference between republican and democratic governance first hand because they’re privileged and insulated from it, and also they’re tied to people who do nothing but complain about how awful democrats are and they refuse to do any unlearning beyond just saying they aren’t bigots anymore.
You joke but they legit just are republicans who insist they’re leftists because they’re wearing a coat of red paint over that shit.
Oh, it’s no joke. I believe wholeheartedly that if the GOP kept all of its current stances, but was an anti-American party in, say, Europe, and put on the Communist aesthetic and rhetoric, tankies would be lining up to lick their boots and cry “Critical support for transgender genocide!”
Like 9/10 times they’re some bougie white kid who never experiences the difference between republican and democratic governance first hand because they’re privileged and insulated from it, and also they’re tied to people who do nothing but complain about how awful democrats are and they refuse to do any unlearning beyond just saying they aren’t bigots anymore.
God, even on the local scale it can be gruesome. Getting a Republican administration is like watching the municipality be gutted in slow motion. It’s difficult for me to sympathize with tankies, since they clearly don’t lack time to mindlessly parrot talking points fed to them by their social circle read about politics, but they act completely fucking clueless about the difference between Dems and the GOP. Or, for that matter, the difference between any imperfect cause and pure fucking evil - except, of course, in judgement of their red-painted fascist states, whose actions are always either justified or justifiable, and criticizing blatant totalitarianism is just not appreciating AES and proof of being a shitlib™.
single issues voters would rather be consuming literal dogshit than see their issue unresolved
How much dogshit do I have to eat to end genocide in Palestine? I’ll do it.
Here is another take. You vote for both:
- The group that most closely resembles what you want AND
- The group that most likely will listen to your requests during the administration
If there are things you want changed, Nov 5 is not the last day but the beginning. The next president will make decisions for 4 years, and every decision is influenced by people and our voices.
Ask yourself, between Harris and Trump, which administration is most likely to want the things I want, and which is most likely to listen and be influenced by my side of political views and the people I support?
For me, the answer is a hard NO on Trump, and a pretty solid Yes on Harris.
Like the other thread abut guns. Sure, the Dems talk about wanting gun reform and it never gets done because they don’t have a super majority in Congress. But the GOP is 100% against it and will never contribute. Which side is more likely to do anything to help the reform I want to see? 4 years of Dems is a good amount of time to press for issues and seek some improvements. If I let the GOP have 4 more years, we are not even going to talk about change until the next election.
Those that are willing to sit out an election because the Dems are not perfect, are inflicting the worst candidate on all of us and themselves. Don’t you dare later complain about school shootings, wealth inequality, tax cuts for the rich, abuse of queer folks, women’s rights, international inhumane policy. Don’t inflict Trump on us and then pretend to care about our issues or be on our side. If you sit out, you’ve picked a side.
I’d just like to clarify that presidential elections are not the only time to vote if you want to see any actual change. There are elections every year. Keep up to date on what’s going on in your state, in your county, in your city or town, and actually put the work in.
Most of the people in power got there by being elected to other positions years ago.