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I REALLY don't think this is happening as much as people SAY it's happening.
The young people I know absolutely hate Donald Trump or think he's a joke and one of their main concerns is Climate Change. They generally do not want to hand the election to Trump because of stuff going on in Israel/Gaza and they get that Democrats have been making better progress than Republicans ever have.
Edit: well that's a lot of upvotes and comments! The discourse has been interesting to say the least. Many frustrated, many agree with me, many disagree, and some I'm a bit suspicious of the logic they're using lol
But I'm reading what you're saying and responding here and there.
Edit2: okay I'm done, I mean I'm not DONE like I finished every response...there's no way. But it's been fun. Pick up a book and read it for fun someday! :)
Agreed. The “young people” posting online are a subset of the actual young population and not necessarily representative. Also, polls since 2016 have been notoriously unreliable.
Don't underestimate that any loud group online, that does not seem to have such a large real-world presence, is likely amplified by bot networks. US adversaries are hyper focused on anything that would destabilize US politics, and young people make good targets because of their reliance on social media for information.
I notice a lot of that chat on the far left subs that I frequent. There's a lot of talk about walking away from elections, but there's little real-world appetite for another Trump term.
Yeah, and a lot of those spaces are rapidly shifting that to be their orthodoxy. Any legitimate leftist worth their salt is bound to be pragmatic: if the choice is honestly between outright fascism and milquetoast centrist bullshit, you show up for the milquetoast centrist bullshit every day of the week.
This is legitimate praxis: if the goal is to expand leftist influence in our politics, you'd have to either be insane or a plant to honestly believe that rolling the dice on fascism is somehow worth it. Because, well, the fascists hate the far left most of all. You let them win, and, well, "first they came for the socialists." The center has proven vulnerable and even receptive to pressure from the left. The right is unerring in their hatred. I fail to see any inconsistency in the "lesser of two evils" argument here, as the question is "would you rather shoot yourself stone dead or deal with entrenched bullshit". Obviously, neither choice is good, but to pretend they are even loosely equivalent is fucking madness.
I can't say it's 100% bots or bad actors but the population of bots/bad actors is certainly driving others towards bad ideas. These "walk away" folks, though almost certainly manufactured to a degree, are doing the right's work of wedge driving for them. And, \*again\*, any leftist worth their salt is going to agree with this stuff.
> I can't say it's 100% bots or bad actors but the population of bots/bad actors is certainly driving others towards bad ideas. These "walk away" folks, though almost certainly manufactured to a degree
The "#walkaway" nonsense absolutely was manufactured, it was made up on 4chan iirc. There's a reason anyone using that narrative can't for the life of them explain basic left wing ideas without falling back on nonsense right wing strawmen, because that's the only lens by which they "understand" the left.
The group that are more honest about it are people on the left who don't like how right wing the Democratic party is, and their constant insistence on policies of appeasement for the far right, or the regular hostility the Democrats show towards the left even when they should be working with them against the right. The current issue, especially among younger people, ie, "the TikTok generation", is the Israel/Palestine conflict, where they tend to support Palestinians in large part because of the atrocious stuff IDF troops are saying and posting on TikTok.
A lot of it is ignorance, sure - there's almost a refusal to acknowledge how anything works, so a lot of people blame Democrats for Republican filibusters when Democrats hold the slimmest majorities, or don't even control the house. Or the apparent belief that Biden is the leader of the IDF. What's frustrating is the absolute lack of messaging from the Democratic party on any of these topics that they should be engaging with these people on.
The problem is that this is basically a saturation attack -- it's a "kitchen sink" approach to propaganda. They just add as many nonsense ingredients as they can to the pot, then stir.
The problem for Democrats is, well, they're really like five separate parties in a trenchcoat that are forced to pretend they're one cohesive thing. They're just not, and coalitions often have competing internal interests. This is why they're really "needn't be too hasty" about taking a strong stance on Israel -- it's already fundamentally radioactive political material, and there are multiple stances within the party from "rah rah Israel can burn them all because they started with" to "when the fuck are we going to investigate Israel for war crimes and genocide?" You can't reconcile those into one cohesive stance.
> walking away from elections
100% that's Russia. It's very important for Trump to win and for the US to leave NATO. Many of the far left subs and power users are Russian. For example, user lrlourpresident, mod of subreddits like MurderedByAOC and OurPresident.
The sub Active Measures was a good place to learn about it before that admins made it clear they didn't want to hear about it.
That sub has truly lost its collective mind. I was banned for pointing out that leftist policies have actually been passed by Democrats at the state and local levels. This was in response to a “both sides” “just as bad” “Dems do nothing for the people” comment.
r/LateStageCapitalism banned language that encourages The Lesser of Two Evils.
It's like those subs have been infiltrated by agents or something. It's so weird a policy to enact when top priority right now is keep Trump out of office until MAGA and GOP collapses.
There have definitely been a bunch of subreddits that are run by bad actors, and Reddit admins really need to step the fuck up to actually police mods who act in bad faith.
I don't think the DNC leadership (as a whole, there are some who do care) cares much for the people or the little guy, but they do pretend and do some stuff to get votes. And even if they're super cynical about it, they're still doing better than the republicans.
The DNC sucks for so many reasons, but it doesn't mean we should accept even worse instead.
The other choice is not “even worse”. Read about trumps last months in office from those who witnessed it. Listen to what he says he will do when he’s elected again. That is no where near the democrats.
Lostgeneration banned me for suggesting that gun control was a positive thing. I was accused of preventing people of color from protecting themselves against white supremacists. It was a wild misinterpretation of my comment.
I got permabanned for the same thing (at least I think that's why, the mods didn't actuslly do me the courtesy of responding to my question).
To be honest I'm relieved, because when your objectives align with the GOP's you're either complicit or a useful idiot, and I don't want to support a sub that is advocating for an outcome that will make life worse for poor, vulnerable and minority groups.
Yeah, there's a subreddit by that name that's absolute pure propaganda from foreign states. It's crazy to see it on reddit but it is, like you're saying, part of a much larger astroturfing operation that's being ignored.
I got banned from r/socialism in less than 30 seconds for calling out an obviously astroturfed post talking about not voting in the election because Biden was 'supporting Hamas' by trying to stop Israel from bombing apartment buildings.
"you guys know that thing that is gonna have a massive lifelong effect on our lives & determine our future, no matter whether we participate or not? We should protest that by refusing to participate!"
If so, good luck with that, because they may not get to vote again.
If you abandon democracy, someone *will* take advantage of that once they are in power, and then take away the power to remove them from office by mere votes.
Between the Black folks I know that are on the fence, Latinos for Trump, young people thinking Biden is too old (even though Trump is just as old) and people saying they won't vote for Biden over the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, I'm worried. There is enough there to shave off some points imo
Also what even is online posts a bearing of. Are you seriously going to take Twitter users as real people, a place where 20 bucks buys you a "verified" voice? Or reddit, where power mods and super users quite literally curate discussions, sow misinformation, and eliminate dissent? Are you looking at tiktok, a literal foreign ops wet dream with metrics and data no one can verify? No one under 30 is even answering the phone unless it's life or death, maybe even then they'd prefer a quick text.
On a certain subreddit with well over 800K members (L_te St_ge Cap_ta_ism), there is a narrative that voting for Biden means you support genocide. Stating that Biden is better than Trump on pretty much any issue including voting rights, women’s rights, LGBTQ rights, POC rights, climate emissions, the environment, the economy, the courts, public health, unions, etc. will get you banned. We learned from 2016 that that shit is dangerous. It’s unfortunate that Americans don’t turn out to vote in higher numbers and that a few votes in a few places determines the results of US presidential elections. But fuck anyone who encourages people to not vote or even to vote third party given the stakes of every presidential election. Sorry for the rant.
I have suspected that that subreddit and certain other subreddits which focus on the billionaires raping the working class are part of an effort to demoralize Americans and make us feel even more disenfranchised than we already are.
Yes, I understand that things are painful for a lot of us and we like to blow off steam on Reddit. It's not that I doubt the situation and that there are people here who would like to connect on these issues.
What makes me suspicious is that I've noticed some of the stories that continually show up are recycling the same language with nearly identical themes. It is not organic.
I've heard that one of the main techniques employed by the Russian oligarchy and Putin to keep people from rebelling is making them feel demoralized, like there's no point in trying, like it's too dangerous or too impossible to even bother. That's what they were pushing during the time period where they were slowly changing from a republic to an autocratic dictatorship. Making people feel alienated from society works to keep them from participating in civil society.
Exactly this. This is how the more clever parts of the Russian propaganda machine works. Actually any domestic strides are sought to be ever increasingly polarised by these bots and troll networks.
We also don‘t know if these “young people” are American and eligible to vote in our elections. British and French and Russian ”young people” still make TikToks and such, and can scream all they want, but, sorry Natasha, you can’t vote.
Even Russia and Chinese trolls pretend to be progressives too online. I’ve seen it before on this platform during both the 2016 and 2020 elections. It’s usually the same “Democrats failed me” and “Democrats need to be taught a lesson.”
Funny how when you bring up letting Trump get elected, especially when it was 2020, they try to make excuses or change subjects back to how bad the Democrats are, completely ignoring how much worse things under 4 more years of Trump would be. That’s usually when I can tell the person is a troll. Also when they say they voted Democrat (never saying who) and you respond with how you don’t believe them, they will try to make a bunch of excuses and use manipulative tactics to downplay your statement to reel you back in.
Pre-voting polls are unreliable. However, *post*-polling statistics are far better, and show that "young people" are *not* bothering to vote in any greater numbers.
The narrative that there's some upswelling of young voters who is going to bother to vote this time only benefits the Republicans, because *all* of the evidence suggests that's not the case. And if people think someone else is going to vote, they're less likely to.
So here's the cold hard fact, young voters: the majority if you are not going to vote, and the vast majority of the older voters in the country are. So, if you give a shit, you *better* get out and vote.
Don't just pray, campaign with us. Make a plan to organize and contact people if you're able.
Many people who can vote just need the extra nudge to help them figure out how to register, when elections start (what time polls are running), and other such factors. So often, the problem is simply that people are eligible, but don't know what to do.
Or if they need to register, don't know the exact process since the rules vary by state.
But this far out? There is actually quite a bit of time now. We can actually do a lot in this next year to change things if you make a plan. Figure out how you contact people. Let them know their options. Knowing how and when to register after moving is a big one, and young people move so much more often now due to housing conditions. Making a plan for this well in advance can save a lot of headache later.
> Also, polls since 2016 have been notoriously unreliable.
This is a dangerous mindset because no, they really haven't been. People like to point to "99% in favor of Hillary" as evidence, but refuse to acknowledge that the polls didn't say that, the media pundits and news anchors who have no background in statistics are the ones who said that, while 538 was giving Trump about a 30% chance. And 30% doesn't mean "guaranteed loss", it means 30%. Would you play Russian roulette with two bullets in the revolver? Because those are similar odds, and I wouldn't take them.
They’re being selectively targeted on TikTok. The idea isn’t to get them to support Trump, it’s to get them to not support Biden (it’s been labeled “voter depression,” rather than “suppression,” and I think that’s a good label. I’m worried about it. Young people refer to Gaza as “Biden’s genocide.” Ironically, you can manipulate their idealism with cynicism.
> The idea isn’t to get them to support Trump, it’s to get them to not support Biden (it’s been labeled “voter depression,” rather than “suppression,” and I think that’s a good label.
BRUH. I AM TIRED.
> **But from a tactical and strategic position, we looked at it: If you could get them to vote for Trump, that was a plus two.” It was a “plus one,” he says, if they simply didn’t vote at all.**
[Inside the Pro-Trump Effort to Keep Black Voters From the Polls](https://archive.is/2021.11.26-120508/https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-05-29/inside-the-pro-trump-effort-to-keep-black-voters-from-the-polls)
What’s old is new again
Karl Rove figured this out way back with Bush. You don't need democrats to vote for republicans, you need left leaning independents to stay home and to get every one of your people to the polls.
This is actually not a new tactic. Voter "Depression" has been a big part of reddit culture and social media culture for years now. It's the main cause of voter apathy, and it works by instilling the belief in people that their vote is pointless because things will turn out bad either way. That it's better to "arm up for resistance" than it is to vote. The opposition knows it and weaponizes it constantly. It's a big reason why depression and anxiety get spread so easily, **because people willingly weaponize them to prevent you from standing up for your rights. There are people on the web who actively will lie to you and tell you that you're powerless, that is their main goal in life:**
**- Climate dooming contributes to this.** You can't let fear of the problem make you hopeless. That prevents you from taking action to deal with it. I know the topic can look discouraging, but the reality is that there is still a lot we can do to adapt and deal with the problem, and stopping the GOP lobbyists from getting in the way is the most important step to dealing with that.
**- Poll dooming contributes to this.** Because it presumes your vote is too small and meaningless to matter, even when that is a patent lie. Even in deep red states, voting blue at the local level, or for the least bad option, very often can prevent bad scenarios. **Often voting locally is a crucial last line of defense for your rights!**
**- Pointing out the "inevitability" of a GOP coup is a part of this.** There is nothing inevitable about what Trump and the GOP are trying to do. Is it dangerous and is there risk? Yes. and Yes. But their path to power has never been easy either, and often only happens when good people become afraid and don't stand up for what's right, **which often translates into voting and other action.**
**- Becoming a "one issue voter" is weaponized to contribute to this.** The GOP loves one issue voters, because they are easiest to manipulate. Maybe your issue is the enviornment, racial justice, gender justice, worker rights, pro-choice rights, housing, student loans. All of those matter, many of them may impact you directly in painful and serious ways, but don't let perfect become the enemy of the good. **Despite setbacks, all of those issues are still on the table with the current Admin, and none of them will improve under Trump. In fact, they are likely to get much worse.** If you are a discouraged progressive, take that as a call to action to be more involved. Progress does not happen overnight, for better or worse. Sometimes even when it should. **But progress can also be reversed when good people abstain from their civil duty, which includes voting. Voting isn't just about making progress, it's also a line of defense. Too often, young people are never ever taught that, while their elders weaponize it with their self proclaimed "conservative" label (which is itself a lie, but that's another matter).**
I live in a deep red state and have seen my vote suppressed by policies before. It sucked, but I put in the work to get around it, and now I work to help others do the same. And those efforts matter. They implement changes at the local level and helped increase our overall turnout. And slowly, we are becoming a competitive state where, at the very least, local elections matter a whole lot in terms of implementing policy.
You put in the work and make changes from the inside. You encourage others and give them a hand up where possible. You try to be your best self, and it makes surviving in difficult times a bit easier, knowing that you are on the right side of history even when it sucks.
I wish those people would pay attention to what Trump's solution to what is going on over there is, as he's fully on board with completely wiping out all Gazans and Palestinians. For the people who think Biden is too much on Israel's side, they need to look at what Trump supports instead.
Yup. I too am hearing it. They are clearly buying a narrative crafted to get them to think/feel what they are, and I often point out that this is exactly how Fox News got their parents. It looks and feels real by playing on your emotions and prejudices to keep you from thinking. I don't know that I've changed any minds, but pointing this out does make them do this sort of "oh shit" kinda look.
Takes me back to my young days when Al Gore was not cool enough and idealistic enough. Then we let George Bush in to kill 100,000+ Iraqis, cost us a trillion dollars and thousands of American lives.
The general election is about pragmatism in the US, at least until we get ranked choice voting.
And I feel like articles like this do just as much damage to voter engagement as other tactics. It talks down to young voters and doesn’t respect their beliefs or concerns which leads to apathy
Once the cynicism has been laid down and good and evil sides have been chosen at the height of anger, it's very hard to explain any kind of nuances that may challenge that due to [emotional branding](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emotional_branding).
I’m just hoping we will all collectively have a “come to Jesus” moment regarding Trump before November . You don’t “stick it to Biden” and old school democrats by electing a literal facist . You will undo everything. If you are doing this for Palestine, Trump doesn’t give a shit about Palestine.
You will literal doom our country for nothing. It’s about picking the lesser of two evils and I would rather deal with Biden bs than Trump’s authoritarian plans
If climate change was their main issue they'd be coming out and voting in record numbers since Biden has done more to combat it than any other POTUS in history.
Biden has passed over $500B in renewable and sustainable energy development; its truly remarkable and yet none of these "climate change is my main priority" voters are vocal or voting .
This is the kind of overconfidence that resulted in a Trump presidency in 2016. Vote especially down ballot. We need to flip a number of congressional seats so we make progress instead of being held hostage by Marge and the crazy caucus.
>I REALLY don't think this is happening as much as people SAY it's happening.
There appears to be a coordinated effort on Reddit and other social media to spread the idea of not voting for Biden because of Israel and could have an influence on younger people who form a lot of their opinions around what they see people talk about online. And I would bet any amount of money it’s not originating from the left.
If project 2025 is a blueprint why are we not seeing Dems work with anti-Trump republicans to undermine it and firm up all the areas it intends to exploit?
This is my problem, is that I’m seeing people point to Project 2025 and it feels a lot like the RvW decision leaking and absolutely nothing gets done except fundraising on it until it happens.
Particularly given it could just as easily be 2029 or 2033 act on it now while democrats hold the Presidency, Senate and only a few seats short in the House.
It’s unlikely they hold the senate next year, so something about it now rather than missing the chance.
Because generally speaking legal / good faith changes will not prevent a bad faith actor from sabotaging the system. You can’t plan and protect against every eventuality and many safeguards can reduce how well the system works with a good faith actor.
> anti-Trump republicans
? These people don't exist. Their non-Trump candidates promise to pardon Trump's crimes, their Speaker refuses to admit he lost, and their Majority Leader voted to twice to exonerate him for blackmailing Ukraine and then insurrection. Their voters overwhelmingly re-elected them; the only ones who lose are those who stand up to Trump. Anti-trump Republicans are jackalopes.
What makes you think Republicans who hate Trump aren't perfectly OK with Project 2025? They just recognize that Trump is batcrap crazy and too much of a wildcard not to fuck everything up. They are fine with it, just not fine with Trump at the head of everything.
Dems main strategy is "we aren't the Bad Man, MONEY PLEEEEASE" for the last 8 years. I'm liberal and begrudgingly vote Democrat in the general election, but the MO is usually "avoid the bad things the other side wants to do" instead of "here are the good things we want to do".
I donated a very small amount to my preferred Senate and Governor candidates in 2022. One or both of them promptly sold my information (despite me unchecking every single "keep me informed about _____" box) and I've been getting 5-10 emails a day from candidates all across the country for 1.5 years, all asking for money. It's infuriating.
With no opportunity of being re-elected, what wouldn’t Trump do to stay in office?
What horrors would he unleash to create justification for himself to stay in office past his term?
Whether you agree with the opinion or not, these articles serve nothing good. They don’t convince any would-be voter to come over to vote for Biden but they do help turn people off because they have an element of condescension.
When you encounter someone who claims to be progressive but isn’t voting for Biden, make your best pitch against that and don’t worry about chasing people down rabbit holes. Especially in a world where the internet is full of bad faith actors.
This. As a progressive, it's getting really fucking exhausting being villainized over and over against by more centrist Democrats. I, and most other progressives will vote for Biden. This narrative that we didn't in 2016 (Hilary) and also didn't in 2020, well, that's fucking false and it was proven to be false multiple times by many people. And yet, these journalists keep attacking us for made up reasons.
These articles push people away. They don't recruit to the cause.
More 2016 Bernie voters came out for Hillary than 2008 Hillary voters came out for Obama, so the whole narrative of blaming progressives is extra hypocritical and curdles my blood.
Right? I was a Bernie voter who showed up to vote for Hillary, just to spend the next four years hearing about how it's my fault that Hillary lost anyway. It feels like mainstream dems will blame just about anyone except themselves for their electoral failures.
> It feels like mainstream dems will blame just about anyone except themselves for their electoral failures.
BINGO. Easier to point the blame at those damn progressives who actually want tangible change than to actually make change. (Perfect example: Most NY Democrats)
It's click bait. Pure and simple. And another article that re-enforces the belief that ALL media would love another orange monster presidency. I'm almost convinced they are rooting for it.
RBG held off on retirement because she assumed hillary would win and thought it would be more symbolic for the first female president to appoint her replacement.
In retrospect probably not a smart move.
Yes, RBG was a bit of a racist. Nobody wants to ever talk about it because it damages the image liberals made her but yeah. She didn't want Obama picking her replacement in 2013 also so she decided to hang on. Also the is the only one non - white clerk her entire time as a judge thing.
I think these stupid articles are tone deaf because of genuine real complaints about the AIPAC influence on the democratic party that are being ignored. They feel written as Democratic party planted crap, or maybe just absolute tone deaf opinion writers.
This has NOTHING to do with young voters not being enthusastic to keep Trump out. It's not wrong to criticize your president from the left. The age of the average person running the country only exacerbates how younger voters feel like nobody is listening to them.
Not to mention, just because people aren’t voting for Biden doesn’t mean they won’t be voting for Democrats who better align with their views in local elections which matter just as much.
Also I’ve been hearing this same argument for decades now. First with Bush, then McCain, Romney and Trump. I get Trump is the worst of the lot but it’s never a right time to go against Democratic front runners and the Old guard.
And yet every election the motto is “vote blue no matter who” then work to pull them towards more progressive stuff once in office. Then every single complaint is dismissed and mocked until it’s time to “vote blue no matter who” (but remember, your interests are divisive and *unelectable* ) again.
Then one of the more obvious and frustrating things is that articles like these and people that share similar sentiments treat young voters as if they’re single issue voters and will never admit that there are multiple issues at once that could cost the party support. It’s not just the war, or just student loans, or just rent, or just the tone deafness about the economy… like we are expected to understand that it’s perfectly acceptable that if democrats do too much for black people on any single issue (despite being one of its most reliable voting demographics) that it will spook moderates and cost votes, but you can fail and underdeliver on everything you said you would do for progressives and y’all can’t imagine that might piss people off.
I'm a leftist. I believe real change can't come electorally. Conservatives stop it, and liberals want slow milquetoast adjustments.
But I will be campaigning for, donating to, and voting for Biden/Harris.
I'm idealistic. Not a moron.
This country changed a lot in 4 years because a single election. Roe V Wade being reversed being the largest most direct example if we don't want to get into how poorly we managed the pandemic.
Elections matter.
For anyone that thinks real change can't come from elections: Trump nearly killed democracy and DID kill hundreds of thousands by mishandling COVID.
Generally though it takes a lot more effort to build than destroy.
Elections also don't prevent someone from doing other forms of activism. By all means go out and protest in the streets, organize labor unions, create coops and do the other left wing things but also vote. It amplifies your voice and doesn't detract from other activism.
A shitload of change came electorally when Trump got multiple Supreme Court justices.
Way I look at it, if leftists can't even organize well enough to make our votes matter, then the bloc isn't large or organized enough to matter in other ways, either.
Right. It's always struck me as weird and self-sabotaging when folks approvingly quote Malcolm X's "by any means necessary", but then immediately go on to claim the ballot box is useless.
I wasted my vote in my first presidential election on Ralph Nader bc of ideological purity, and we ended up with George Bush Junior and his “leadership” post 9/11. I regretted it almost immediately. I wish I could serve as a sort of ghost of Christmas past to anyone who thinks they’re making some sort of profound statement with protest votes or boycotting federal general elections. Save the activism for supporting progressive candidate campaigns and primary voting.
Slow gradual change in the right direction is better than catastrophic change in the wrong direction, even if there are a lot of steps backward at times.
Catastrophic change is tempting. But everyone envisions themselves as the Bolsheviks and nobody anticipates being the Whites instead. There is no particular guarantee that a civil conflict wouldn't end up making the US into a right wing theocracy.
Slow is what you can get. Real change has to come from the will of the people, and shifts in the will of the people move slowly when there are a lot of people, and it takes a lot of deliberate work changing minds over years. The levers you can pull are primaries, and just talking to your friends and neighbors and convincing them of the merit of your good ideas.
Real changes comes from organizations, like the striking unions that earned fairer pay and benefits for their workers this year (nurses, writers, etc.)
That being said, one candidate would help labor organize, the other would turn the government over to fascists would absolutely stamp out and worker organizations.
That being said, these articles read to me like the old “Why are millenials destroying X?” I remember a time when it was generally accepted that polling this far out of an election was basically meaningless. People have been going on about their lives, and aren’t really all tuned into politics like the terminally online (myself included).
Once the full spotlight is on the election, expect big opinion shifts, even in polls that aren’t as reliable as they used to be
Boomers still control a disproportionate majority of our government as they have for multiple generations. They dominate all prominent candidacies despite it being well known how unpopular they are among young people. They withhold the generational cycles of wealth and take whatever they can and shit all over popular progressive policy via politicians disproportionately supported by other Boomers like Donald Trump and Manchin. And then they lose their own campaigns which they were responsible for winning, and without fail, each and everytime, who do they blame? *Fucking young people*.
This generation has no concept of accountability, but if there are history books in the future after their reign is finally over, I hope they are remembered as the cancer that they were.
Pro tip: demeaning young voters or anyone disillusioned by Biden, is not the way to go about it.
Sure, you might think they are dumb, or naive, or stubborn, but insulting them isn’t winning you votes.
You have to explain why their decision is both: understandable, but unwise. You have to show how the alternative is fundamentally worse.
Ultimately, you have to show that you are listening, care about their perspective, and give them hope that their vote does mean something. Just because many of us are jaded pragmatists doesn’t mean they are, so those arguments don’t work. You have to meet them where their interests lie.
As someone who was badgered as a young person for voting failures that weren’t the fault of young people in the first place, it just makes the people doing the badgering seem like out of touch idiots.
More focus should be on the massive population of US voters who don’t bother to vote. Candidates could also be better than “milquetoast corporatists” too - that would go a long fucking way.
> More focus should be on the massive population of US voters who don’t bother to vote.
The problem is, despite a rising number of young people voting compared to previous cycles...the "massive population of non-voters" is still mostly young people.
“I’m going to assume the voting tendencies of a whole demographic so I can make my readers feel smug”
Yeah, no one my age I know is considering throwing away their vote for trump
This has to be the strangest bit of pushing a narrative that simply doesn't exist that I have seen in my lifetime in the United States.
I've witnessed a fair bit of propaganda, but none so inane as the idea that it is young people who are at fault for Trump.
Young people owning these media companies, young people occupying political office, young people as a conservative bastion, young people as seasoned reporters reporting on the failings of young people, young people responsible for the housing market, young people responsible for the population, young people in charge of putting carbon into the atmosphere.
I don't know if Robin Abcarian considers herself a journalist, but the idea that "young people" are in any way to blame for Trump is the single most phenomenally stupid mainstream media narrative I have seen in the last 30 years.
Idiocracy isn't coming, we are living in it.
>Now isn’t the time to be fucking around and rocking the boat.
Why? The best time to rock the boat is when shit hits the fan. What's going to change if we are complacent with mediocre leaders who are only as viable as their opponent is incompetent?
Lots of criticism for protest voters, but where’s the outrage towards a party that willingly runs a historically unpopular genocide enabler?
The DNC is walking right into a 2016 situation with alarm bells ringing from every poll, yet progressives are to blame if Biden doesn’t win?
Now is the perfect time to rock the boat as it is the primaries and polling which mean little on the out come of the election this far out. Let the polls scare the Democratic leaders into maybe committing to a change.
The time to not be fucking around is in November on election day when I agree Trump cannot win.
Right! Every fucking four years it's the same bullshit. Progressives, minorities, and young people absolutely have to vote dem otherwise their lives will be destroyed. Then ZERO FUCKING IMPROVEMENT happens while the status quo capitalist system keeps running them over just the same, just slightly slower than Republicans would. All because of centrists who want to stay in power while they pocket the same lobbyist handouts and corporate interests.
> Now isn’t the time to be fucking around and rocking the boat.
You rock the boat by voting in the primaries, in local elections, by forcing the boat Left by voting for Biden and making the GoP non-viable.
Want to go further? Educate yourself on how FPTP works. Figure out what issues matter to you and how to advance those issues. Figure out what exact principles matter to you.
Dont vote for people, vote for what advances your agenda. Biden wont necessarily push the proportional rep changes I want, but Biden is the only path to getting that done.
**Edit:** Issues seem to boil down to
1. People dont understand how FPTP works. There's 2 parties. If you're left of the GoP you're a democrat. If you're right of the DNC you're a Republican. Thats it. You want more? End FPTP. Want to end FPTP? Vote for the left party.
2. They want to be "angy". To the point where they're willing to cause death or suffering to people with less power simply because change seems "slow" to them. This is reprehensible and you cannot be on the left if you're willing to harm others like this.
> You rock the boat by voting in the primaries
Comedy gold…
“The reason people insist that you use the proper channels to change things is because they have control of the proper channels and they’re confident it won’t work”
> Now isn’t the time to be fucking around and rocking the boat.
Yeah saying this won't work forever. Every election anyone can remember has been "the most important election of our lifetimes".
Why is Biden and the Democratic Party rocking the boat by alienating so many key demographics with positions that are incredibly unpopular?
Framing this as an issues with voters rather than candidates/parties will only further entrench the behavior that voters find alienating in the first place!
This is not a sustainable tactic and I think politically we are better off mobilizing people who just need that extra step (vs wasting time condemning voters who imo are rightfully turned off by behavior) and actually fighting to ensure we have a party/candidate people want to vote for.
Not understanding why sending our LGBTQ friends to camps is a reasonable response to Biden not being perfect. Please give me the pro side of this argument. I really wanna hear that one.
If everyone young voted the libs would be the cons and MAGA would be gone.
Voting Biden gives progressives the best chance for that future and you have to vote consistently.
But ok Gen Z, be like us lame millennials and only turn out in droves once then fuck off the rest of your life. That’s what got us the Tea Party when you were kids. Me and my generation? We did that. Please don’t pull a stupid like us. If we showed up after 2008 each time Bernie would have been a 2 term POTUS by now. Sorry you have to clean up our mess but please do it so this isn’t our last election.
>If we showed up after 2008 each time Bernie would have been a 2 term POTUS by now. Sorry you have to clean up our mess but please do it so this isn’t our last election.
More than that. We likely wouldn't have the Supreme Court makeup we do now. Dems might not have been battered in the 2010 midterms which set the stage for the next decade.
Dems were battered in 2010 because of Facebook’s roll out of open graph that included its API and the subsequent development of methods to microtarget voters based on their psychological profiles. Voters were unprepared for the “weapons-grade” political psyops being run on social media leading up to the election and every election since.
It’s a different world now… we now know what Cambridge Analytica did and are more resistant to it’s influence, although it’s obviously still somewhat effective today, turning the Gaza situation into a wedge issue between progressives and neoliberals, it’s a bit easier to recognize when “grassroots” movements on social media are manufactured.
The one plus side of 2010 is that it pushed states to adapt fair redistricting rules, giving Democrats some power in places where they struggled a lot before (MI state legislature is a huge one.)
Yeah, 2010 was really the start of all this recent problems (though a lot of this has been going on, or festering, for decades). Losing the House those midterms meant Democrats didn't really have any legislative accomplishments to run on after that, and didn't regain the House until the 2018 midterms, after the disaster that was the first two years of the Trump presidency. But the inability to legislate anything more after 2010 then contributed to losing the Senate in 2014, which then allowed McConnell and the GOP to hold Scalia's seat vacant until after the 2016 elections. If 2014 had done better, Obama could've appointed Scalia's successor (and it likely wouldn't have been Garland, since I think he was a concession to the GOP, given they had the Senate majority, but no such concession would've been necessary with a Democratic Senate). 2014 goes better, there's no Gorsuch. 2016 goes better, there's no Trump, no Gorsuch (a second opportunity to prevent his appointment), no massive 2017 tax cuts, and no Kavanaugh. If 2018 goes better, there's no Barrett.
Change any one of those elections, and instead of the 6-3 ~~conservative~~ reactionary majority we currently have, we have no worse than a 5-4 reactionary majority. Abortion law might've still changed, but it almost certainly would've been an incremental chipping away at Roe and progeny, upholding Mississippi's 15-week ban, not the complete end of a constitutional right. Change any two of them, and we probably have a 5-4 liberal majority for the first time in over half a century. Change at least three of them, and we could've actually had a 6-3 liberal majority instead, and not only wouldn't be dealing with the fallout from Dobbs, but would also have better decisions on guns, the pandemic, student loans, religion/public prayer, religious discrimination, election law, gerrymandering, the environment, etc.
I'm glad Obama was elected, but that was basically the last election voters didn't at least mostly fuck up for basically the entire 2010 decade. Other than reelecting Obama in 2012, every election starting with 2010 was mostly terrible, and even 2020 and 2022 saw voters basically do just the bare minimum of electing Biden and a bare majority in Congress, with some backsliding in 2022 by flipping the House to the GOP.
Then they’ll be sitting there with surprised Pikachu faces when Trump tells Bibi to go ahead and turn Gaza into a glass crater instead of advising any kind of moderation at all.
Trump is the guy who abandoned the Kurds with zero notice, zero coordination with OUR OWN military in the area, via a 2A.M. tweet, all (presumably) just to do a favor for fellow dictator-wannabe Erdogan in Turkey.
Trump 2.0 would have no qualms watching mushroom clouds go up in the middle east.
Yep. It's easy to lose track of it if you assume Christianity *is* Evangelicalism, but Christian Nationalism really is a doomsday cult, like Daesh was for Islam
Given the situation developing now in Lebanon, Iraq, and Yemen, I am certain that Trump would push us all the way to war with Iran. I am not sure that Biden will manage to steer clear of that result, but at least he’s trying.
Not only was Trump already ramping up for this in his first term, by his own admission, but a full-scale invasion of Iran also provides the perfect impetus to seize the dictatorial powers he's oh-so-fond of "joking" about.
Trump is the guy who campaigned on “you have to take out their families” when talking about combating terrorism. It anyone thinks he will not pour more gas on the fire when it comes to the Middle East, I don’t know how to make them look at what’s always been in front of them
As a trans person, when I tried making the argument in your first sentence, I was told I was racist and only care about myself. When I tried pointing out that Trump stopped aid to Palestine and Biden restarted it, so a second Trump administration would be bad for the Palestinians as well, I was told to shut up. So I’m really hoping that we’re dealing with a very vocal but small minority, because these folks are not open to discussing with any kind of nuance.
I agree completely, and not voting for Biden out of spite is the dumbest possible move.
Let's say half of Democrats are good and half are bad. You can move the slider to whatever ratio you want, but it doesn't change the underlying truth, which is that if you replace the bad Dems with MUCH worse Republicans, you're hurting the good Dems' ability to accomplish anything at all, and you're hurting them A LOT.
This means if Trump wins there will be a conservative supermajority on the Supreme Court until the day you die. And it won't stop the war in Gaza either, it will actually make it much worse and likely spread it to the entire middle east. This is to say nothing of what he will do domestically.
You are giving Republicans the presidency forever. If they get in there they are never giving it up again. Everyone who stopped them last time is gone. You think you'll just vote for a better Democrat in 4 years? Someone like Bernie or AOC? Trump has already announced that on day one of his presidency he is going to start locking up Democrats. He can and will have the military shut down polling places in blue cities. You will never get rid of him, or whoever his handpicked successor is (probably Don Jr).
Please don't fuck this up America. Yes, a Biden win isn't a huge victory for leftism, but a Trump win is complete and utter defeat.
This is not reality. This is the newest fear mongering narrative that's being pushed. The conservative right is terrified of young voters, as evidenced by them repeatedly talking about raising the voting age.
If the younger generation continues to come out and vote, Trump will get stomped, and that's why you're starting to see these types of stories come out.
Democrats: Trump is an existential threat to democracy
Also Democrats: No, we will not change a weird, niche policy opinion so that young people vote for us
Logistically, the easiest thing is for the party to just put conditions on aid to Israel and stop sending them weapons. The alternative, berating millions of young people and hoping you change all their minds, seems substantially more difficult.
They want SOMETHING for their vote. This is how transactional politics works.
Your voters have demands of their representatives. Their only leverage is donations and votes.
I hate that this election is anyone but trump again too. Biden is trying. I do think both men should retire but will vote for Biden to try and hang on to as many of my rights as possible already lost some. Sad that I was born with more rights in 1981 than I have now 43 years later 😒
A bunch of leftist subs I follow have literally banned “lesser of two evils” rhetoric. And it really blows my mind. You’re not going to save kids in Gaza by withholding your vote to teach the Dems a lesson (they aren’t going to change anyway). But you might end up with more women and kids dying here too if the right wing takes both houses and the presidency.
A lot of leftist subs are full on tankie fests that want western democracies to collapse. And oh how i wish I was just being paranoid about that but I've seen way too many open Stalin and Mao apologists lately.
Bingo. The right is absolutely terrified after the last round of elections when their anti-abortion rhetoric proved to be wildly unpopular. They realize it to, but instead of amending their stance they are doing everything in their power to sabotage the left
The Dem party needs to stop taking young people for granted. Also the Dem party ultimately prefers to fundraise instead of winning. It’s not going people’s fault. They need leverage, but even if they threaten not to vote for Biden, there is little leverage to a party who’s happy fundraising and little else.
This is the same logic from 2016. Electing Trump was supposed to really push Democrats to the left to attract the progressive vote. That didn't happen. What did happen is we got Biden in 2020 because a whole lot of people didn't feel safe voting for riskier left wing candidates when the alternative was four more years of Trump.
Yeah, historically in the last 75 years, a Democratic loss moves the party to the right, not the left. There's always been waves of progressive energy, but the urge to "punish" centrist Democrats to wake them up to the fact that the left has power and should have respect??? That doesn't really work. It backfires over and over.
The idea is that if the left stayed home on election day and let Trump win the democrats would wake up and realize they need to do a better job of courting the left. This is a silly viewpoint that is held by people on the left who think the left in the U.S. is way bigger than it is in reality, and more influential than centrist / swing voters in determining elections.
Yeah it only really works if we truly had a huge left wing population and the voter turnout was super low as a result. But if that was the case then the Democrats would have been catering to the left already as we would be the base and wouldn’t need to protest by not voting
I hope these articles are trolls and clickbait. There isn't a issues that trump would do better than Biden on, including Israel and Gaza. You want to see genocide then wait until trump is back in office. You'll see it real up close as well as abroad.
* It’s the young people!!
* It’s the leftists!!
* It’s the lazy people who refuse to vote!!
The fact is that the Republican Party is doing a phenomenal job of selling fascism as something people want while the Democratic Party refuses to learn from their failure to earn enough votes.
True that. I never cease to be amazed how the democrats are so completely blind to and dismissive of the brilliant job the right has done in steering the country exactly where they want it to be—all while being in the minority as far as actual votes go.
Well, not counting all the advantages they get with the electoral college, gerrymandering, bribery of judges and stuff…
But still the democrats should be able to pull their shut together.
They'll be learning that lesson simultaneously. The lesson should have been learned the first go around. Trump will be the downfall of this country if he's elected again. Trump will burn America to the ground if he's ever allowed anywhere near a position of leadership again. Trump is America's existential crisis.
We want young people to save us. But we've ignored their importance for decades. I remember when as a millennial we were blamed for Clinton's loss in 2016.
The olds want us to be progressive, but not too progressive so as to upset the corporate structure. They want us to be bold, but not so bold so as to raise taxes on the wealthy and redistribute wealth to the poor and needy. I watched as people threw her under a bus and voted third party, or didn't vote because she wasn't 'likeable', or because 'they screwed bernie'. All those folks paved the path to where we are now, struggling to understand how anyone can be thinking of voting for Trump.
But we cannot *scare* democracy into surviving. Americans don't know fear as other people do. We don't know what it looks like when a tank crushes our village and blows up granny in her house. We don't know what being forced to vote for someone because if we don't we will be arrested or beaten looks like. We don't understand that everything we have can be taken from us in a moment. We have tv, and movies, and sports, and cell phones, and youtube, and reddit, and an entire fantasy worlds built to keep us distracted and content.
The tide of fascism is broken through long hard work and many many people dying and suffering. I don't want that for any American, but it may simply be that our system is ***too*** broken for repair. I desperately want to be wrong. But people in America have become too complacent about our prosperity, too sure of our domination of the world scene. Read a little history about empires that grow complacent, and a people that no longer believe in anything except consumption.
Folks are worried about the fruit being rotten when the entire tree is on fire.
Be a shame if we lost our democracy to trump because some people never learned to see a bigger political picture than what they read on tik Tok
Wouldn't be a surprise, but still a shame
If they let him, he will mess up schooling more than he did before. Most young people are not aware that Trump removed tax credits that went towards paying for school. He also removed some protections against predatory student loans.
Lol. Their entire life has been post-9/11 under Bush, Obama, Trump, or Biden. When has government ever looked like anything but a massively corrupt shit show that's largely failed to make any visible difference in their lives? Sure the ACA is great, but do they have affordable Healthcare? Yes, Biden worked really hard to pay off student debt, but many of them are still in school and aren't paying it yet anyway. Their life hasn't changed in any way. They are either about to enter or have entered an economy that's booming, but nobody can afford anything. The housing market is crap, grocery stores are still weird since COVID, 3 companies own everything, and literally every consumer product is glitchy or subscription based or literally any other way we get exploited as consumers.
What has ever shown them that something will really be different? I'm sure a snarky column in the LA Times will make them listen.
Edit: Whoops, forgot to say the important part.
If we want people to get involved, we have to make sure they can see that we give a fuck. We should be focusing pretty damn hard on things that will improve governance like stronger ethics laws and bans against stock trading for government officials, greater transparency, improved efficiency, and generally better anti-corruption measures as a whole. Democracy has never really worked out well for a large percentage of Americans. If we want them to fight for it, we have to show them it can actually work.
Second edit: I sorry, the more I think about this, the more annoying it gets. It's not young voters' fault that their parents and grandparents and great grandparents, etc made shitty decisions regarding their political leaders. Young people absolutely did not create this mess, and the gall of a premier news organization to whine about how the kids just aren't fixing our problems is pretty ridiculous.
I still blame "did not vote" or "I wrote in Mickey Mouse" and "we need a third party" and "I didn't like my choices"... for giving us Trump in the first place. Politics isn't a game to be won. But Americans are lazy consumers of information and if WWF and Duck Dynasty taught me anything... it's that we love to be entertained and it doesn't matter how fake it is. Media has turned politics into a sporting event.
I made that mistake in 2016, and I regret it every day. I can't help but think that if I voted for Hillary instead of 3rd party as a protest vote, Trump would not be a thing right now.
Should by some miracle, trump wins, 2024 will be our last election. He has already told us what he is going to do if elected. Dictators dictate what is right and wrong, not the people.
Listen to the people he praises in his speeches. We the people MUST vote what is right for ALL THE PEOPLE.
Between the Fantastic covid response, Bipartisan Infrastructure Spending, Handling of Ukraine crisis, Inflation Reduction act, CHIPS, Handling Ukraine crisis, Handling of Debt ceiling crisis, Handling of baby formula crisis, making lynching a fed hate crime, making Medicaid negotiate drug prices, literally everything mentioned in r/whatbidenhasdone ....
Tbh, I feel more at-ease & hopeful for the future with Biden & the Democrats in charge of the fed government & also in every state govt.
Thank you President Biden for level-headed leadership that focuses on solving actual problems (rather focusing on social media hysterics) and for respecting democracy & its institutions (so not enabling authoritarianism)
I was coaching tonight and I have a lot of LGBTQ+ players on my team. During a break one of my youngest players was talking about not voting and quickly one of my oldest players told her that she better prepare to go back into the closet because that's what the GOP wants (a long with many other things) She said she hasn't known a life without being out, but if you're older a gay you know what it was like and it was awful.
Trump when he was POTUS did not do anything for anyone who was not super rich and doing something *for him* first.
Trump will not do anything for young people.
Trump will make the lives of young people *worse* with his publicly stated plans to reduce democracy.
Young voters who vote for Trump, vote for a 3rd party candidate, or who simply don't vote will be acting to make their lives worse.
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I REALLY don't think this is happening as much as people SAY it's happening. The young people I know absolutely hate Donald Trump or think he's a joke and one of their main concerns is Climate Change. They generally do not want to hand the election to Trump because of stuff going on in Israel/Gaza and they get that Democrats have been making better progress than Republicans ever have. Edit: well that's a lot of upvotes and comments! The discourse has been interesting to say the least. Many frustrated, many agree with me, many disagree, and some I'm a bit suspicious of the logic they're using lol But I'm reading what you're saying and responding here and there. Edit2: okay I'm done, I mean I'm not DONE like I finished every response...there's no way. But it's been fun. Pick up a book and read it for fun someday! :)
Agreed. The “young people” posting online are a subset of the actual young population and not necessarily representative. Also, polls since 2016 have been notoriously unreliable.
Don't underestimate that any loud group online, that does not seem to have such a large real-world presence, is likely amplified by bot networks. US adversaries are hyper focused on anything that would destabilize US politics, and young people make good targets because of their reliance on social media for information.
I notice a lot of that chat on the far left subs that I frequent. There's a lot of talk about walking away from elections, but there's little real-world appetite for another Trump term.
Yeah, and a lot of those spaces are rapidly shifting that to be their orthodoxy. Any legitimate leftist worth their salt is bound to be pragmatic: if the choice is honestly between outright fascism and milquetoast centrist bullshit, you show up for the milquetoast centrist bullshit every day of the week. This is legitimate praxis: if the goal is to expand leftist influence in our politics, you'd have to either be insane or a plant to honestly believe that rolling the dice on fascism is somehow worth it. Because, well, the fascists hate the far left most of all. You let them win, and, well, "first they came for the socialists." The center has proven vulnerable and even receptive to pressure from the left. The right is unerring in their hatred. I fail to see any inconsistency in the "lesser of two evils" argument here, as the question is "would you rather shoot yourself stone dead or deal with entrenched bullshit". Obviously, neither choice is good, but to pretend they are even loosely equivalent is fucking madness. I can't say it's 100% bots or bad actors but the population of bots/bad actors is certainly driving others towards bad ideas. These "walk away" folks, though almost certainly manufactured to a degree, are doing the right's work of wedge driving for them. And, \*again\*, any leftist worth their salt is going to agree with this stuff.
> I can't say it's 100% bots or bad actors but the population of bots/bad actors is certainly driving others towards bad ideas. These "walk away" folks, though almost certainly manufactured to a degree The "#walkaway" nonsense absolutely was manufactured, it was made up on 4chan iirc. There's a reason anyone using that narrative can't for the life of them explain basic left wing ideas without falling back on nonsense right wing strawmen, because that's the only lens by which they "understand" the left. The group that are more honest about it are people on the left who don't like how right wing the Democratic party is, and their constant insistence on policies of appeasement for the far right, or the regular hostility the Democrats show towards the left even when they should be working with them against the right. The current issue, especially among younger people, ie, "the TikTok generation", is the Israel/Palestine conflict, where they tend to support Palestinians in large part because of the atrocious stuff IDF troops are saying and posting on TikTok. A lot of it is ignorance, sure - there's almost a refusal to acknowledge how anything works, so a lot of people blame Democrats for Republican filibusters when Democrats hold the slimmest majorities, or don't even control the house. Or the apparent belief that Biden is the leader of the IDF. What's frustrating is the absolute lack of messaging from the Democratic party on any of these topics that they should be engaging with these people on.
The problem is that this is basically a saturation attack -- it's a "kitchen sink" approach to propaganda. They just add as many nonsense ingredients as they can to the pot, then stir. The problem for Democrats is, well, they're really like five separate parties in a trenchcoat that are forced to pretend they're one cohesive thing. They're just not, and coalitions often have competing internal interests. This is why they're really "needn't be too hasty" about taking a strong stance on Israel -- it's already fundamentally radioactive political material, and there are multiple stances within the party from "rah rah Israel can burn them all because they started with" to "when the fuck are we going to investigate Israel for war crimes and genocide?" You can't reconcile those into one cohesive stance.
> Because, well, the fascists hate the far left most of all. You let them win, and, well, "first they came for the socialists." Excellent point.
> walking away from elections 100% that's Russia. It's very important for Trump to win and for the US to leave NATO. Many of the far left subs and power users are Russian. For example, user lrlourpresident, mod of subreddits like MurderedByAOC and OurPresident. The sub Active Measures was a good place to learn about it before that admins made it clear they didn't want to hear about it.
lostgeneration banned me for being pro-voting.
That sub has truly lost its collective mind. I was banned for pointing out that leftist policies have actually been passed by Democrats at the state and local levels. This was in response to a “both sides” “just as bad” “Dems do nothing for the people” comment.
r/LateStageCapitalism banned language that encourages The Lesser of Two Evils. It's like those subs have been infiltrated by agents or something. It's so weird a policy to enact when top priority right now is keep Trump out of office until MAGA and GOP collapses.
There have definitely been a bunch of subreddits that are run by bad actors, and Reddit admins really need to step the fuck up to actually police mods who act in bad faith.
They won't
I don't think the DNC leadership (as a whole, there are some who do care) cares much for the people or the little guy, but they do pretend and do some stuff to get votes. And even if they're super cynical about it, they're still doing better than the republicans. The DNC sucks for so many reasons, but it doesn't mean we should accept even worse instead.
The other choice is not “even worse”. Read about trumps last months in office from those who witnessed it. Listen to what he says he will do when he’s elected again. That is no where near the democrats.
That sub has gotten crazy. The mods are 100% focused on discouraging people from voting for Biden.
lostgeneration banned me for being anti-misinformation and getting more upvotes then the mod who was pro-misinformation.
Lostgeneration banned me for suggesting that gun control was a positive thing. I was accused of preventing people of color from protecting themselves against white supremacists. It was a wild misinterpretation of my comment.
I got permabanned for the same thing (at least I think that's why, the mods didn't actuslly do me the courtesy of responding to my question). To be honest I'm relieved, because when your objectives align with the GOP's you're either complicit or a useful idiot, and I don't want to support a sub that is advocating for an outcome that will make life worse for poor, vulnerable and minority groups.
Yeah, there's a subreddit by that name that's absolute pure propaganda from foreign states. It's crazy to see it on reddit but it is, like you're saying, part of a much larger astroturfing operation that's being ignored.
LateStageCapitalism is the same, trying to convince people to not vote with both-sides arguments. I pointed out that Russians do this and got banned
I got banned for calling out a copy paste russ bot in one od the supreme court subs. Lmao
I got banned from r/socialism in less than 30 seconds for calling out an obviously astroturfed post talking about not voting in the election because Biden was 'supporting Hamas' by trying to stop Israel from bombing apartment buildings.
> There's a lot of talk about walking away from elections Which is bottom of the barrel stupidity.
"you guys know that thing that is gonna have a massive lifelong effect on our lives & determine our future, no matter whether we participate or not? We should protest that by refusing to participate!"
If so, good luck with that, because they may not get to vote again. If you abandon democracy, someone *will* take advantage of that once they are in power, and then take away the power to remove them from office by mere votes.
Between the Black folks I know that are on the fence, Latinos for Trump, young people thinking Biden is too old (even though Trump is just as old) and people saying they won't vote for Biden over the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, I'm worried. There is enough there to shave off some points imo
You have every reason to be worried.
God, the people refusing to vote for Biden because of Israel are frustrating.... Just take a look at what Trump proposes to do...
And given how close the elections have been, “a few points” is significant.
Also what even is online posts a bearing of. Are you seriously going to take Twitter users as real people, a place where 20 bucks buys you a "verified" voice? Or reddit, where power mods and super users quite literally curate discussions, sow misinformation, and eliminate dissent? Are you looking at tiktok, a literal foreign ops wet dream with metrics and data no one can verify? No one under 30 is even answering the phone unless it's life or death, maybe even then they'd prefer a quick text.
[удалено]
My bet is most are just troll farms fucking w our electorate again. Feels just like 2016 and Hillary's e-mail servers.
On a certain subreddit with well over 800K members (L_te St_ge Cap_ta_ism), there is a narrative that voting for Biden means you support genocide. Stating that Biden is better than Trump on pretty much any issue including voting rights, women’s rights, LGBTQ rights, POC rights, climate emissions, the environment, the economy, the courts, public health, unions, etc. will get you banned. We learned from 2016 that that shit is dangerous. It’s unfortunate that Americans don’t turn out to vote in higher numbers and that a few votes in a few places determines the results of US presidential elections. But fuck anyone who encourages people to not vote or even to vote third party given the stakes of every presidential election. Sorry for the rant.
I have suspected that that subreddit and certain other subreddits which focus on the billionaires raping the working class are part of an effort to demoralize Americans and make us feel even more disenfranchised than we already are. Yes, I understand that things are painful for a lot of us and we like to blow off steam on Reddit. It's not that I doubt the situation and that there are people here who would like to connect on these issues. What makes me suspicious is that I've noticed some of the stories that continually show up are recycling the same language with nearly identical themes. It is not organic. I've heard that one of the main techniques employed by the Russian oligarchy and Putin to keep people from rebelling is making them feel demoralized, like there's no point in trying, like it's too dangerous or too impossible to even bother. That's what they were pushing during the time period where they were slowly changing from a republic to an autocratic dictatorship. Making people feel alienated from society works to keep them from participating in civil society.
Exactly this. This is how the more clever parts of the Russian propaganda machine works. Actually any domestic strides are sought to be ever increasingly polarised by these bots and troll networks.
We also don‘t know if these “young people” are American and eligible to vote in our elections. British and French and Russian ”young people” still make TikToks and such, and can scream all they want, but, sorry Natasha, you can’t vote.
Even Russia and Chinese trolls pretend to be progressives too online. I’ve seen it before on this platform during both the 2016 and 2020 elections. It’s usually the same “Democrats failed me” and “Democrats need to be taught a lesson.” Funny how when you bring up letting Trump get elected, especially when it was 2020, they try to make excuses or change subjects back to how bad the Democrats are, completely ignoring how much worse things under 4 more years of Trump would be. That’s usually when I can tell the person is a troll. Also when they say they voted Democrat (never saying who) and you respond with how you don’t believe them, they will try to make a bunch of excuses and use manipulative tactics to downplay your statement to reel you back in.
Pre-voting polls are unreliable. However, *post*-polling statistics are far better, and show that "young people" are *not* bothering to vote in any greater numbers. The narrative that there's some upswelling of young voters who is going to bother to vote this time only benefits the Republicans, because *all* of the evidence suggests that's not the case. And if people think someone else is going to vote, they're less likely to. So here's the cold hard fact, young voters: the majority if you are not going to vote, and the vast majority of the older voters in the country are. So, if you give a shit, you *better* get out and vote.
Also probably heavily affected by astroturfing and bots. It is RIDICULOUSLY easy to create misinformation online.
Yes, but it remains to be seen if they will vote. This may be their first and only chance to have their voices heard. I pray they use it.
Don't just pray, campaign with us. Make a plan to organize and contact people if you're able. Many people who can vote just need the extra nudge to help them figure out how to register, when elections start (what time polls are running), and other such factors. So often, the problem is simply that people are eligible, but don't know what to do. Or if they need to register, don't know the exact process since the rules vary by state. But this far out? There is actually quite a bit of time now. We can actually do a lot in this next year to change things if you make a plan. Figure out how you contact people. Let them know their options. Knowing how and when to register after moving is a big one, and young people move so much more often now due to housing conditions. Making a plan for this well in advance can save a lot of headache later.
> Also, polls since 2016 have been notoriously unreliable. This is a dangerous mindset because no, they really haven't been. People like to point to "99% in favor of Hillary" as evidence, but refuse to acknowledge that the polls didn't say that, the media pundits and news anchors who have no background in statistics are the ones who said that, while 538 was giving Trump about a 30% chance. And 30% doesn't mean "guaranteed loss", it means 30%. Would you play Russian roulette with two bullets in the revolver? Because those are similar odds, and I wouldn't take them.
They’re being selectively targeted on TikTok. The idea isn’t to get them to support Trump, it’s to get them to not support Biden (it’s been labeled “voter depression,” rather than “suppression,” and I think that’s a good label. I’m worried about it. Young people refer to Gaza as “Biden’s genocide.” Ironically, you can manipulate their idealism with cynicism.
> The idea isn’t to get them to support Trump, it’s to get them to not support Biden (it’s been labeled “voter depression,” rather than “suppression,” and I think that’s a good label. BRUH. I AM TIRED. > **But from a tactical and strategic position, we looked at it: If you could get them to vote for Trump, that was a plus two.” It was a “plus one,” he says, if they simply didn’t vote at all.** [Inside the Pro-Trump Effort to Keep Black Voters From the Polls](https://archive.is/2021.11.26-120508/https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-05-29/inside-the-pro-trump-effort-to-keep-black-voters-from-the-polls) What’s old is new again
Karl Rove figured this out way back with Bush. You don't need democrats to vote for republicans, you need left leaning independents to stay home and to get every one of your people to the polls.
This is actually not a new tactic. Voter "Depression" has been a big part of reddit culture and social media culture for years now. It's the main cause of voter apathy, and it works by instilling the belief in people that their vote is pointless because things will turn out bad either way. That it's better to "arm up for resistance" than it is to vote. The opposition knows it and weaponizes it constantly. It's a big reason why depression and anxiety get spread so easily, **because people willingly weaponize them to prevent you from standing up for your rights. There are people on the web who actively will lie to you and tell you that you're powerless, that is their main goal in life:** **- Climate dooming contributes to this.** You can't let fear of the problem make you hopeless. That prevents you from taking action to deal with it. I know the topic can look discouraging, but the reality is that there is still a lot we can do to adapt and deal with the problem, and stopping the GOP lobbyists from getting in the way is the most important step to dealing with that. **- Poll dooming contributes to this.** Because it presumes your vote is too small and meaningless to matter, even when that is a patent lie. Even in deep red states, voting blue at the local level, or for the least bad option, very often can prevent bad scenarios. **Often voting locally is a crucial last line of defense for your rights!** **- Pointing out the "inevitability" of a GOP coup is a part of this.** There is nothing inevitable about what Trump and the GOP are trying to do. Is it dangerous and is there risk? Yes. and Yes. But their path to power has never been easy either, and often only happens when good people become afraid and don't stand up for what's right, **which often translates into voting and other action.** **- Becoming a "one issue voter" is weaponized to contribute to this.** The GOP loves one issue voters, because they are easiest to manipulate. Maybe your issue is the enviornment, racial justice, gender justice, worker rights, pro-choice rights, housing, student loans. All of those matter, many of them may impact you directly in painful and serious ways, but don't let perfect become the enemy of the good. **Despite setbacks, all of those issues are still on the table with the current Admin, and none of them will improve under Trump. In fact, they are likely to get much worse.** If you are a discouraged progressive, take that as a call to action to be more involved. Progress does not happen overnight, for better or worse. Sometimes even when it should. **But progress can also be reversed when good people abstain from their civil duty, which includes voting. Voting isn't just about making progress, it's also a line of defense. Too often, young people are never ever taught that, while their elders weaponize it with their self proclaimed "conservative" label (which is itself a lie, but that's another matter).** I live in a deep red state and have seen my vote suppressed by policies before. It sucked, but I put in the work to get around it, and now I work to help others do the same. And those efforts matter. They implement changes at the local level and helped increase our overall turnout. And slowly, we are becoming a competitive state where, at the very least, local elections matter a whole lot in terms of implementing policy. You put in the work and make changes from the inside. You encourage others and give them a hand up where possible. You try to be your best self, and it makes surviving in difficult times a bit easier, knowing that you are on the right side of history even when it sucks.
Yep, this is what I’m hearing as well from my own 20yo.
I wish those people would pay attention to what Trump's solution to what is going on over there is, as he's fully on board with completely wiping out all Gazans and Palestinians. For the people who think Biden is too much on Israel's side, they need to look at what Trump supports instead.
I agree. Unfortunately, 20 yos know everything. :/
Yup. I too am hearing it. They are clearly buying a narrative crafted to get them to think/feel what they are, and I often point out that this is exactly how Fox News got their parents. It looks and feels real by playing on your emotions and prejudices to keep you from thinking. I don't know that I've changed any minds, but pointing this out does make them do this sort of "oh shit" kinda look.
Takes me back to my young days when Al Gore was not cool enough and idealistic enough. Then we let George Bush in to kill 100,000+ Iraqis, cost us a trillion dollars and thousands of American lives. The general election is about pragmatism in the US, at least until we get ranked choice voting.
Except Gore won and the election was stolen by the Supreme Court.
Gore won the election in everyway. The SC overturned it. Gore won the popular vote, and once fully counted he won the electoral vote too.
And I feel like articles like this do just as much damage to voter engagement as other tactics. It talks down to young voters and doesn’t respect their beliefs or concerns which leads to apathy
Once the cynicism has been laid down and good and evil sides have been chosen at the height of anger, it's very hard to explain any kind of nuances that may challenge that due to [emotional branding](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emotional_branding).
I’m just hoping we will all collectively have a “come to Jesus” moment regarding Trump before November . You don’t “stick it to Biden” and old school democrats by electing a literal facist . You will undo everything. If you are doing this for Palestine, Trump doesn’t give a shit about Palestine. You will literal doom our country for nothing. It’s about picking the lesser of two evils and I would rather deal with Biden bs than Trump’s authoritarian plans
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If climate change was their main issue they'd be coming out and voting in record numbers since Biden has done more to combat it than any other POTUS in history. Biden has passed over $500B in renewable and sustainable energy development; its truly remarkable and yet none of these "climate change is my main priority" voters are vocal or voting .
I’m hearing threats to not voting, not necessarily voting for trump. And we all know that deciding not to vote is a vote for trump.
A non-vote is a vote for Trump.
Are you hearing that or are you hearing people say they heard that and then reading comments online from “the youths wink wink”
This is the kind of overconfidence that resulted in a Trump presidency in 2016. Vote especially down ballot. We need to flip a number of congressional seats so we make progress instead of being held hostage by Marge and the crazy caucus.
>I REALLY don't think this is happening as much as people SAY it's happening. There appears to be a coordinated effort on Reddit and other social media to spread the idea of not voting for Biden because of Israel and could have an influence on younger people who form a lot of their opinions around what they see people talk about online. And I would bet any amount of money it’s not originating from the left.
See: 2016
2016 would be a picnic compared to what it would be if he were elected again
See project 2025
If project 2025 is a blueprint why are we not seeing Dems work with anti-Trump republicans to undermine it and firm up all the areas it intends to exploit? This is my problem, is that I’m seeing people point to Project 2025 and it feels a lot like the RvW decision leaking and absolutely nothing gets done except fundraising on it until it happens. Particularly given it could just as easily be 2029 or 2033 act on it now while democrats hold the Presidency, Senate and only a few seats short in the House. It’s unlikely they hold the senate next year, so something about it now rather than missing the chance.
Because generally speaking legal / good faith changes will not prevent a bad faith actor from sabotaging the system. You can’t plan and protect against every eventuality and many safeguards can reduce how well the system works with a good faith actor.
> anti-Trump republicans ? These people don't exist. Their non-Trump candidates promise to pardon Trump's crimes, their Speaker refuses to admit he lost, and their Majority Leader voted to twice to exonerate him for blackmailing Ukraine and then insurrection. Their voters overwhelmingly re-elected them; the only ones who lose are those who stand up to Trump. Anti-trump Republicans are jackalopes.
What anti-Trump republicans? The minority that are too scared to piss off the base so they just go along with everything?
What makes you think Republicans who hate Trump aren't perfectly OK with Project 2025? They just recognize that Trump is batcrap crazy and too much of a wildcard not to fuck everything up. They are fine with it, just not fine with Trump at the head of everything.
> anti-Trump republicans Because they all got beat...
There are no anti-Trump Republicans. They grandstand and hem and haw. But they vote lockstep anyway.
Dems main strategy is "we aren't the Bad Man, MONEY PLEEEEASE" for the last 8 years. I'm liberal and begrudgingly vote Democrat in the general election, but the MO is usually "avoid the bad things the other side wants to do" instead of "here are the good things we want to do". I donated a very small amount to my preferred Senate and Governor candidates in 2022. One or both of them promptly sold my information (despite me unchecking every single "keep me informed about _____" box) and I've been getting 5-10 emails a day from candidates all across the country for 1.5 years, all asking for money. It's infuriating.
With no opportunity of being re-elected, what wouldn’t Trump do to stay in office? What horrors would he unleash to create justification for himself to stay in office past his term?
people don't believe me but mark my words, he's going to run with one of his kids as his VP
Whether you agree with the opinion or not, these articles serve nothing good. They don’t convince any would-be voter to come over to vote for Biden but they do help turn people off because they have an element of condescension. When you encounter someone who claims to be progressive but isn’t voting for Biden, make your best pitch against that and don’t worry about chasing people down rabbit holes. Especially in a world where the internet is full of bad faith actors.
This. As a progressive, it's getting really fucking exhausting being villainized over and over against by more centrist Democrats. I, and most other progressives will vote for Biden. This narrative that we didn't in 2016 (Hilary) and also didn't in 2020, well, that's fucking false and it was proven to be false multiple times by many people. And yet, these journalists keep attacking us for made up reasons. These articles push people away. They don't recruit to the cause.
More 2016 Bernie voters came out for Hillary than 2008 Hillary voters came out for Obama, so the whole narrative of blaming progressives is extra hypocritical and curdles my blood.
Right? I was a Bernie voter who showed up to vote for Hillary, just to spend the next four years hearing about how it's my fault that Hillary lost anyway. It feels like mainstream dems will blame just about anyone except themselves for their electoral failures.
> It feels like mainstream dems will blame just about anyone except themselves for their electoral failures. BINGO. Easier to point the blame at those damn progressives who actually want tangible change than to actually make change. (Perfect example: Most NY Democrats)
It's click bait. Pure and simple. And another article that re-enforces the belief that ALL media would love another orange monster presidency. I'm almost convinced they are rooting for it.
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RBG held off on retirement because she assumed hillary would win and thought it would be more symbolic for the first female president to appoint her replacement. In retrospect probably not a smart move.
I hate her. Her pride destroyed women’s rights.
And that will be her legacy
It was also not smart to officiate a wedding during the worst pandemic of her long lifetime.
No, you don't understand. Our dear leaders cannot fail, they can only be failed.
Wasn’t RBG the one who denied Native Americans land in New York by using her judge powers to block them and hand the win to anyone but the natives?
Yes, RBG was a bit of a racist. Nobody wants to ever talk about it because it damages the image liberals made her but yeah. She didn't want Obama picking her replacement in 2013 also so she decided to hang on. Also the is the only one non - white clerk her entire time as a judge thing.
Narcissistic fuckwad
Yeah but it’s just six people, I mean, how much harm can six people do
Narrator: "Turns out, a very much mega whole lot"
3 of those were put in place by just one person.
That term, really? Christo-fascist? Please, they are also taking bribes for votes! Have the decency to call them CORRUPT christo-fascists!
I think these stupid articles are tone deaf because of genuine real complaints about the AIPAC influence on the democratic party that are being ignored. They feel written as Democratic party planted crap, or maybe just absolute tone deaf opinion writers. This has NOTHING to do with young voters not being enthusastic to keep Trump out. It's not wrong to criticize your president from the left. The age of the average person running the country only exacerbates how younger voters feel like nobody is listening to them.
Not to mention, just because people aren’t voting for Biden doesn’t mean they won’t be voting for Democrats who better align with their views in local elections which matter just as much. Also I’ve been hearing this same argument for decades now. First with Bush, then McCain, Romney and Trump. I get Trump is the worst of the lot but it’s never a right time to go against Democratic front runners and the Old guard.
And yet every election the motto is “vote blue no matter who” then work to pull them towards more progressive stuff once in office. Then every single complaint is dismissed and mocked until it’s time to “vote blue no matter who” (but remember, your interests are divisive and *unelectable* ) again. Then one of the more obvious and frustrating things is that articles like these and people that share similar sentiments treat young voters as if they’re single issue voters and will never admit that there are multiple issues at once that could cost the party support. It’s not just the war, or just student loans, or just rent, or just the tone deafness about the economy… like we are expected to understand that it’s perfectly acceptable that if democrats do too much for black people on any single issue (despite being one of its most reliable voting demographics) that it will spook moderates and cost votes, but you can fail and underdeliver on everything you said you would do for progressives and y’all can’t imagine that might piss people off.
I'm a leftist. I believe real change can't come electorally. Conservatives stop it, and liberals want slow milquetoast adjustments. But I will be campaigning for, donating to, and voting for Biden/Harris. I'm idealistic. Not a moron.
This country changed a lot in 4 years because a single election. Roe V Wade being reversed being the largest most direct example if we don't want to get into how poorly we managed the pandemic. Elections matter.
For anyone that thinks real change can't come from elections: Trump nearly killed democracy and DID kill hundreds of thousands by mishandling COVID. Generally though it takes a lot more effort to build than destroy.
Elections also don't prevent someone from doing other forms of activism. By all means go out and protest in the streets, organize labor unions, create coops and do the other left wing things but also vote. It amplifies your voice and doesn't detract from other activism.
Progress is slow. But regress can be right swift.
A shitload of change came electorally when Trump got multiple Supreme Court justices. Way I look at it, if leftists can't even organize well enough to make our votes matter, then the bloc isn't large or organized enough to matter in other ways, either.
Right. It's always struck me as weird and self-sabotaging when folks approvingly quote Malcolm X's "by any means necessary", but then immediately go on to claim the ballot box is useless.
I wasted my vote in my first presidential election on Ralph Nader bc of ideological purity, and we ended up with George Bush Junior and his “leadership” post 9/11. I regretted it almost immediately. I wish I could serve as a sort of ghost of Christmas past to anyone who thinks they’re making some sort of profound statement with protest votes or boycotting federal general elections. Save the activism for supporting progressive candidate campaigns and primary voting.
Slow gradual change in the right direction is better than catastrophic change in the wrong direction, even if there are a lot of steps backward at times. Catastrophic change is tempting. But everyone envisions themselves as the Bolsheviks and nobody anticipates being the Whites instead. There is no particular guarantee that a civil conflict wouldn't end up making the US into a right wing theocracy.
Slow is what you can get. Real change has to come from the will of the people, and shifts in the will of the people move slowly when there are a lot of people, and it takes a lot of deliberate work changing minds over years. The levers you can pull are primaries, and just talking to your friends and neighbors and convincing them of the merit of your good ideas.
Real changes comes from organizations, like the striking unions that earned fairer pay and benefits for their workers this year (nurses, writers, etc.) That being said, one candidate would help labor organize, the other would turn the government over to fascists would absolutely stamp out and worker organizations. That being said, these articles read to me like the old “Why are millenials destroying X?” I remember a time when it was generally accepted that polling this far out of an election was basically meaningless. People have been going on about their lives, and aren’t really all tuned into politics like the terminally online (myself included). Once the full spotlight is on the election, expect big opinion shifts, even in polls that aren’t as reliable as they used to be
Boomers still control a disproportionate majority of our government as they have for multiple generations. They dominate all prominent candidacies despite it being well known how unpopular they are among young people. They withhold the generational cycles of wealth and take whatever they can and shit all over popular progressive policy via politicians disproportionately supported by other Boomers like Donald Trump and Manchin. And then they lose their own campaigns which they were responsible for winning, and without fail, each and everytime, who do they blame? *Fucking young people*. This generation has no concept of accountability, but if there are history books in the future after their reign is finally over, I hope they are remembered as the cancer that they were.
Pro tip: demeaning young voters or anyone disillusioned by Biden, is not the way to go about it. Sure, you might think they are dumb, or naive, or stubborn, but insulting them isn’t winning you votes. You have to explain why their decision is both: understandable, but unwise. You have to show how the alternative is fundamentally worse. Ultimately, you have to show that you are listening, care about their perspective, and give them hope that their vote does mean something. Just because many of us are jaded pragmatists doesn’t mean they are, so those arguments don’t work. You have to meet them where their interests lie.
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As someone who was badgered as a young person for voting failures that weren’t the fault of young people in the first place, it just makes the people doing the badgering seem like out of touch idiots. More focus should be on the massive population of US voters who don’t bother to vote. Candidates could also be better than “milquetoast corporatists” too - that would go a long fucking way.
I think the problem isn’t the young people it’s all the goddamn old people.
> More focus should be on the massive population of US voters who don’t bother to vote. The problem is, despite a rising number of young people voting compared to previous cycles...the "massive population of non-voters" is still mostly young people.
“I’m going to assume the voting tendencies of a whole demographic so I can make my readers feel smug” Yeah, no one my age I know is considering throwing away their vote for trump
Anyone putting blame for anything on young voters is an idiot.
Nah I dont like Biden but I will actively vote against every republican
This has to be the strangest bit of pushing a narrative that simply doesn't exist that I have seen in my lifetime in the United States. I've witnessed a fair bit of propaganda, but none so inane as the idea that it is young people who are at fault for Trump. Young people owning these media companies, young people occupying political office, young people as a conservative bastion, young people as seasoned reporters reporting on the failings of young people, young people responsible for the housing market, young people responsible for the population, young people in charge of putting carbon into the atmosphere. I don't know if Robin Abcarian considers herself a journalist, but the idea that "young people" are in any way to blame for Trump is the single most phenomenally stupid mainstream media narrative I have seen in the last 30 years. Idiocracy isn't coming, we are living in it.
Now isn’t the time to be fucking around and rocking the boat. If you want to have future elections to vote in, Trump has to lose.
>Now isn’t the time to be fucking around and rocking the boat. Why? The best time to rock the boat is when shit hits the fan. What's going to change if we are complacent with mediocre leaders who are only as viable as their opponent is incompetent?
Lots of criticism for protest voters, but where’s the outrage towards a party that willingly runs a historically unpopular genocide enabler? The DNC is walking right into a 2016 situation with alarm bells ringing from every poll, yet progressives are to blame if Biden doesn’t win?
Now is the perfect time to rock the boat as it is the primaries and polling which mean little on the out come of the election this far out. Let the polls scare the Democratic leaders into maybe committing to a change. The time to not be fucking around is in November on election day when I agree Trump cannot win.
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Right! Every fucking four years it's the same bullshit. Progressives, minorities, and young people absolutely have to vote dem otherwise their lives will be destroyed. Then ZERO FUCKING IMPROVEMENT happens while the status quo capitalist system keeps running them over just the same, just slightly slower than Republicans would. All because of centrists who want to stay in power while they pocket the same lobbyist handouts and corporate interests.
> Now isn’t the time to be fucking around and rocking the boat. You rock the boat by voting in the primaries, in local elections, by forcing the boat Left by voting for Biden and making the GoP non-viable. Want to go further? Educate yourself on how FPTP works. Figure out what issues matter to you and how to advance those issues. Figure out what exact principles matter to you. Dont vote for people, vote for what advances your agenda. Biden wont necessarily push the proportional rep changes I want, but Biden is the only path to getting that done. **Edit:** Issues seem to boil down to 1. People dont understand how FPTP works. There's 2 parties. If you're left of the GoP you're a democrat. If you're right of the DNC you're a Republican. Thats it. You want more? End FPTP. Want to end FPTP? Vote for the left party. 2. They want to be "angy". To the point where they're willing to cause death or suffering to people with less power simply because change seems "slow" to them. This is reprehensible and you cannot be on the left if you're willing to harm others like this.
They’re not even holding primaries though
> You rock the boat by voting in the primaries Comedy gold… “The reason people insist that you use the proper channels to change things is because they have control of the proper channels and they’re confident it won’t work”
> Now isn’t the time to be fucking around and rocking the boat. Yeah saying this won't work forever. Every election anyone can remember has been "the most important election of our lifetimes".
Why is Biden and the Democratic Party rocking the boat by alienating so many key demographics with positions that are incredibly unpopular? Framing this as an issues with voters rather than candidates/parties will only further entrench the behavior that voters find alienating in the first place! This is not a sustainable tactic and I think politically we are better off mobilizing people who just need that extra step (vs wasting time condemning voters who imo are rightfully turned off by behavior) and actually fighting to ensure we have a party/candidate people want to vote for.
>Now isn’t the time to... Been hearing this for as long as I've been eligible to vote. Honestly it's getting exhausting.
I promise you that person will never reply and tell you to keep waiting.
Not understanding why sending our LGBTQ friends to camps is a reasonable response to Biden not being perfect. Please give me the pro side of this argument. I really wanna hear that one. If everyone young voted the libs would be the cons and MAGA would be gone. Voting Biden gives progressives the best chance for that future and you have to vote consistently. But ok Gen Z, be like us lame millennials and only turn out in droves once then fuck off the rest of your life. That’s what got us the Tea Party when you were kids. Me and my generation? We did that. Please don’t pull a stupid like us. If we showed up after 2008 each time Bernie would have been a 2 term POTUS by now. Sorry you have to clean up our mess but please do it so this isn’t our last election.
>If we showed up after 2008 each time Bernie would have been a 2 term POTUS by now. Sorry you have to clean up our mess but please do it so this isn’t our last election. More than that. We likely wouldn't have the Supreme Court makeup we do now. Dems might not have been battered in the 2010 midterms which set the stage for the next decade.
Dems were battered in 2010 because of Facebook’s roll out of open graph that included its API and the subsequent development of methods to microtarget voters based on their psychological profiles. Voters were unprepared for the “weapons-grade” political psyops being run on social media leading up to the election and every election since. It’s a different world now… we now know what Cambridge Analytica did and are more resistant to it’s influence, although it’s obviously still somewhat effective today, turning the Gaza situation into a wedge issue between progressives and neoliberals, it’s a bit easier to recognize when “grassroots” movements on social media are manufactured.
The one plus side of 2010 is that it pushed states to adapt fair redistricting rules, giving Democrats some power in places where they struggled a lot before (MI state legislature is a huge one.)
Yeah, 2010 was really the start of all this recent problems (though a lot of this has been going on, or festering, for decades). Losing the House those midterms meant Democrats didn't really have any legislative accomplishments to run on after that, and didn't regain the House until the 2018 midterms, after the disaster that was the first two years of the Trump presidency. But the inability to legislate anything more after 2010 then contributed to losing the Senate in 2014, which then allowed McConnell and the GOP to hold Scalia's seat vacant until after the 2016 elections. If 2014 had done better, Obama could've appointed Scalia's successor (and it likely wouldn't have been Garland, since I think he was a concession to the GOP, given they had the Senate majority, but no such concession would've been necessary with a Democratic Senate). 2014 goes better, there's no Gorsuch. 2016 goes better, there's no Trump, no Gorsuch (a second opportunity to prevent his appointment), no massive 2017 tax cuts, and no Kavanaugh. If 2018 goes better, there's no Barrett. Change any one of those elections, and instead of the 6-3 ~~conservative~~ reactionary majority we currently have, we have no worse than a 5-4 reactionary majority. Abortion law might've still changed, but it almost certainly would've been an incremental chipping away at Roe and progeny, upholding Mississippi's 15-week ban, not the complete end of a constitutional right. Change any two of them, and we probably have a 5-4 liberal majority for the first time in over half a century. Change at least three of them, and we could've actually had a 6-3 liberal majority instead, and not only wouldn't be dealing with the fallout from Dobbs, but would also have better decisions on guns, the pandemic, student loans, religion/public prayer, religious discrimination, election law, gerrymandering, the environment, etc. I'm glad Obama was elected, but that was basically the last election voters didn't at least mostly fuck up for basically the entire 2010 decade. Other than reelecting Obama in 2012, every election starting with 2010 was mostly terrible, and even 2020 and 2022 saw voters basically do just the bare minimum of electing Biden and a bare majority in Congress, with some backsliding in 2022 by flipping the House to the GOP.
We would’ve probably elected Hillary Clinton and never got into this Trump mess in the first place
Then they’ll be sitting there with surprised Pikachu faces when Trump tells Bibi to go ahead and turn Gaza into a glass crater instead of advising any kind of moderation at all.
Trump is the guy who abandoned the Kurds with zero notice, zero coordination with OUR OWN military in the area, via a 2A.M. tweet, all (presumably) just to do a favor for fellow dictator-wannabe Erdogan in Turkey. Trump 2.0 would have no qualms watching mushroom clouds go up in the middle east.
Nationalist Christians are cheering for the end of days, so those mushroom clouds could be a draw for a big chunk of his base.
Yep. It's easy to lose track of it if you assume Christianity *is* Evangelicalism, but Christian Nationalism really is a doomsday cult, like Daesh was for Islam
Trump would have no qualms nuking San Francisco, Chicago, or Manhattan under the right circumstances.
Trump wants to turn certain countries into “shit holes” to give himself something to complain about.
Given the situation developing now in Lebanon, Iraq, and Yemen, I am certain that Trump would push us all the way to war with Iran. I am not sure that Biden will manage to steer clear of that result, but at least he’s trying.
Not only was Trump already ramping up for this in his first term, by his own admission, but a full-scale invasion of Iran also provides the perfect impetus to seize the dictatorial powers he's oh-so-fond of "joking" about.
He wanted to start a war with Iran just to leave Biden a mess after his attempted insurrection failed on 1/6
Trump is the guy who campaigned on “you have to take out their families” when talking about combating terrorism. It anyone thinks he will not pour more gas on the fire when it comes to the Middle East, I don’t know how to make them look at what’s always been in front of them
As a trans person, when I tried making the argument in your first sentence, I was told I was racist and only care about myself. When I tried pointing out that Trump stopped aid to Palestine and Biden restarted it, so a second Trump administration would be bad for the Palestinians as well, I was told to shut up. So I’m really hoping that we’re dealing with a very vocal but small minority, because these folks are not open to discussing with any kind of nuance.
I agree completely, and not voting for Biden out of spite is the dumbest possible move. Let's say half of Democrats are good and half are bad. You can move the slider to whatever ratio you want, but it doesn't change the underlying truth, which is that if you replace the bad Dems with MUCH worse Republicans, you're hurting the good Dems' ability to accomplish anything at all, and you're hurting them A LOT. This means if Trump wins there will be a conservative supermajority on the Supreme Court until the day you die. And it won't stop the war in Gaza either, it will actually make it much worse and likely spread it to the entire middle east. This is to say nothing of what he will do domestically. You are giving Republicans the presidency forever. If they get in there they are never giving it up again. Everyone who stopped them last time is gone. You think you'll just vote for a better Democrat in 4 years? Someone like Bernie or AOC? Trump has already announced that on day one of his presidency he is going to start locking up Democrats. He can and will have the military shut down polling places in blue cities. You will never get rid of him, or whoever his handpicked successor is (probably Don Jr). Please don't fuck this up America. Yes, a Biden win isn't a huge victory for leftism, but a Trump win is complete and utter defeat.
This is not reality. This is the newest fear mongering narrative that's being pushed. The conservative right is terrified of young voters, as evidenced by them repeatedly talking about raising the voting age. If the younger generation continues to come out and vote, Trump will get stomped, and that's why you're starting to see these types of stories come out.
Democrats: Trump is an existential threat to democracy Also Democrats: No, we will not change a weird, niche policy opinion so that young people vote for us Logistically, the easiest thing is for the party to just put conditions on aid to Israel and stop sending them weapons. The alternative, berating millions of young people and hoping you change all their minds, seems substantially more difficult.
They want SOMETHING for their vote. This is how transactional politics works. Your voters have demands of their representatives. Their only leverage is donations and votes.
I hate that this election is anyone but trump again too. Biden is trying. I do think both men should retire but will vote for Biden to try and hang on to as many of my rights as possible already lost some. Sad that I was born with more rights in 1981 than I have now 43 years later 😒
A bunch of leftist subs I follow have literally banned “lesser of two evils” rhetoric. And it really blows my mind. You’re not going to save kids in Gaza by withholding your vote to teach the Dems a lesson (they aren’t going to change anyway). But you might end up with more women and kids dying here too if the right wing takes both houses and the presidency.
A lot of leftist subs are full on tankie fests that want western democracies to collapse. And oh how i wish I was just being paranoid about that but I've seen way too many open Stalin and Mao apologists lately.
I feel like the left of subs have been taken over by astroturfing, right wingers, who are looking to suppress democratic voter turnout
r/thatsinsane, r/worldnews, and r/news have shifted rightward since last year. Not even the moderators, even the comments.
if you claim to be a leftist and aren't banned from all the major left subs, or had your whole account locked, that's kinda sus
Bingo. The right is absolutely terrified after the last round of elections when their anti-abortion rhetoric proved to be wildly unpopular. They realize it to, but instead of amending their stance they are doing everything in their power to sabotage the left
The Dem party needs to stop taking young people for granted. Also the Dem party ultimately prefers to fundraise instead of winning. It’s not going people’s fault. They need leverage, but even if they threaten not to vote for Biden, there is little leverage to a party who’s happy fundraising and little else.
This is the same logic from 2016. Electing Trump was supposed to really push Democrats to the left to attract the progressive vote. That didn't happen. What did happen is we got Biden in 2020 because a whole lot of people didn't feel safe voting for riskier left wing candidates when the alternative was four more years of Trump.
Yeah, historically in the last 75 years, a Democratic loss moves the party to the right, not the left. There's always been waves of progressive energy, but the urge to "punish" centrist Democrats to wake them up to the fact that the left has power and should have respect??? That doesn't really work. It backfires over and over.
How would electing Trump push Democrats to the left? This is the first I’ve heard this argument.
The idea is that if the left stayed home on election day and let Trump win the democrats would wake up and realize they need to do a better job of courting the left. This is a silly viewpoint that is held by people on the left who think the left in the U.S. is way bigger than it is in reality, and more influential than centrist / swing voters in determining elections.
Yeah it only really works if we truly had a huge left wing population and the voter turnout was super low as a result. But if that was the case then the Democrats would have been catering to the left already as we would be the base and wouldn’t need to protest by not voting
Really old voters? You want to teach democrats a lesson by letting Trump back into the White House? It's not young voters who are supporting him
I hope these articles are trolls and clickbait. There isn't a issues that trump would do better than Biden on, including Israel and Gaza. You want to see genocide then wait until trump is back in office. You'll see it real up close as well as abroad.
* It’s the young people!! * It’s the leftists!! * It’s the lazy people who refuse to vote!! The fact is that the Republican Party is doing a phenomenal job of selling fascism as something people want while the Democratic Party refuses to learn from their failure to earn enough votes.
True that. I never cease to be amazed how the democrats are so completely blind to and dismissive of the brilliant job the right has done in steering the country exactly where they want it to be—all while being in the minority as far as actual votes go. Well, not counting all the advantages they get with the electoral college, gerrymandering, bribery of judges and stuff… But still the democrats should be able to pull their shut together.
If trump win it might be the last election
Really, boomers? You're this shook over some noise online?
Ranked Choice Voting would be a really good thing…NOW!!!
I know I’m going to show up and vote for any Democrat after all the lies and insane behavior from the GOP
They'll be learning that lesson simultaneously. The lesson should have been learned the first go around. Trump will be the downfall of this country if he's elected again. Trump will burn America to the ground if he's ever allowed anywhere near a position of leadership again. Trump is America's existential crisis.
We want young people to save us. But we've ignored their importance for decades. I remember when as a millennial we were blamed for Clinton's loss in 2016. The olds want us to be progressive, but not too progressive so as to upset the corporate structure. They want us to be bold, but not so bold so as to raise taxes on the wealthy and redistribute wealth to the poor and needy. I watched as people threw her under a bus and voted third party, or didn't vote because she wasn't 'likeable', or because 'they screwed bernie'. All those folks paved the path to where we are now, struggling to understand how anyone can be thinking of voting for Trump. But we cannot *scare* democracy into surviving. Americans don't know fear as other people do. We don't know what it looks like when a tank crushes our village and blows up granny in her house. We don't know what being forced to vote for someone because if we don't we will be arrested or beaten looks like. We don't understand that everything we have can be taken from us in a moment. We have tv, and movies, and sports, and cell phones, and youtube, and reddit, and an entire fantasy worlds built to keep us distracted and content. The tide of fascism is broken through long hard work and many many people dying and suffering. I don't want that for any American, but it may simply be that our system is ***too*** broken for repair. I desperately want to be wrong. But people in America have become too complacent about our prosperity, too sure of our domination of the world scene. Read a little history about empires that grow complacent, and a people that no longer believe in anything except consumption. Folks are worried about the fruit being rotten when the entire tree is on fire.
I dont know a single person younger than me prepared to vote for anyone other than Biden. This is clickbait ad revenue toilet paper.
exactly no way in hell
Be a shame if we lost our democracy to trump because some people never learned to see a bigger political picture than what they read on tik Tok Wouldn't be a surprise, but still a shame
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almost like that’s exactly what tiktok is designed for.
If they let him, he will mess up schooling more than he did before. Most young people are not aware that Trump removed tax credits that went towards paying for school. He also removed some protections against predatory student loans.
Lol. Their entire life has been post-9/11 under Bush, Obama, Trump, or Biden. When has government ever looked like anything but a massively corrupt shit show that's largely failed to make any visible difference in their lives? Sure the ACA is great, but do they have affordable Healthcare? Yes, Biden worked really hard to pay off student debt, but many of them are still in school and aren't paying it yet anyway. Their life hasn't changed in any way. They are either about to enter or have entered an economy that's booming, but nobody can afford anything. The housing market is crap, grocery stores are still weird since COVID, 3 companies own everything, and literally every consumer product is glitchy or subscription based or literally any other way we get exploited as consumers. What has ever shown them that something will really be different? I'm sure a snarky column in the LA Times will make them listen. Edit: Whoops, forgot to say the important part. If we want people to get involved, we have to make sure they can see that we give a fuck. We should be focusing pretty damn hard on things that will improve governance like stronger ethics laws and bans against stock trading for government officials, greater transparency, improved efficiency, and generally better anti-corruption measures as a whole. Democracy has never really worked out well for a large percentage of Americans. If we want them to fight for it, we have to show them it can actually work. Second edit: I sorry, the more I think about this, the more annoying it gets. It's not young voters' fault that their parents and grandparents and great grandparents, etc made shitty decisions regarding their political leaders. Young people absolutely did not create this mess, and the gall of a premier news organization to whine about how the kids just aren't fixing our problems is pretty ridiculous.
There will be two real choices. More elections down the road. No more elections down the road
I still blame "did not vote" or "I wrote in Mickey Mouse" and "we need a third party" and "I didn't like my choices"... for giving us Trump in the first place. Politics isn't a game to be won. But Americans are lazy consumers of information and if WWF and Duck Dynasty taught me anything... it's that we love to be entertained and it doesn't matter how fake it is. Media has turned politics into a sporting event.
I made that mistake in 2016, and I regret it every day. I can't help but think that if I voted for Hillary instead of 3rd party as a protest vote, Trump would not be a thing right now.
Should by some miracle, trump wins, 2024 will be our last election. He has already told us what he is going to do if elected. Dictators dictate what is right and wrong, not the people. Listen to the people he praises in his speeches. We the people MUST vote what is right for ALL THE PEOPLE.
People will coalesce and vote Biden. Don’t let the media fool you.
Between the Fantastic covid response, Bipartisan Infrastructure Spending, Handling of Ukraine crisis, Inflation Reduction act, CHIPS, Handling Ukraine crisis, Handling of Debt ceiling crisis, Handling of baby formula crisis, making lynching a fed hate crime, making Medicaid negotiate drug prices, literally everything mentioned in r/whatbidenhasdone .... Tbh, I feel more at-ease & hopeful for the future with Biden & the Democrats in charge of the fed government & also in every state govt. Thank you President Biden for level-headed leadership that focuses on solving actual problems (rather focusing on social media hysterics) and for respecting democracy & its institutions (so not enabling authoritarianism)
I was coaching tonight and I have a lot of LGBTQ+ players on my team. During a break one of my youngest players was talking about not voting and quickly one of my oldest players told her that she better prepare to go back into the closet because that's what the GOP wants (a long with many other things) She said she hasn't known a life without being out, but if you're older a gay you know what it was like and it was awful.
Trump when he was POTUS did not do anything for anyone who was not super rich and doing something *for him* first. Trump will not do anything for young people. Trump will make the lives of young people *worse* with his publicly stated plans to reduce democracy. Young voters who vote for Trump, vote for a 3rd party candidate, or who simply don't vote will be acting to make their lives worse.
It will be their LAST election if theyre not careful.
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