Image Transcription:
A tweet from the George Takei Twitter account which states:
"A Democrat was in the White House when my family was sent to the internment camps in 1941. It was an egregious violation of our human and civil rights.
It would have been understandable if people like me said they’d never vote for a Democrat again, given what had been done to us.
But being a liberal, being a progressive, means being able to look past my own grievances and concerns and think of the greater good. It means working from within the Democratic party to make it better, even when it has betrayed its values.
I went on to campaign for Adlai Stevenson when I became an adult. I marched for civil rights and had the honor of meeting Dr. Martin Luther King. I fought for redress for my community and have spent my life ensuring that America understood that we could not betray our Constitution in such a way ever again.
Bill Clinton broke my heart when he signed DOMA into law. It was a slap in the face to the LGBTQ community. And I knew that we still had much work to do. But I voted for him again in 1996 despite my misgivings, because the alternative was far worse. And my obligation as a citizen was to help choose the best leader for it, not to check out by not voting out of anger or protest.
There is no leader who will make the decision you want her or him to make 100 percent of the time. Your vote is a tool of hope for a better world. Use it wisely, for it is precious. Use it for others, for they are in need of your support, too."
End Transcription.
The last paragraph I find particularly powerful and something more people really should take into account.
This is what happens when you give your vote away for free. Make the fuckers fight for it. Organize a group on social media that promises to vote for anyone who can meet your demands and canvas for this group. Get enough people and you can form your own slate even.
https://www.vanityfair.com/style/2018/05/george-takei-sexual-assault-accuser-retracts-claim
It’s been 5 years. He’s not a rapist.
What exactly is your alternative?
Have 4, 8, 12 years of Repubican rule in the hopes of getting a better Democrat? 4 years if Trump was awful enough, and did quite a lot of long-lasting damage.
If you’re offering me the certainty of a lot more long-lasting, hard to undo damage against the uncertain hope of a bit of progress, you’ll forgive me if I accept the certainty of the status quo combined with pushing for voting method reform at the state and local level.
My father beat me when I was a kid, he ran for child services president and I voted for him. I heard that the other guy beat his kids more, so I really had a moral duty to vote for my dad. You guys, it’s really important to vote for the guy who beats his kids less.
How? It is exactly what it sounds like when people say to vote for the “lesser evil”, especially in this post.
If there was absolutely no chance for some one other than the two child beaters getting elected, then it would make sense. But that’s not the case for the US presidency.
Actually it doesn’t matter how much he beat you when the other guy molested and raped woman.
My local mayor wants to increase funding for the public transit, but he didn’t say ACAB, so I’m not gonna vote for him even if the other other guy is gonna slash the public transit funding by half 😤😤
You make a good point.
The person you responded to also makes a good point.
There’s no one-size-fits-all (all voters or all elections) solution on this one.
All we can ultimately do is encourage our fellow voters to open their minds, learn all they can about the issues and candidates, and make the best use they feel they can with their right to vote.
Shaming someone for not voting for your candidate is a great way to repel them from your camp long term. Respecting their decision, even if you disagree with it, sets a much better example of the sort of level-headedness you’d likely want people to associate with your causes.
Does shaming people for saying slurs repel them from your camp long term?
Is it acceptable to respect someone’s decision to say r*ard because it sets a better example of the kind of level-headedness the anti-slurs camp wants people to associate them with?
Like it or not, shame, not fitting in with the group, is a motivating force.
“Democrats have always fucked me over but I keep voting for them because the alternative is actively more harmful”.
No, I don’t find it touching nor powerful. This is a celebration of the failure of the 2 party system.
Winner takes it all it the biggest bullshit ever. Anything but popular vote is worth jack shit.
No, I don’t find it touching nor powerful. This is a celebration of the failure of the 2 party system.
Liberal-splaining strategic voting is how my socialist brain interprets this. This isn’t as condescending as others but yeah it’s not powerful or touching it’s a sad coping mechanism, even sadder because he’s been so negatively affected personally by it.
When you roll out the feasible alternative let me know. Until then, I’ll be voting for the candidate whose rallies don’t break out in chants of “kill f*ggots, kill all transgenders”
That word “feasible” is doing a lot of work. No doubt the politician I want to vote for won’t be “feasible” for some reason, and the one you want me to vote for is.
In the general election the “feasible” candidate is always the Democratic nominee, so you should never have any argument about it at that stage. Meanwhile in the primary people try to use that sort of “feasibility” / electability argument against farther left Dems, but it is total nonsense and can be completely ignored at that stage.
We need to get RCV passed at the state level in at least 33 states, then we can get rid of FPTP at the federal level, and actually force some change
oh if it’s that simple then lets just do that. surely we can bang it out in a weekend.
What might help to effect this change? If I’m not mistaken, a number of states are almost under single-party rule, particularly those that might benefit most from this kind of change.
Is it something that may be built up from a municipal to county to state level to then establish on a national level?
force some change
RCV favors moderates and promotes political stability. That’s kinda the opposite of a revolution.
When you figure out a means of political activity that doesn’t involve refining the capitalist regime as it stands, let me know. Until then, I won’t be voting for candidates who help slaughter innocent people around the world.
That is part of the calculus people are making when they express the idea they won’t vote for candidate A for reasons X and candidate B for reasons Y.
It is how voters can express their political will during the primary and electoral process. If a candidate can modify their position on X or Y because of voter concerns, that would be a meaningful part of the democratic process influenced by the voters. They’re trying to forge that alternative.
The real unfeasible alternative is actually just doing nothing and letting the donors buy their selected policies and voting for the lesser evil between them. That is just supporting the status quo.
World’s oldest current democracy. It also has all the oldest flaws. USA and UK are stuck with a system that will always end up with two parties filled with wildly different politicians. Biden and AOC are both democrats. Trump and Romney are both republicans. What does each party stand for? Who the fuck knows? Republicans haven’t stood for anything for the last 10 years or so. Democrats have countered all that with “being normal and not rocking the boat”. Democrats are acting like your mom after her boyfriend beat her. “We can work something out later when we’ve all calmed down”.
What is really happening today is that the US has one party with politicians who actually do the job. The other party is an insane asylum where the craziest bitch gets the most attention. This means that every time one party has a popular vote the other party gets even more insane. And the first party, not wanting to alienate voters try meet half way. This is like your mom begging you to talk to your stepdad after he beat your sister. That’s how America got so far into neoliberalism, fascism and one election away from dictatorship. Multi party system works because it forces compromise and even if the government changes it won’t swing as hard as it did after Obama.
Democrats are acting like your mom after her boyfriend beat her. “We can work something out later when we’ve all calmed down”.
This is like your mom begging you to talk to your stepdad after he beat your sister
I hope this isn’t character development.
Very tangential, but why do Americans like to claim they’re the workds oldest democracy? That’s just so incredibly untrue to the point of being funny.
Oldest existing democracy, not the first one to ever exist. Here is an article that discusses the basis and legitimacy of this claim: https://www.valuewalk.com/top-10-countries-with-oldest-democracies/
Because depending on what exactly one means when they say it, it’s arguably true that it is in fact the oldest extant liberal democracy, that’s why. There are a lot of potential objections, many of which are perfectly valid, but I’m not here to defend the proposition, I am simply telling you why people say it.
I mean aside from San Marino, what others are there that are older and still around?
Apart from the main point he made, and I agree with it, I would love to hear more about his meeting Dr. King. That must be a very interesting story.
Dr. King was a Star Trek fan. He convinced Nichelle Nichols to stay on the show when she was toying with leaving to further her career. It’s quite possible that Dr King was the fan meeting Mr Takai.
I live in a state that has reliably , by a wide margin, given all of its electoral votes to the same party for over 40 years. Voting third party and helping them get 20% of the popular vote so they have a spot in the debates next election is literally the only way for my vote to matter.
There aren’t any third party Presidential candidates in America who deserve 20% of the popular vote. None of them put any effort into winning congressional seats or pushing alternative voting to make themselves viable. They’re just a bunch of grifters and fools who only show up every four years to beg for donations instead of doing anything useful to fix our political system.
That’s because unless they get rid of the first-past-the-post system, it’s 100% wasted.
Unfortunately, FPTP also keeps the existing dominant parties complacent in only having one enemy, so they don’t actually have to try very hard. So changing it is unlikely to gather a lot of steam, either. “Lesser evil” sucks, but is ironically a lesser evil than just throwing away the vote entirely.
I disagree with this mindset.
In a purely hypothetical scenario say 10% of people vote for the third party candidate, and this candidate has policies which neither of the two main parties have, say more green policies. When the results come in and one of the main parties lose by 5%, they’re going to start thinking about adopting a few more green policies to capture some of that third party vote for the next election.
Voting third party can absolutely change the policies of the main parties, it happened in the UK with UKIP - a party which had less than 10% of the vote and no chance of a majority, but it spooked the big parties enough that they promised a referendum on EU membership.
He does. A “protest vote” is the same thing as throwing away your vote for a third party in the general election for president.
He doesn’t mention protest votes though, only not voting out of protest, which is something entirely different imo. Not voting can be interpreted as satisfaction with the status quo, while a protest vote is the opposite, a clear statement of rejection of all available choices. Not voting is quiet approval, a protest vote an active display of discontent.
Also, I disagree that a vote for a third party is a protest vote. I usually vote for a fringe party, but I’m not doing so to protest the system or ruling parties, but simply because I think they are the best candidates.
Finally I don’t agree with the idea that I am throwing away my vote by voting for an unpopular candidate. If anything, I am doing the opposite, I am making my will known. The people who decide that this vote has no worth are the ones throwing away my vote and they are the ones undermining democracy.
Wild how he doesn’t even mention the possibility of voting for a third party.
Why would he? The US voting system makes third party candidates an impossibility. It’s not a viable option.
To elaborate a little further: Our First Past the Post system makes third party candidates a spoiler candidate for the party they most closely resemble
Say you’ve got 3 people running for a position. Person A and Person B are fairly similar but differ in some key points, Person C is the exact opposite of Person A.
The election happens and this is the result: Person A gets 30%, Person B gets 30%, and Person C gets 40%. Person C wins, even though 60% of people didn’t want Person C.
This is why third party candidates are usually considered “spoiler candidates”
I think that logic is employing the “best of two evils” ideology again. People should vote on the person that better represents them and person C is the one that represents most people. Voting against people they dislike is not the basis of democracy!
Well, sorta but also not really.
Neither party seems to have any interest in reforming the voting system to something more representative. So in that way I guess you could say they are colluding, but more reasonably they simply share a common incentive.
But it really is the system itself that makes third party candidates basically impossible. It incentivises people to vote strategically, not for the party they want but rather against the party they don’t want. That system is eventually sure to collapse into a two-party system.
I understand that. What baffles me is how willing he is to accept the FPTP system they have in the US, especially with his history. Given the beginning of his tweet, you’d think he’d conclude with an appeal to reform the system, to make it viable to vote for third parties. Instead, he acts as if the system was a constant of the universe, not a man made one that can quite easily be changed. He lays down the perfect argument for a reform of the system, without actually speaking out in favor of it. Thats whats wild to me.
And who should be the one to actually do the reforming? Everyone always asks for reform in the system but no one actually wants any specific entity to do it.
Bernie Sanders was the best-positioned potential third party candidate in probably the last 50-100 years. Why, then, didn’t Bernie run as a third party candidate? Because it’s not a viable strategy in the FPTP way we run elections here. He knew that it would be the worst option.
There isn’t a viable “other way”.
To make it true? That would be the federalists and the democratic republicans. To keep it true? Well that would be the winner-takes-all system the US has. Blaming a single entity for systematic issues will never work the way you want it to.
If the democratic party died tomorrow, a new party would take its place and it would be just as terrible as you believe the DNC is now.
