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i literally said i would hate to see trump win: i don’t see how that makes me a “trumpy”
gender isn’t binary, sex isn’t binary, and the us needs to veer drastically towards socialist policies if it wants to keep from tearing apart at the seams
what shibboleth would you like me to pass to validate that i am not in fact a secret right-winger, and am in fact just somebody who isn’t a terribly big fan of genocide?
democrats have been rightfully decrying the right’s refusal to condemn the countless moral failings on their side of the aisle for almost a decade now, but the thing that finally has the left circling the wagons is a literal genocide?
are you feeling okay?
Then I assume you are voting for Biden if you are in a swing state, right?
please see previous comment:
Voting in Biden again signals to the democratic party that their base are willing to accept genocide. Are you fine with that?
Hate to break this to you but they do not hear you and they never will. Not voting or voting for a third party DOES NOT change the party platforms of the two major parties. Period. If it did, you would have seen major changes when Ross Perot took a massive chunk of votes. Twice. Guess what didn’t happen? The Democrats at least have a good chunk of them wanting military support for Israel to end. And allowing Trump to be president will do nothing but absolutely make things worse in Gaza. Are you fine with that? Because that is what you are calling for. What you are doing is pushing for an even worse genocide. Good job.
Instead, maybe stop focusing your energy on inaction and pushing for others to waste their energy also not acting. Push for systemic changes to our voting. Many localities have implemented alternative voting methods that are not first past the post and two states have as well. Push for more of that. Push for an increase in the number of House seats and push for states to have proportional voting to select their House members. Push to make the electoral college toothless. There are initiatives for all of those. Focus your energy on those so we are not forced to pick between a turd and a shit sandwich. What you are doing changes absolutely nothing and only helps the candidate furthest from your views.
That said, if you are not in a swing state, vote for whatever presidential candidate you want. Nobody fucking cares unless you are in a swing state. Still push for al those things I mentioned in my previous paragraph though.
You’re arguing that your vote doesn’t matter. If that’s true, why vote at all?
Your vote can’t simultaneously be important enough to swing an election, and insignificant enough that the democratic party is fine to just ignore it. So which is it?
There is something called nuance. Does your vote matter? In many cases it does. Does it always? Of course not. Does it always have the effect you intended? Also of course not. Let’s go through some examples.
You’re in a first past the post election system in a tight race between the main two candidates and your preferred candidate has zero chance of winning the election. One of the major candidates holds positions closer to your own but they are doing something you find pretty shitty. The other major candidate would absolutely do the same but even worse and has positions you find horrible. You take a principalled vote and vote for your preferred candidate who has no chance of winning. The candidate you find to be worse wins. Voting for the major candidate who is closer to your positions is important here. Taking the principalled action made the situation you didn’t like much worse and you have someone in office withe horrid positions on issues. The major candidate who lost takes a look at their shitty action and realized that they lost some votes for it but sees that they would lose more votes if they did not do it.
You’re in a first past the post election system and the plurality of voters suggest which candidate a few electors vote for. History and polling show that the election is not going to be close at all and one of the candidates is going to win by more than 10%. Same candidates as the other situation. The importance of your vote is pretty minimal in this specific election because your vote has little chance of affecting the outcome. Feel free to do a protest vote.
You are in a place where there is ranked choice voting. Rank candidates to your heart’s content.
Most people are in the second category, a good chunk are in the first category, and a few are in the last one. If you are in that second category and you don’t see the point in voting for a presidential candidate or want to vote for someone with no chance, go for it. If you are in a swing state, vote strategically by voting for the candidate who has a chance that most closely fits your policy positions. If you are lucky enough to be in a state with ranked choice, put who you want as your top choice then rank down the line.
Candidates are not just one issue. So yes, your vote can be simultaneously important to swing an election but you may also hold a position that is unimportant enough so as to be ignored in the party platform. No candidate can have the perfect position for every single voter. As a for instance, I support Medicare for All and have volunteered in campaigns pushing for it locally. I have voted for candidates who do not support it but the candidate they are going against wants a system extremely far away from anything resembling Medicare for All. Sitting the election out or voting for a candidate with no chance means that the candidate who is furthest from my policy position has a better chance of being elected. Not only that but the candidate getting a better chance at winning also wants worse environmental protections, worse worker protections, worse healthcare for women, worse rights for the LGBT community, etc. If your chosen progressive candidate does not win the primaries, vote for the most progressive candidate who can win the general election. Until our voting system changes, that is the best we can do. Thankfully there is at least some progress in changing voting systems like in Maine and Alaska but it is not an option for most.
If you’re in a safe seat, then no they don’t care about your vote as much, so they don’t care about your protest vote as much.
If you’re in a swing seat, then they care about your vote more, and therefore your protest vote has more weight.
Democrats caring about your vote is by definition inexorably linked to how powerful your vote is.
But since we’re talking hypotheticals, if there’s another genocide in 5 years, why would the democrats spend political capital to prevent it if they have solid data to show that they don’t need to bother and can still win reelection?
That they can just point out how much worse the republicans might be in this scenario? You think Trump will be the only bad potential president? You think if you can get past this one election that US politics will return to “normal”? There’s more or less always going to be a Trump from now on.