And I’m being serious. I feel like there might be an argument there, I just don’t understand it. Can someone please “steelman” that argument for me?
Because if it wasn’t Gaza, it would have been another excuse to not lift a lazy goddamned finger and still delude themselves into feeling "morally superior"while sitting on their fat mediocre asses at home.
Before Harris, they also leaned heavily on the “Sleepy Joe” bullshit and “two old white men up for election, who cares”. Once the old “Sleepy Joe” element was removed from the equation, they had to find a way to keep their goddamned stubbornly lazy and ignorant narrative intact.
Now that the election is over, most of these “concerned and outraged” deadweight assholes will never think about Gaza and the plight of its’ people again. And they will keep on feeling smug about themselves.
It is rich to criticize the Democrats for claiming moral superiority while doing nothing, as a justification for not voting for the candidate who would at least try to put a leash on what Israel is doing to Gaza.
If you want what’s best for a suffering people, you should vote for the candidate not trying to give their oppressors a blank check. All of America is responsible for what the president we chose does next.
This is fucking rich lmao.
You know who I always see busting their ass protesting, striking, aiding their fellow worker? Not fucking democrats, I’ll tell you that. It’s always third parties who get demonized for not voting for a fascist and then told they get what they deserve when they’re out there serving as a shield against the worst of fascist violence. Americans are so politically illiterate it’d be funny if y’all would go down alone and not threaten to burn the rest of us down with you.
I said the same thing about people like you before the election, and I’ll repeat it again. The laser focus on single issue voters was and will always be mostly an excuse to blame someone else.
To look at it another way, if this one issue actually decided the election, why didn’t Harris change her strategy two months ago? … Maybe it’s because this wasn’t the determining issue. Or it was, and her staff was incompetent. Take your pick.
I’m not American, and I don’t agree with these people either, but I don’t think that calling them lazy and ignorant makes any sense. In the fucked up democracy of the US it’s clear that the only way to get what you want for the coming 4 years is to vote for the least bad candidate. At the same time I can definitely understand that if you view both candidates was horrible, though one way more horrible than the other, you would feel conflicted about voting for either of them.
Let’s do a thought experiment. Assuming both candidates are still roughly equally “popular”. If both candidates wanted to start a genocide, but one would want to kill only 50% of the amount of innocents that the other would kill, how would you vote? Would you vote for the one who is overall the less bad option, which will in turn make you give your vote for something horrible. Or would you abstain and signal that the democracy as it currently stands has lost your confidence entirely, even if it means that on the short term the consequences might be way worse?
Not voting actually costs the democrats something, and should (if they want to win next time) force them to think how to better represent you next time.
It’s fucked up that your democracy came to this. It has become an annoying game theory dilemma instead of voting for the candidate that you actually believe in. Our system here in the Netherlands is certainly also not perfect, since we have too many parties and too long coalition negotiations, but at least I feel like it represents people way better. Anyone can start a party and capture seat if they represent a large enough niche.
I think some people have explained it decently, but as someone who did not vote for Harris, I have a simple explanation:
I do not want the Democratic party to think it’s Ok to be slightly better than Trump.
If I’m going to be honest, trans rights and immigration are minor issues compared to inequality and war in Gaza.
The Dems can be better, but they choose not to. Me voting for Dems signals that what Dems are doing is acceptable, but it’s not. I supported third party in 2024, and I will continue to do so until the Democrats get serious reform.
(For those who think it would be “less bad” with Harris, that’s the problem. I don’t care for “less bad” when the duopoly got us here regardless. Represent the people.)
Thanks for enabling Trump you ginormous ass hat. I will remember your entitled self righteous indignation when Ukraine falls. When Trump talks about eradicating the Palestinian people. And when Russia starts taking small bites of NATO countries, while Trump refuses to respond to article 5 requests.
Sending a message to the democratic party was something you could have done before the election. By getting involved. But noooo let’s send the message by handing the US to a fascist and convicted felon, that’s far easier.
Edit: I just saw the .ml now. Good one tankie, you got me all riled up. I believe you can now collect a kopek from your boss for your trouble.
You can disagree with that guy. That’s fine. But you need to understand that your attitude mirrors the attitude of the democratic party, and it literally just cost them the election.
Ignore the people who want change, assuming they’ll vote for you anyway is a great way to get them to vote for someone else.
Reform or fail.
What’s so weird to me is how Americans can just be “oh bother! The not fascist prodemocracy party lost. If only I would care enough to do something, oh well better luck next time.” why aren’t you guys screaming?
Trump’s relationship with Putin is going to change the current world order. You know the world? It’s where the US is?
If that’s too abstract, then look at the remaining SCOTUS judges. With Trump in the Whitehouse then Alito and Thomas can step down and be replaced with more Gen Xers ensuring right-wing dominance for the next 30 years. Repealing Roe v Wade is going to be dwarfed by the what’s coming now.
Harris wasn’t ideal. Harris was as interesting as a corporate newsletter. But at least she wasn’t a threat to democracies worldwide. Harris would have meant less injustice, but not “no injustice”. But because people couldn’t get no injustice, they stayed home and got 20x the injustice they would have gotten otherwise. And now they’re justifying that? GTFO!
The US political system is broken. But it’s broken deliberately by one side to suit them, while the other side is too busy blaming each other for their own common failures to do anything.
Democrats are alright with failure, they’re gonna make serious bank anyway. Their voters, though? Idk why they act like they are part of this campaign, when they might as well have been cardboard cutouts as far as the DNC is concerned. They’re the worst kind of politicucked.
It wouldn’t have mattered anyway. Third party votes didn’t total up enough to make a difference if Harris got them all or not. I can’t blame people for acting in accordance with their conscience whether I agree with it or not. What’s done is done. Let’s move on and figure out the next steps we need to take.
So, instead of selecting the better of two bad options (according to you), you chose the worse of two bad options. And that’s supposed to make some sort of point?
Do I shoot myself in the foot or the head? The head, that’ll show em!
X to doubt.
I voted for the Unity party largely to make this point. I live in Colorado. That’s “shooting myself in the head”?
I heard someone say “Well what if so many voters vote third party that they lose the state?” In this scenario…if Colorado is even close…it’s a fantasy to think they’d still have Pennsylvania, Florida, Ohio, or Texas. There is no path to 270 that doesn’t involve Colorado being firmly blue enough that vote won’t change anything.
I respect the right of people in swing states to vote their conscience as well, but that’s obviously a different consideration. But the vitriol a lot of Dems have without even asking where someone lives is just weird.
Ok. Sure. Myself and millions of others helped get Trump elected. Hopefully you can figure out how to appeal to us next election.
Right. Need to support everyone, universal healthcare, universal basic income, without religion, no with religion, with feminism, with support for men’s rights, with support for immigration, not too much support for immigration, with support for small businesses, without enabling corporate America, and ranked choice voting, and younger people, more minorities, elect a woman, with more communism, no, more socialism, with consequences for the right, with unity for all and put the past behind us etc etc etc.
We get Trump because some entitled fuckers from every. single. camp. (often with conflicting interests) say “earn MY vote” or go to hell. The straight white cis bible thumping camp is voting as a bloc all the time. This is why D can’t get anything done: there is no sparkling unicorn candidate. Sometimes a little better is all you get. Lefties complain about people on the right being single issue voters, then turn around and single issue don’t vote.
Thanks for the nut punch of a president.
For the love of all that is holy, do not assume that they will figure out everything you just typed above from the fact that you didn’t vote for them.
I don’t actually agree with your choice, but I do agree with this:
The Dems can be better, but they choose not to.
So please, if you have convinced yourself that withholding one vote out of tens of millions will somehow send them the message you are trying to send, please also convince yourself that it would be even more effective to drop them a line and let them know how you feel in explicit detail.
https://democrats.org/contact-us/
Same message for everyone else who chose a protest vote on Tuesday. It’s all great to feel like you did the right thing, but maybe now question whether your message will actually be received, and be sure that it does. Otherwise you put Trump in for literally nothing.
I like your reasoning. I’m a libertarian myself, so I get it.
But I held my nose and voted Democrat the last two Presidential elections because I think Trump is a uniquely dangerous person. I hate the “this time is different” argument, but I actually think it applied this time.
That’s fair and I respect your decision.
I was excited about Obama. For whatever reason I thought he’d be a lot more progressive than he ended up being.
I phone banked for Clinton. Was never a fan, but I agree that Trump was/is uniquely dangerous.
I voted for Biden. He was explicitly picked to be the conservative balance to the liberal firebrand, Obama (😬), but hey vote Blue no matter who, right?
The counterpoint to this thinking, for me: Where does this end? Do I stick it out until the next “unimportant” Presidential election? At what point am I just enabling the Dems to run rightward to pick up imaginary centrist Republicans while ignoring the left and the working class?
I doubt the DNC will learn their lesson from this election. I hoped they’d learn from a win, but I pray they take this loss to heart. The idea that Republicans somehow convinced people that they’re the party of unions and the working class is laughable, but if they could do that, that says Dems aren’t making the difference in people’s lives that they should be.
I was born and raised Jewish, going to Hebrew school in addition to English school from preschool to 14. The horrors of the Holocaust and all it’s trauma was shoved down my throat at far too young of an age to be appropriate. Never again means so much to me, one of my deepest held beliefs. Never again isn’t just Jews but any group hunted down for their ethnicity (not to mention all the other undesirables murdered in the Holocaust, such as the disabled and queer).
What’s going on in Gaza is a Holocaust. I can’t live with myself and sleep at night if I vote for trump or Harris, because materially for Gaza they are the same. I voted third party. In 2020 I held my nose and voted for biden. I’m disgusted with myself for doing so. He managed to be worse than I could ever imagine. And the liberals were out to fucking brunch for the past four years.
I will drink liberal tears all damn day long. They can whine and cry and carry on like entitled spoiled rotten children all they want. They were warned that they would lose if they continued to pursue the path they were on and that’s exactly what happened and I have zero remorse for it. And for the record, I’m a visibly queer woman who’s experienced a lot of physical violence in my life for being queer.
Hahaha I bet you’re the type to report your latino neighbors who voted for trump to ICE.
Typical blue MAGA liberal bullshit.
Go be mad at the democrats instead of voters who refuse to vote for horrible genocidal candidates. They had a whole fucking presidency to pick a successor to biden and they still managed to lose in a landslide it’s so fucking pathetic it would be funny if their political malpractice and brainwashed blue no matter who voters weren’t so fucking dangerous.
If blue no matter who worked, the Democrats would have won. So that’s obviously not a thing.
so just to recap here, and I’ll put the facts in bullets.
- you’re Jewish
- refused to support literally the only candidate that had majority support
- installed a LITERAL NAZI as president through sheer incompetence
- did it all to make people suffer
- will take great enjoyment out of the suffering
you sound like a cool dude. I really hope you have a positive experience with the Nazis when they open those concentration camps.
oh you thought those camps were for them. no, those camps are for us.
You know Jews voted en masse for trump because they want to glass Palestine a little faster, right?
Also, go back to brunch you piece of shit liberal.
I didn’t vote for a fascist. The democrats ran a PIECE OF SHIT CANDIDATE THAT LOST IN A LANDSLIDE. Go fucking blame the party that REFUSES to hold a primary that they don’t fuck with since 2008.
So you voted to have it happen in the USA and Ukraine too as well as Gaza? 😅
What have you done except be out to brunch for the last four years? Fucking liberal trash
It’s important to remember the Holocaust happened largely because people didn’t do enough to stop it. “First they came for the Communists…” and all that. The Nazis were a fairly minor party for years, but they were able to consolidate power because their opposition wouldn’t rally against them. Coalition requires compromise.
I am not happy with the Democrats either, but they were the better option. And abstaining from a decision between bad and worse doesn’t help anyone. By allowing Trump to take power again when we might have stopped it, we are all responsible for what comes next.
Another moron who doesn’t know how voting works. Take all the third party votes, give them to Harris in swing states, and she still fucking loses the popular vote and electoral college in a landslide. And most the senate! And likely the house too! GREAT JOB OUT TO BRUNCH LIBERALS!
HARRIS LOST BECAUSE THE DEMOCRATS REFUSED TO RUN A CANDIDATE THAT WENT THROUGH A REAL PRIMARY SINCE 2008!
It’s true that Trump had a simple majority of votes, but you can win the electoral college and lose the popular vote; this is typically what happens for Republican victories. Kamala lost MI, PA, and WI by 3% or less. If those had flipped, she would have had her 270. You are right that third party votes wouldn’t have been enough though. The bigger problem was reduced turnout from people not voting at all.
The fact that Republicans also managed to do so well in Congress to me suggests that the problem for Democrats wasn’t really just their choice for presidential candidate. Voters really care about immigration and inflation right now, and those tend to be stronger for Republicans.
Russian bots mostly, but also privileged people who think that a Trump presidency won’t affect them
Don’t underestimate the pissed off poor. The Dems kept telling them that things weren’t so bad while the Reps said they’d change things.
The changes will of course be worse, but if things are clearly shit, and someone keeps telling you that it’s not that bad, you start to despise those people even if they’re the better choice.
Do you have any examples of Dems telling people things werent bad? The closest things I can think of is dems saying we know things are bad but we are working on them and they are getting better. It feels like a republican talking point that dems think things are good.
“Bidenomics” and “Economy is doing great” and anything and everything involving the word “GDP”
Don’t underestimate the pissed off poor. The Dems kept telling them that things weren’t so bad while the Reps said they’d change things.
Okay, but those aren’t the single-issue Gaza voters OP was asking about.
Frankly, they should’ve been what OP was asking about though, because they were a way bigger factor (and always are, in every election, despite the Democrats abject refusal to acknowledge it).
also privileged people who think that a Trump presidency won’t affect them
I’m a privileged person who probably won’t be directly affected by another Trump presidency. Probably. Hopefully.
But anybody who genuinely holds that opinion, and doesn’t care what happens to everybody else, may as well just be a full-on trumper.
I know people who voted neither candidate because Trump was horrible and Harris was pro-choice. Single-issue voters are the death of democracy. Full stop.
Thing is you can actually be radical. In a healthy democracy you need some small fringes to exert pressure, e.g. civil right activist groups and so on so that the government isn’t able to just completely ignore portions of the population.
But to be effective as an activist you have to know when to put on pressure and when to unite. Malcolm X or Fred Hampton didn’t go vote for David Duke just because MLK was a pacifist.
This was the wrong time to pressure because as always activists dramatically misread the levels of actual support for their cause and dramatically underestimate how much support the general populace gives the opposition.
Most people don’t even agree on the very basic facts of reality or that such a thing can even exist, how tf are you gonna expect to convince them of anything? What you gonna write some long post on it? Good luck - they cannot read.
Humanity is just a dogshit species. To even agree that we shouldn’t stab ourselves in our proverbial balls with a proverbial milwaukee power drill - it takes like generations and most people are always for the status quo and the worst possible version of everything is the default we have to work from and with, it’s just a cruel joke and it would be more existentially comforting if progress was outright impossible.
It was absolutely the correct time to pressure. Harris/dnc/biden miscalculated.
I said months ago that we were going to “single issue” our way to Trump 2.0, and I’ve never ever wanted to be wrong more than when I said that.
Edit: Updated with receipts.
nearly all the single-issue voters on the right vote in lock-step unison, and have for decades.
democrats and progressives seem to just toss in the towel if they aren’t getting everything they want, right now.
it takes time to build something great, it takes but a moment to destroy it all. welcome to total destruction.
Everything being ‘dont genocide’ just so we’re clear here. I dont particularly think that was a huge ask. Nor do i think effective economic policies changes for the working class.
My punk rock lifetime bay area liberal 45 yr old friend voted Trump bc Israel.
Only in a two-party system. Locked in a two party system is the death of it. At least introduce multiple rounds, to democratically elect the 2 contestants for the final round…
Sometimes being a single issue voter happens because people just care that much about that one issue. But there’s a natural tendency for anyone’s decision to come down to one thing. Complex issues are complex, most people don’t know what’s right. But then they do have ONE thing that they consider black-and-white, so that influences their choice. It gives them something they feel they can say to others “I just can’t bring myself to vote for someone who XYZ…”
Because let’s face it: no one wants to hear your entire list of political calculations. People’s choices are absolutely influenced by thoughts of how they’ll justify themselves to the people they know. And having one big pithy thing to say is more convenient than a subtle position based on a score of factors.
Humans are social, emotional, idiosyncratic shortcut machines, not logic engines.
