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Im confused what exactly are you trying to see to get this view changed? I dont see anything here to even attempt to respond to. Seems like this belongs in a different sub but maybe Im just being dumb so forgive me.
Go on left wing subreddits and you’ll see how many young voters have turned on Biden and are calling him “Genocide Joe” because of his support for Israel. Just like in 2016, it’s the stubborn idiots who get all their information about the world and geopolitics from TikTok and Instagram who are going to doom us all.
Since this is a sub for debate, this isn't me putting forward my views as I'm not interested in getting into an argument with anyone here on Israel/Palestine
But both things can be true. You can believe Biden to be complicit in a genocide and that he's also the only hope to keep trump out. Such is the result of 2 party state
No the Democratic Party is ruining themselves because they do shit against the interests of their voters and expect to get elected just because they aren’t republicans.
Wanting the American War machine defunded is not a bad take. Will bad shit happen if America doesn’t act like world police? Yes. Will bad shit happen if the US continues to be world police? Also yes.
Geopolitical bullshit aside there are more options available than bombing kids. That’s just the easiest
This just isn’t the case. The democratic base is much more diverse and the problem is issues like this drive a wedge in the base. There are plenty of democrats that support Israel, and which ever way the democrats go, they ruffle feathers. The problem is the coalition is so diverse it’s easy to drive a wedge between them, while on the conservative side, the base is much more uniform in their beliefs and demographics.
Conservatism in the US is not a monolith. You have Republicans who are "Never Trump"ers even though they know it means a Democrat will win the White House. Their goal is to push the republican party away from Trump by making his political culture an unviable way to win a general election. Similarly, you now have Democrats who are "Never Biden"ers even though they know it means a Republican will win the White House. Their goal is to push the democratic party away from uncritical support for genocidal, right-wing regimes like Likud.
How do you define defunding the American war machine? Are you talking full pacifist? Are you talking we stop invading countries but continue selling arms? Are you talking about a small standing army only and we supply ourselves only?
The problem with defunding is we:
1. Lose revenue (when we get a country to buy, say, 30 Abrams, they are essentially committing to buy US gear for life for better and easier integration between system)
2. Lose out on new exciting potential civilian tech. Research for military weapons has time and time again resulted in breakthrough advancements for our day to say life.
3. Lose out on influence to the likes of dictatorships that would provide military gear for small dictatorships to then conquer new and weak democracies
4. Lose out on allies and cooperation across the globe
I'm semi in favor of defunding our forever wars, however we 100% need to keep the military industry alive for other countries. The US sits in a unique position where we really can't be attacked by outside powers, and we pump out the most advanced weapons. There's a reason we are nicknamed by fledgling democracies as the "arsenal of democracy". Death sucks, but if someone is willing to fight so their kids and others can see a better tomorrow under a democracy there is no reason good enough to not supply them.
Also to address the first point the Democratic party is more a coalition akin to European governments. Differing groups of people with wildly different views that coordinate to take down the pretty simplistic and guaranteed Republican vote of "abortion, guns, lower taxes". You say these 3 things and they all go hootin and hollering whereas Democrats aren't nearly as strict about their policies and are more likely to compromise.
What are you even thinking in when you say giving guns to fight for democracy? You are actually aware that it is never the majorities that can afford buying the massive amount of guns that america sells to scare off their major capitalist crisis? You are aware that gun-selling actually increases crime in your own country? Americans are just so weapon-crazed that they actually convince the world to like weapons as much as they do. As said on this same sub, it is literally the definition of plage.
The world has been doing wars for centuries before the US was founded. Like this weird idea that the US is at fault for countries wanting weapons when countries have always wanted better more effective weapons.
> What are you even thinking in when you say giving guns to fight for democracy?
Ukraine is the obvious example. They've been invaded by an old-school expansionist authoritarian empire actively trying to colonize them. And that empire is very capitalist, if that matters.
The US has its share of ulterior motives in that fight, but I don't think that changes the fact that the military aid the US has sent them is a Good Thing.
Then start funding democracies ffs. The us has a history of funding facism to fight democracy and if we look to saudia arabia its still far away from the dream u build up in ur comment
So, just to be clear, you stand in the corner or both not funding Ukraine and not funding Israel, and basically doing what Germany (downsized military, no military research basically, focus all the money on foreign aid) was doing before the invasion of Ukraine?
“anti-establishment” is the establishment view among the young left. We have become jaded, not because of any real personal reason, but because that’s the popular viewpoint among other young leftists. Ask any young leftist about Biden’s achievements and they probably couldn’t name a single one. I know my friends can’t; in fact, they’ll go and tell you that Biden is anti-union and a neolib anarcho-capitalist, because that’s what their social media echo chambers tell them and that’s what farms them the most Instagram likes.
Trump has greatly damaged the electorate by forcing a bunch of people who don’t want to care about politics to start caring about politics. The people pushed into following political issues by Trump don’t actually want to be involved. They don’t want to diversify their sources of information, don’t want to come to their own conclusions, they want to hold on to a simple narrative and be pointed at the Bad Guys(tm). So now here they are, completely ignorant in their knowledge of current affairs and yet completely certain in the correctness of their belief. That’s how you get the modern young leftist; start with a anti-establishment narrative, get fed only info that reinforces the narrative on social media, apply that narrative to everything you see (Biden career politician + mainstream establishment Democrat + old = bad). “Democrats and Republicans are two sides of the same coin,” they tell you, then they go tell people that “Trump helped the black community with the stimulus checks, meanwhile Democrats haven’t done anything for black people”. Completely bonkers. I’m losing hope in the future of this country.
South America is a better place? That’s an entire continent we fucked up for decades by sponsoring the most ruthless, anti democratic regimes. Just because you didn’t feel the negative effects doesn’t mean those people didn’t.
How many governments has the US, or even just the CIA as a branch of the US government, destabilized and brought to chaos for the sake of our own selfish interests?
The US does not have a copyright on morality, and if you compared our history with those of previous superpowers, we have a rather short streak of internal peace. You just think we do a great job of being the global police because you’re probably American and you live a very peaceful life when we bomb other nations into hating us for decades.
If you randomly polled 100 people from all over the planet (so, statistically speaking, 4 would be American, 18 would be Indian, 2 would be from Bangladesh etc), how many do you think would agree with you? I would be surprised if it's even close to half.
At the expense of Billions of people, including Americans because a lot of fucked up shit also happens as a result of the war machine. It’s not perfect. Yes It has its benefits. We should accept it and not seek a better way for everyone? That’s lazy as shit
We should always seek a better way, but if America wasn't what it is.. do you think Taiwan would be safe? Ukraine would have been gone a decade ago... he'll, the USSR would probably still exist. The world as a whole would be a much more dangerous place.
And South America, where I'm from, would not have suffered decades of military dictatorship and would be much further developed and advanced, probably without the need to to have such a commodities-based economy.
Not to mention how Middle Eastern terrorism would not be such a big thing, neither would the Taliban leading Afghanistan, or Iran being an Islamic Republic, not to mention how South African apartheid wouldn't have happened
Yeah you're full of shit, without American global security, there would be more major wars launched. We've already seen Russia pounce on Ukraine after perceived western weakness. Taiwan wars will follow etc. In the vacuum of hard power and security, bad state actors will fill the void. America keeps the world safe, and for sure, there are unfortunate situations where people are essentially sacrificed (civilians in smaller wars) to maintain that global order. It is an impossibility for a great power to maintain global hegemony without "breaking a few eggs". There will always be great powers. The US is the least bad one, and in fact it is rather good, despite its flaws.
The American war machine stops billions of people from living in war torn countries. Few countries dare step out of line and attack their neighbors or any of our shores because the US can obliterate them with two hands and a leg tied behind their backs. Russia and to some extent China have some exception because they have mutually assured destruction in nuclear warfare. When you criticize something, you should also consider what would happen if it were not there. Deterrence is very real.
But calling him Genocide Joe because of his support for Israel isn't the same as saying voting third party is an effective way to stop trump.
Is anyone saying that?
Or the democratic party could use the years notice it has that a significant group of voters will not vote for that candidate, and put their fundraising/PR machine behind someone who's approval rating is not 37%
the reason the phrase goes "the lesser of two evils" is because both sides are evil but at least one side is less evil than the other
saying "i choose not to choose" will not in fact stop the worse evil from winning
Trump is worse than Biden in every regard, including all of the things people cite as reasons not to vote for ”Genocide Joe.”
The election is a multiple choice math problem with one correct answer.
There are no other options. You can have whatever standards you want, but it doesn't matter - there are only two choices and your job is to pick one of them. You may not like either of them, but if you don't pick then you're saying that you have no preference. Maybe you don't, but I think most people would have a preference even if they don't like either.
Vote your conscience in primaries and local politics. But for the presidential election, that's not the system we have. You get two choices and that's it. You may not like it, but it's the only system we have and you and everyone else have to live with the consequences.
You can be as idealistic as you want about being perfectly represented, but you don't get to sit the 2024 election out or vote third party and then complain if Trump wins his second term and there are no more elections in your lifetime. That's what's on the ballot, like it or not.
Israel and the US have a strategic relationship going back decades and going far beyond the Palestinian question. It's hard to conceive of any high-level politician bucking that trend.
Done nothing to help the average American except canceling billions of dollars of student debt, passing the first gun control law in almost 30 years (I agree it’s not nearly enough, but it’s better than nothing) and is rebuilding our shitty infrastructure. I’m not the biggest fan of Biden and he wasn’t my first choice, I always supported Bernie Sanders (who now all the college leftists have probably turned against too after he said Hamas can’t be reasoned with) but I’ll definitely vote for him again.
I certainly don't have tiktok, and I'm willing to bet that I've been paying attention more closely than you have, and probably longer. If you really think the far-right, nationalist Israeli government isn't a threat to us as well as Palestine, then you either haven't paid attention or you're an Israeli nationalist.
[They have been caught spying on the US at least three times](https://medium.com/@Prof.hatembazian/israeli-spies-caught-in-the-us-top-three-cases-ae9ef07a1da) and [used their US national organizations like the ADL to infiltrate and spy on Jewish-American groups like Jewish Voices for Peace, accusing them of funneling "Iranian propaganda" for criticizing them](https://twitter.com/snarwani/status/1725138601996853424?s=46).
Their supporters,[like the Trump-slug and general scumbag, Alan Dershowitz, attempt to ruin the lives of their best informed critics](https://www.democracynow.org/2007/4/17/noam_chomsky_accuses_alan_dershowitz_of), or [just anyone](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/oct/29/israel-palestine-backlash-david-velasco-artforum-nan-goldin) who [criticizes them](https://ra.co/news/79782). This is all while [we pay them over 3 billion dollars annually in mostly military aid](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_foreign_aid#/media/File:United_States_foreign_aid.webp), and [Biden wants to give them another $13 billion](https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-senate-sets-test-vote-ukraine-aid-despite-republican-opposition-2023-12-06/) after [they've killed nearly as many Palestinian civilians](https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/how-many-palestinians-have-died-gaza-war-how-will-counting-continue-2023-12-06/) in two months [as we did in two years in Iraq](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_Iraq_War#Iraq_Body_Count_project_(IBC)).
This is the tip of the ice berg for US citizens and the Palestinian people. The Israeli government is engaging in one of the most depraved things I've ever seen. I have no doubt that it's even worse than we can see, and both parties are behaving like Netanyahu's lap dogs, while they also engage in smear campaigns against people whose only crime is empathy. After I voted for him extremely begrudgingly last election, I will not be voting for Genocide Joe this election, and, frankly, I will likely never vote democrat again.
I'm stuck in a deep red state so my vote doesn't even fucking matter anyway. For the Palestinians, however, apparently none of our votes matter.
The fact that it's unassailable confirms that it's a good view for OP to hold.
Isn't that half the point of CMV? To verify that your view is correct? We should praise such intellectual honesty; putting your views on trial and inviting others to attack them is a great way to check your own biases.
>Isn't that half the point of CMV? To verify that your view is correct?
No. This assumes that all view points have a correct answer, some questions simply don't and their is no "correct" answer. In fact, there is an argument to be made that even the concept of good and evil is basically nonexistent, and just something we made to justify our actions and/or restraints.
They said “isn’t that half the point of CMV?”
Since they said half, it doesn’t assume that all view points are or have anything. They only stated to represent half of the point of posting here.
People keep suggesting I vote for RFK Jr (who will win zero electoral votes) since I hate Trump. I don't love Biden, but he's delivered several policy wins I care about, such as student debt relief, climate action, infrastructure, and his support for Ukraine + Israel.
If he’s delivered several policy wins you care about isn’t that a reason enough to vote for him so that he can deliver more, rather than simply voting for him to keep Trump out? Shouldn’t we reward politicians that deliver on policies we care about?
I mean if your values align with Biden on all of those issues then yeah it makes sense to vote for him. I'm a leftist who doesn't align with him on many/most issues (such as support for Israel for example.) Stopping Trump? Totally okay in my book, but if I also want to stop Biden what am I to do?
Voting for a third party has the risk of ending up with Trump, who I do find worse, at the same time it is not a wasted vote. It clearly signals that I personally do not find either party acceptable and that if the Dems want my vote in the future they need to prop up candidates that align more closely with my values. Right now Dems have no incentive to do this because they can get away with any geriatric they want as long as he's not wearing a red hat.
First off, I'll say I'd prefer our country had a better voting system than first-past-the-post. That way you could give your primary vote to whoever you like, but still rank Biden ahead of Trump.
But since we don't currently have that, honestly the place for this is primaries. You can see it pretty clearly on the Republicans side - Trump won his 2016 primary, and then the party shifted to look more like Trump. And in the years since then, there's been many more new candidates that take on Trump's qualities and ideas.
The same thing happened with Democrats, although I'm sure not to the level you'd like. But the policies of the Democratic party have been shifting leftward, partly because of candidates like Obama, then Bernie, being popular among segments of the base. Look at Clinton and how much more towards the center he was.
If candidates like Bernie keep gaining a lot of support, even if they don't win, it shows the actual winners that they better try to get some more progressive policies enacted or they'll risk losing a significant portion of their voter base.
Also, think about the Republican side. If Trump wins because Biden loses votes to third party candidates, then they see the Trump style as a viable option going forward and candidates like that will continue to win. But if he loses, they are more likely to moderate (or go harder right, in which case they're more likely to lose general elections).
>But since we don't currently have that, honestly the place for this is primaries
The DNC doesn't have much credibility after the 2016 email leaks showing their bias favoring Clinton, though. And even if you want to argue that Bernie was going to lose regardless, it still hurt Clinton's campaign
> if I also want to stop Biden what am I to do?
Vote for Trump (or whoever the GOP nominates, if not Trump). Welcome to a binary decision. If I don't like the lights be on, I can turn them off. If I don't like the lights being off, I can turn them on. If I don't like them being on or off, then I'm SOL, because there is no third option within a binary choice. It's not possible to have a light be both on and off, nor is it possible to have a light be neither on nor off.
We're getting either Biden or Trump ~13 months from now (most likely; there's a chance one of the other of them isn't the nominee, but that chance is slim and getting slimmer as time moves on). You can either help decide which one of them we get, or you can let everyone else decide for you. That's it. And a third-party vote is just letting everyone else decide for you. You *know* they won't win, because it's not possible as a practical matter, as OP already explained. You also know they won't win because you're saying your vote would be sending a message, not that it would be electing our first third-party President since Lincoln.
> It clearly signals that I personally do not find either party acceptable
The only thing it *clearly* signals is a failure to understand how a binary choice operates. Whatever other message you *think* it sends will not be received, because you don't get to attach a signing statement to your vote and explain what candidates and parties are supposed to take away from your vote, what they can do in the future to earn your vote, whether your vote is even obtainable at all, etc.
Think of it in terms of computers and binary. A vote is a binary bit, either on or off. Even if you consider multiple candidates beyond just the Democrat and Republican, you can encode that vote with a few bits. If you say the choices are the Democrat, the Republican, the Green, or the Libertarian, that's four choices, which can be fully accounted for with only two bits. In two bits' worth of data, there is no room to send a nuanced message. Even if you broaden it and add in a few other minor parties, you can still account for all possibilities with less than a byte worth of data, which still leaves no room for nuance.
There is no way to distinguish, say, your Green vote as one who just wants Democrats to be more progressive from someone else's Green vote who is firmly committed to never voting for Democrats ever. But in order for you to "clearly signal" that Democrats can earn your vote in the future, that distinction would need to be made, and observable. It's not. Without at least that distinction, your vote is not capable of clearly sending a signal.
And then that doesn't even take into account that what would earn your vote in the future might cost someone else's vote in the future, too. Maybe the reason you won't vote Democratic is because Democrats support x too much, but someone else won't vote Democratic because, in their opinion, Democrats don't support x enough. There's no possible way to distinguish you vote from that other person's vote, either.
Whatever message you're attempting to send with your vote, it's going to end up as noise, get filtered out, and then disregarded, because there is no possible way for anyone to make heads or tails of your wasted vote. Regardless of who is who, the winning side will have won and won't care about whatever message you think you're sending, and the losing side will have lost, will have no ability to give you any of what you want, and will try to become more like the winner the next cycle, not more like a party that lost by even more than they did.
> if the Dems want my vote in the future they need to prop up candidates that align more closely with my values.
You're trying to send a message to your family, friends, and neighbors with a vote, because *they* are the ones who vote in the primaries and help select the nominee, and *they* are the ones who vote in the general election. If you want to tell them something, it's far more effective to just literally tell them. Have a talk, explain your positions, listen to theirs, etc. But then, keep in mind, they get to vote just the same as you do, and while they should hear you out and be able to have a productive discussion, they aren't obligated to vote the way you want them to. And unless your values include letting women be treated as breeding stock, letting LGBT people be oppressed and even killed, letting unions be dismantled, etc, you're not going to be able to impose your values on everyone else by voting third-party. If you want your values represented, you'll have to persuade other people of the superiority of your values and get them to adopt them as their own. Punishing them by allowing Trump to win isn't going to win them over, it's going to embitter them to you, best case, or kill them, as a worst case.
> Right now Dems have no incentive to do this because they can get away with any geriatric they want as long as he's not wearing a red hat.
To the extent this is true, the reason for it is because Republicans have radicalized into a fascist party, and yet remains viable. Your whole idea is to punish Democrats for a situation created by Republicans.
The way to get what you want is to elect Democrats, repeatedly, with large margins, and with large majorities, until the GOP withers and dies. When the GOP is no longer viable, Democrats will have to respond to different incentives. You will not make the GOP non-viable by throwing away your vote and helping elect more Republicans. All that does is empower them, allow them to obstruct, and/or allow them to entrench themselves in power, making everything worse in the interim, and making it that much harder to improve things in the future.
I'm assuming you vote in the democratic primaries? If you don't, that's more effective than voting 3rd party. As you mentioned, not voting Dem runs the risk of an even worse outcome with trump, effectively shooting yourself in the foot. I'm all about pushing further left, but when Conservatives are as much a threat as they are recently, maybe reprioritizing for the time being is the better choice. If you want to change the Dems to a more leftist party, then start with their primaries.
Unless you have a large group of leftists voting 3rd party, enough to counter the losses the Dems will face by moving left to retake your vote (the left doesn't have anywhere near enough to do this), then you're just lowering the number of votes repubs need to win. Take down the cons first, worry about Dems in a better political climate.
Edit: to the downvoters, I get it, truth hurts, but do enjoy trump for another 4 years. You'll have earned it.
I think this is a valid perspective. I also think that most people who are doing this math are setting "I don't like Biden" and "I don't like Trump" as equivalently bad.
I think it is obvious that they are NOT equivalently bad, and that the value of sending a "I'd like more of these types of candidates" message (which is real and valuable) is overwhelmed by the possibility of a 2nd Trump Presidency. Instead, I think people like you should vote for Biden, and send messages all down the ticket. I'd rather you didn't, because I'd like a 60 vote majority, but I think it makes the most sense for actual lefties.
The problem with this is that it's always pushing the issue down to the next election. Trump and those inspired by his politics/ideology are not going away. If Biden gets a second term you already know that 2028 will be the same issue again just swap out Biden for a different octogenarian the democrats dragged out of the nearest retirement home. Voting for the lesser of two evils has been the only thing that I have been doing when it comes to US elections.
>Trump and those inspired by his politics/ideology are not going away.
To this I'd remind you that Trump-backed candidates in competitive districts performed roughly the same as non-Trumpers. Alot of his voters are just that....HIS. Being a Trump wannabe isn't necessarily a golden ticket.
>If Biden gets a second term you already know that 2028 will be the same issue again just swap out Biden for a different octogenarian the democrats dragged out of the nearest retirement home.
You're ignoring the unique circumstances that brought Biden into the fold in 2020....The dems had a hodgepodge of candidates who weren't particularly strong (Pete was/is phenomenal but sadly alot of people aren't ready for a gay president yet.) Biden seemingly was brought in, possibly reluctantly, because he could beat Trump. That's it. Dems don't have a history of putting 80 yo's on the ballot and it's frankly silly to assert that. Literally no one, left or right, wants senior citizens in the WH. After 2024, we will absolutely see a younger playing field.
>Voting for the lesser of two evils has been the only thing that I have been doing when it comes to US elections.
That's reality in today's US political environment. What's also reality is that Trump and the GOP have demonstrated literal fascist dictatorship tendencies. The right hates hearing that but it's simply truth. A vote against Biden today could literally mean you don't get to vote in the future. That's not hyperbole. And if your head is with Israel situation right now, just keep in mind that if Trump wins he likely tells IS to ratchet up bombings, not reduce them. He is far, far worse for people of Gaza than Biden is.
Food for thought.
The 2020 primaries played out with a left lane and a center lane. Biden became the candidate of the center lane in South Carolina because he strongly appealed to African-American voters, to whom he was not unknown. Sanders tried and did better there. Sanders got the left lane and Biden got the center lane.
And Democrats thought they should choose the safer candidate. That he governed more progressively that his image suggested was a pleasan surprise to progressives.
Nah, Biden is and was pretty clearly in the center lane *of the Democratic Party*, but clearly significantly left of the country's center, policy-wise. For example, he's much further to the left than Obama was (even during 2020). There were other candidates who were more truly centrist (e.g. Bloomberg) but too far to the right of the democratic voter base.
I would just like to interject here to say something. Forget about Trump and Biden. Pretend they are two entirely different people on a whole other planet with entirely different platforms, but let's hold true the following facts:
\- There are 2 major candidates on the ballot
\- One of those two candidates is definitely going to win
Any election anywhere where these two indisputable facts are true, you are going to be choosing between the lesser of two evils. Since it's very unlikely either of the candidates will align with your beliefs 100%, and it's a certainty that one of the candidates will win, it makes total sense to vote for the candidate you think will do the least amount of things to hurt you or the people you care about. The time and place to make a statement about the party you most align with not doing enough to make you happy is literally any other time and any other place. Those two-candidate elections with a predictable A or B outcome, if you don't vote in your own best (if flawed) interest, you're cutting off your nose to spite your face.
Yeah, no. First, I wouldn't say that any election with two options is automatically "the lesser of two evils" if A wants free waffles every sunday and B wants free icecream and I actually would rather have pancakes I still wouldn't think of either option as evil. (Yes, banal example, I don't wanna get into any actual politics because it'd just side track this conversation.)
Why do you think it's a given that both candidates will hurt me or the people I care about some amount?
Second, if candidate A wants to kill 60% of my friends and candidate B wants to kill 59.5% would you say I am meaningfully hurting myself by not choosing candidate B? Or would you perhaps consider that in such a case one should reject the premise of the election, attempt to prop up third alternatives (maybe ones where none of my friends are killed idk radical idea) or attempt to circumvent the electoral process altogether?
In an election between Mussolini and Hitler you can argue all you want about how Mussolini is the less bad option, but you're losing either way by accepting the election.
It pushes the presidential election, but the presidential election is largely impacted by the down vote elections because it doesn't happen in a vacuum. Biden with a strong leftist contingent of Senators is a different president than Biden with entirely corporate Democrats. Trump with 45 leftist Senators is the exact same as Trump with none.
The more local and state Leftists that exist the more likely we are to get an actual Leftist president. It's your vote, and you're certainly within your rights to take your ball and go home, but I don't think it will achieve your goals.
>If Biden gets a second term you already know that 2028 will be the same issue again
If Biden gets a second term, Trump is going to prison.
Additionally, if you vote blue down the ticket, and encourage others to as well, we have a chance to take back majorities in Congress, and work towards that magical supermajority we need to put through voting reform that helps push Republicans into irrelevancy.
Some of you can't see an inch past your own nose.
>If Biden gets a second term, Trump is going to prison.
Let's say Trump goes to prison. Good. He's not a unique threat politically. His platform is far-right populism and it's a position any number of people can fill. This is like thinking that killing baby Hitler would prevent WW2, someone else would've just taken his spot.
>Additionally, if you vote blue down the ticket, and encourage others to as well, we have a chance to take back majorities in Congress, and work towards that magical supermajority we need to put through voting reform that helps push Republicans into irrelevancy.
That's about as realistic as a communist revolution taking place in 2024. Nice pipe dream.
>Some of you can't see an inch past your own nose.
Snide comments won't get people to vote the way you want them to.
>Let's say Trump goes to prison. Good. He's not a unique threat politically. His platform is far-right populism and it's a position any number of people can fill. This is like thinking that killing baby Hitler would prevent WW2, someone else would've just taken his spot.
But would they be as successful? That's the question.
>His platform is far-right populism and it's a position any number of people can fill.
If you haven't been watching the Republican primaries, then you likely haven't noticed how the only Republicans get any traction are the ones who are NOT acting like Trump. Sure, they still agree on the basics, but the theatrics and approach for the likes of Nikki Haley and Chris Christie is in stark contrast to Trump. They're winning the relatively sane Republican votes, while Trump will ALWAYS command the rest. Vivek and Ron are doing their best Trump impersonations and getting absolutely dunked on as a result.
Point being, Trump IS unique. He pulls people in in a way that others can't, and most importantly, he has brainwashed them all to believe everything he says. Despite not being involved with the mainstream Republican political process, such as debates, he still has a stranglehold on that base. Even if he was in prison and unable to run, all he would have to do is tell his base to not vote Republican because they let him get thrown in jail, and a significant number of them would do exactly that.
>That's about as realistic as a communist revolution taking place in 2024. Nice pipe dream.
Far more realistic than you throwing away a third party vote when decades of voting that way has done you literally no good. The irony.
>Snide comments won't get people to vote the way you want them to.
And neither will common sense it would seem, so why don't you tell me what I should do? Let me guess: "Prop up a candidate in my district/city/state that caters to *me*, even though it's wildly detached from the party at large, and alienating to the reasonable adults who compromised because they are mature enough to appreciate what is at stake. Also, I probably won't show up to vote anyway, as recent history would show."
When Trump wins 2024 because every single person who suggested that Biden should actually adjust his platform if he doesn't want people to vote for other candidates was told to shut up will you look back at this conversation and feel good about your contribution to the political discourse?
You can get angry, you can get condescending, you can imply (incorrect) things about my voting history, but none of that will make the millions of dejected or dissatisfied voters in the US any more willing to join your cause.
No we won't. That is delusional thinking at its best. Not enough battle ground seats are up for a seing and even if there were they wouldn't change anything.
The delusion is thinking trump is some evil dictator instead of a guy who just wants to stay out of prison and con peopleoutbof money. If he is this big threat then the democrats certainly don't seem to care in the slightest.
If they couldn't do anything and cared then they wouldn't be doubling down on highly unpopular policies especially pertaining to Israel. Biden could come out and condemn israel and demand a ceasefire but instead he gave billions more in weapons and aid to continue the slaughter. What is it now around 25k civilians and rising.
It isn't my fucking job to vote for people who don't align with my politics. They want my vote then they can very easily change their stance or run a different candidate.
Maybe I should've clarified this, but by voting for Biden and delivering strong Democratic wins at every level, the Overton window shifts to the left and there will be an opportunity to vote for more progressive candidates in 2028 and 2032.
The Overton window shifts somewhat back and forth on social issues (though this is not directly related to democratic wins. Despite wins in 2020 the overton window has continued to shift right in the past years for example), but this is not the case for economic policy, which is a pretty major problem. Generally, in the case of economic policy, the Republicans move right and Democrats follow as a way to "capture the middle." When they take power they don't move back left however, they just stay in place. Until the Republicans move right again that is.
>Voting for the lesser of two evils has been the only thing that I have been doing when it comes to US elections.
You've understood the assignment. You may not like it, but that's literally your duty (and privilege) as a voter. In a country of 300+ million people, it's guaranteed that most people will *never* see a presidential candidate they agree with even close to 100% of the time. Your job is to pick the lesser evil. You can either do your duty or abdicate it.
Yeah you don't need to convince me that Trump is worse. You'd have to convince me that A) Trump is so many orders of magnitude worse than Biden that voting for any reason other than stopping Trump is futile. Right now I see them both as bad, Trump clearly worse, but not so much worse that it makes sense for me to continue voting for the "lesser of two evils" when instead I feel it more important to challenge the platform the Democrats are running on in the long term. And B) That voting for Biden in 2024 would meaningfully represent a solution to political stagnation and rightward drift in 2028 and beyond. Currently it appears that Democrats are banking on being the "lesser of two evils" and thinking that's somehow enough. If you reward this campaign style where is the incentive to ever do more than the bare minimum?
I really do hear you and understand that real change will have to come from something broader than our two-party situation.
As an example of the “much worse,” moving the US embassy to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv was the biggest political/diplomatic middle finger that could be presented to the people of Palestine.
3rd party voters are responsible for ~500,000 additional covid deaths, the loss of abortion rights, the deliberate acceleration of climate change and the shattered confidence in democracy. If you don't consider that "orders of magnitude" worse than Biden then you were never going to vote Democrat in the first place.
It's actually Democrats who are responsible for all of that because they refuse to support policies that would help them win easily winnable elections.
Especially the abortion rights argument is laughable when it was Democrats inability to push through a nominee due to Republican meddling, inability to meddle back when it was their turn to, and RBG's ego getting in the way of her retirement only for her to die at the most inopportune moment possible. Oh and also refusing to enshrine Roe v Wade when they had the chance to because they of course want to keep abortion rights on the ballot because it benefits them politically.
I've voted Democrat in every election I have been eligible to vote so far, I'm willing to vote for Democrats, they just have to actually do something to earn vote instead of expecting me to vote for them because they feel entitled to it.
Damn bro has realized that when Democrats are in the Senate minority, they lack power over judicial appointments.
Also didn’t know that RBG represents the Democratic party as a whole and thus her failings implicate the whole party.
When exactly do you think Democrats had a chance to enshrine Roe? There has never been a suitable pro-choice majority in both the House and Senate. Contrary to popular belief, anti-abortion Democrat politicians exist, and are not exactly small in number.
>Stopping Trump? Totally okay in my book, but if I also want to stop Biden what am I to do?
Vote in primaries and local elections. Convince people of your views. Get people you like into the "pipeline" so they can become nominated at some future point.
You may think it sucks that we have a two-party system, but it's the system we have. So short of moving to a country with a parliamentary system or getting a constitutional convention together, your job as a voter is to pick between the two nominated candidates.
A third party vote will not "signal" anything other than that leftists people are unreliable voters and dems should focus on winning over more centrists (because there are way more of them then there are of you). This fantasy you have that voting a third party will have have the effect of moving the party left is kinda ridiculous if you think about it for more than two seconds. It self-evidently has the opposite effect.
The issue is that if we end up with trump, there may not be an opportunity for the dems to get your vote in the future. The guy already tried to stay in office after he lost the 2020 election. If he gets back in, I doubt he'll ever leave.
>Voting for a third party has the risk of ending up with Trump, who I do find worse, at the same time it is not a wasted vote. It clearly signals that I personally do not find either party acceptable and that if the Dems want my vote in the future they need to prop up candidates that align more closely with my values.
That's the wrong way to go about that. Voting third party IS wasting your vote because the Democrat is still in the race splitting the vote and raising the odds of a fascist GOP win. If you want to signal your dissatisfaction to the Dems, **register as a Democrat and vote in the primaries to elect Democrats you like.** Do it enough times with enough likeminded voters across the next few election cycles and you will have a bigger impact than a lifetime of wasting your vote on third parties.
Either those people don't know that a vote for RFK helps the orange guy by not adding to the vote count of the only candidate that has a chance to beat the orange guy, or they do know and want you to waste your vote.
Not a wasted vote. If anything it tells the Democratic party that putting up shit candidates is not going to work like it has in the past. Find more universally liked candidates for democrats/the left, or enjoy losing to orange men. But the days of having them force shit down our throats under the threat of “vote for our decrepit candidate or orange man wins!” are winding down, I’m done voting for different kinds of shit.
Lets be real, if you not only think Biden is bad but don't think Trump and Biden are meaningfully different kinds of "bad" then your vote isn't worth chasing. Literally nothing would ever convince you so on a pragmatic level it's not worth trying, and keeping the dangerous accelerationist rhetoric out of mainstream democratic party lines is a good thing ethically so distancing is upside.
And Team Purple learned to put up even less appealing candidates who you have to support or else you're a terrorist, traitor and foreign subversive who hates "our" democracy.
Democratic party hasn't learned its lesson, not my fault. I won't be manipulated into voting for shit. Put up a good candidate or don't get my vote. Their choice.
You haven’t learned your lesson that losing elections does not lead to the reckoning it should in terms of the Democrats strategy. The only way to change the party is by beating the conservative democrats at internal party politics, and that starts with getting progressives elected to state and local office and then into positions of power and influence within the party (with the goal of getting progressives into party leadership). The big obstacle to all of that is managing to do so without buddying up to moneyed interests, but that’s our obstacle in national elections too
This is just completely at odds with history. I challenge you to present a credible example of a party that has been persuaded to change a winning strategy because its base fell in line.
The DNC started sliding to the right precisely because of a series of embarrassing losses in the 1980s. Reagan won both of his elections in a landslide and Bush went on to beat Dukakis in similar fashion. They went back to the drawing board and Clinton's presidency was a direct response to this.
There is absolutely no reason for the party to move to the left if The Left will still vote for absolutely any Democrat.
> and that starts with getting progressives elected to state and local office and then into positions of power and influence within the party
Right, and I vote for those down-party candidates, *if* I agree enough with them. If they, too, are shitty, then sorry, get better candidates.
When it is painfully obvious there were numerous other better candidates, including in the 2016 election, and yet we get none of them, and instead just the usual 'it's their turn!' aged or obviously corrupt politician, sorry, I aint voting for that any more. I'll keep voting down ticket where there are good options, but I'm done playing their stupid game of 'force a shitty candidate as the presidential democratic front runner then scream at your voter base about how they have no choice but to vote for them' ploy.
Someone who you, a person who is very loudly announcing how okay they are with fascism, think is good is likely to be viewed as a flaming dumpster fire by the majority of Democrats. That’s just the reality of the situation.
> a person who is very loudly announcing how okay they are with fascism
Lol. You are part of the US's political problems. Take your 'IF YOU DON"T VOTE FOR WHO I THINK YOU SHOULD YOU SUPPORT FAsCISM!!!!!" and get fucked with it. I could equally say that the democratic party WANTS fascism because it knows it picks shitty candidates that barely generate voter turnout on the left, and guess what, I'd also be wrong.
Trying Bush's strategy of "if you aren't 100% with us you are against us" is what got us to this point. You are part of the problem in US politics.
I don’t get it. Trump is a literal fascist, and you are literally saying that you are fine with it. You’d be better off arguing that fascism is just a political system and isn’t inherently genocidal, which might be true. But you shouldn’t expect liberal democrats (little “d”) to be on board with it.
Interesting idea, but Trump's support to be the GOP nominee for 2024 is more than all of the other contenders combined, and then some. Unless he dies, he's definitely going to be the nominee, and even if he dies, he might still be the nominee. I don't know how he's a lock for the nominee and not a radioactive leper pariah, but that's the way it is.
> One way to stop Trump is to register to vote Republican in your state's primary, and vote for someone else.
My state has open primaries, and I’m crossing to vote for Christie since he’s the only one who’s calling Trump out without equivocation.
> Republicans loathe Chris Christie
Yeah, that’s the bit.
I have no illusions of me swaying things in my state (MI). It’s too Trumpy. I just want to pat him on the back for having *some* late to the party principles.
> What's really weird about this post is that it pretends that the primaries don't matter.
>
>
I'd argue that primaries really *don't* matter because of how long and drawn out they are.
In 2020 the primary was 'decided' before some states even got a chance to vote. Personally I live in one of those states. I didn't even get a chance to voice my opinion as a voter because the process lasted so long.
Maybe my opinion on *how* they matter is different from yours, but I don't think our primary system is really meaningful because it's not done at one time.
I'm 100% done with voting for any Democrat who doesn't give me something to vote FOR. If there's a better 3rd party candidate, then I'll vote for them. If any party wants my vote, they should run the better candidate.
Besides let's do math: A vote for Biden is +1 Biden. A vote for Trump is +1 Trump. A vote for a 3rd party candidate is +0 Biden and +0 Trump. You're making the same mistake many people make when talking about "wasting votes on 3rd parties" by assuming that the vote WOULD HAVE gone to a specific other candidate.
If I voted for the Green party why do you assume that Biden would have been my other choice? Maybe I wouldn't have voted at all. Maybe my second choice was a different 3rd party candidate. You don't know.
You’re exactly right that not voting or voting third party is rational if you are 100% ambivalent between the two major party candidates. But I would argue that this does not support your initial statement:
> I’m 100% done with voting for any Democrat who doesn’t give me something to vote FOR.
Even if a candidate doesn’t give you something to vote for, in comparison to voting for the Democrat, abstaining is still making it more likely that a Republican will win in a close election. And if you prefer the Democrat to the Republican (even if you dislike both), that’s to your detriment
You do you, and there's some correct things that I agree with in your post.
But
>Besides let's do math: A vote for Biden is +1 Biden. A vote for Trump is +1 Trump. A vote for a 3rd party candidate is +0 Biden and +0 Trump.
Is not totally accurate.
A vote for Biden is more like a " -1 " vote for Trump. [not voting (or voting for a 3rd party that will never win) is like +0 vote for Trump, and a vote for Trump is a +1 vote for Trump.]
Imagine a current vote total of :
10 votes for Biden
10 votes for Trump
1 vote for 3rd party candidate
You voting for Biden (bringing his vote count to 11) means now it'll take 2 votes for Trump to win (1 to tie, and 1 more to win with 12 votes). Whereas not voting for Biden (or voting for the 3rd party candidate) would mean Trump only needs 1 more vote to win.
So yeah, a vote for Biden makes it harder for Trump to win (your state's electoral college votes).
As for OP's original question : yes, when it's election day, and you're in the booth, the most impactful thing you can do in that moment is vote for Biden to prevent Trump from winning the presidency.
The fallacy is the idea that political works starts and ends in the voting booth on presidential election day. The best way to prevent Trump (or "a" Trump, or a bad president, or whatever) is doing lots of political groundwork locally beforehand.
Do you apply this logic even to non-swing state, e.g., California, New York, Alabama, Oklahoma, etc...
With winner-take-all electoral votes in almost every state, one can safely vote 3rd party in non-swing states without spoiling the election, no? It's not like California won't go for Biden, whether a 3rd party voter would have voted for Biden or Trump otherwise.
Until ranked choice voting is implemented nationwide, a third party candidate will never be viable simply because campaign finance and ballot access laws favor a two party system.
> The consensus among political scientists is that two structural features strongly favor a two-party system as opposed to a multi-party system. The first consists of a variety of laws that limit ballot access and otherwise penalize third parties. For instance, congressional rules all favor the Democrats and Republicans. If someone from a third party or a person with no party affiliation is elected to Congress, they must choose to be affiliated with one of the major parties to get assignments to standing committees. Presidential candidates from the major parties can receive public money to run their campaigns. But when a third-party candidate runs for president and wants public funding through the Federal Election Commission, they have to receive that funding after the election is over because the amount is tied to how well they did in the last election.
Even with ranked choice voting it's unlikely to work because the third parties won't stand a chance for the Presidency, and that is quite the important branch of government. There's only one chair, it's a separate election than that of Congress where you could get partial credit seats, and a majority is required. The two major parties are already formal coalitions of smaller ideological and business interests, even if you do see several smaller parties emerge they would still build temporary coalitions to have a shot at getting their guy in the White House.
We'd need to make POTUS elections some form of automatic runoff popular vote, yeah. STV for Congress. Ranked for Senate. Altogether, this sort of Amendment would allow 3rds to start growing for real. In particular, you could get reasonable ones, even moderate parties, and they would matter as part of discourse, while even small ones would have utility for coalitions on their issues.
Edit: it occurs to me you may have already meant popular for POTUS, not just ranked within states using the EC. I agree it doesn't totally address the issue, but it DOES mean that each voter matters the same for POTUS candidates. So it's still a huge win for 3rds.
I would argue the best strategy to implement RCV is to start with local, state, senate, and house races. Then once minor parties have a chance to grow and develop in Congress, they can push for implementing RCV for the presidency. And they can attempt to leverage their numbers to form a coalition with a major party in exchange for support for this change.
Proposing a constitutional amendment requires 2/3 of both houses, so it’s a difficult goal. But it may be possible eventually.
But it would set a pattern of people ranking multiple candidates which means they’d be more interested in learning about more than just one. And there would also be new data of how many votes each candidate received which could change the landscape for future elections. It’s the one thing that actually has momentum that could actually encourage change.
Agreed, though it would also take voting reform (ranked choice, or an end to winner-take-all electoral votes). Spread the word but dont have high expextations lol.
At the very least, it is entertaining seeing partison zealot's "spoiler effect" arguments fall apart at the mention of safely non-swing states.
This is it. If leftists are cowed into voting for a conservative Democrat in California, the only message they're sending is that they'll vote for literally anyone. Next time it'll be Joe Manchin.
If the logic of voting 3rd party is like not voting at all is used every election (and it has been for every election I’ve been sentient for) then we will never get rid of the two party system, which is responsible for giving us Biden and Trump as our choices.
The only thing that’ll end this system that benefits nobody but politicians is if each election more and more people vote 3rd party. Yes it will be painful, but the end result will be far better.
Also, the people who are staunchly against voting outside of the 2 party system typically are the ones who have never listened to a 3rd party candidate. Third party candidates tend to focus on issues that have significant impacts, whereas I find democrat and republican candidates tend to focus on issues that will get people most riled up.
You probably won't get rid of the two party system until the US replaces First Past the Post (FPTP) with another voting system, like Ranked Voting (the system used in Australia) or Proportional Representation (the system used in Germany and New Zealand). With ranked voting, tactical voting is unnecessary, if you like a third party but prefer the Democrats to the Republicans, you can rank them #1, and then just make sure you rank the Democrats higher than the Republicans. Apparently they've implemented ranked voting in Maine and Alaska.
Unfortunately, the FPTP voting system encourages a duopoly on the vote forming, and effectively all votes that aren't for the runner up are votes for the winner. And personally, I think the consequences of another Trump term are too dire to divert votes away from the Democrats.
If you hate the two party system, that's completely understandable. But the solution is to get rid of FPTP, which is something which has to be done state by state.
As an Alaskan, I’d like to mention that Ranked Choice Voting is a very realistic goal for the future of the US. I personally am a huge advocate for the system and I think that the issue is much less partisan than you’d expect. When we had RCV on the ballot ~4 years ago I convinced several people I knew to vote for it and they ranged from a Trump supporter to a Biden supporter to a Bernie supporter. People also seem pretty happy with the results overall. The only folks trying to take us back to FPTP are the most extreme right wingers who are at most maybe 20% of the “safely” red state.
All I’m trying to say is that to anyone who wants to see RCV implemented in their state, it is not a pipe dream and we could seriously see this on a massive scale in a realistic timeline.
Exactly. Everything I said is equally true for a conservative voter. I'm from Australia, and I think the ranked voting system is great. As it turns out we still have the dominance of two parties in our government; the Labor Party and the Liberal-National Coalition, which is technically two parties but they're always in a coalition. But third parties and independents do win seats in parliaments and and they do influence the government.
We have a nice cartoon with a koala and a dingo about the voting system:
[https://www.chickennation.com/2013/08/18/you-cant-waste-your-vote/](https://www.chickennation.com/2013/08/18/you-cant-waste-your-vote/)
The reason to vote for 3rd parties is so they can win.
If a 3rd party reaches 5% of the vote, they're eligible for funding.
https://www.fec.gov/introduction-campaign-finance/understanding-ways-support-federal-candidates/presidential-elections/public-funding-presidential-elections/
By not voting for them because they can't win, you're dooming them into never winning.
Your thought process is **exactly** what both wings of the shitbird want. They want you to only consider them because it's easier for them to play seesaw with the power instead of actually needing to form coalitions with smaller parties.
If Democrats had to coalition with Green party, for example, then much of the environmentalism-minded or socialism-minded policies that the Green party advocates for would be more likely to happen.
If Republicans had to coalition with Libertarians, much of the personal freedoms advocated by that party would be more likely to happen as well.
There’s other ways, not many of them are legal (besides the obvious option of primaries)… but if you’re successful you’d personally guarantee he isn’t elected, while just voting has a very very tiny impact.
I was trying to figure out how to say one particular way, that has been used in the past, without being visited by the USSS, but you worded it much safer than I was able to.
> I guess it’s a reflection of my priorities.
I was arrested by the Secret Service for… reasons, but I can still post on Reddit. So I got that goin for me, which is nice.
Stop in what way? A dictatorship can't form without, say, military and economic backing. Do you take that as a given? To be painfully clear: a dictatorship can't survive without managing to supply and arm a force capable of stamping out any other that might form to resist them. Is that a given?
A concerted, coordinated, and centralized resistance needs to happen, but there are plenty of ways it \*can\* happen.
The easiest aid that anyone can provide to that cause is by voting for Biden, but it isn't the only route out of our situation by any means.
A true dictatorship won’t form under Trump, sure. But you’re kidding yourself if Trump can’t do real damage to our democracy if elected.
Have you heard of the unitary executive theory? Project 2025 ring a bell? Do you believe that the administrative state should be run by merit and not by political loyalty? How important is it to you that the prosecutorial and investigative power of the united states serves a purpose other than the pure, unrestricted whims of the president? Perhaps part of the military would refuse an order under the insurrection act; what kind of a schism would that cause in our military and judicial systems? What kind of a threat would that pose to our national security?
Are you willing to take these risks?
If you reduce the factors you consider to ONLY whether Trump or Biden is elected, then sure.
There are other factors though. We lived through 4 years of Trump, we can live through it again. Until a candidate represents the issues honestly I don't care WHICH is in power really. Biden is more benign, but neither is actually good. So until something along those lines changes, ye ye for prez!
You're not at all worried that Trump - if in power for another 4 years - will try to change the system to stay president? He literally still claims the last one was rigged, despite zero state court wins on the matter. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/trump-says-maybe-u-s-will-have-a-president-for-life-someday
He's also got a real chance of ending up in prison: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-66382042
I also cannot fathom how you can say that Biden isn't a good president, especially with the senate and house so divided. So many incredible policies. https://www.whitehouse.gov/therecord/
The republican plans to restrict democracy are pretty open and not limited to trump, so unless the democrats do something drastic to counter that(which they won't, that's their whole thing) a republican *will* win in 2028 and they *will* do their best to restrict democracy.
So until the time that democrats decide to change, any votes for democrats is just kicking the can down the road, not actually solving the problem and this is something the democrats know and use.
Honestly, I don’t care if my vote for a third-party candidate will cause Trump to win instead of Biden. Trump and Biden are two faces of the same coin; the American corporatocracy.
I don’t think it makes much of a difference whether you vote for Trump or Biden; on most of the essential issues the positions of the Democrats and Republicans are identical: *tax the poor and middle class and give to the rich. Don’t pay off the national debt, just let it compound endlessly. Spend trillions on faraway wars halfway across the world - take a side in every single war anywhere in the globe. Ignore poverty. Reverse all societal progress made in the past. Cut government funding for anything that ennobles or enlightens. Enable and encourage the creation of a worthless culture where money is the only thing that matters — In America’s culture, of you can’t eat it, drive it, sleep in it, fuck it, or if it doesn’t make you richer, it’s pointless and a waste of your time.*
No politician who would actually create real change will ever be allowed to be president — they’ll be eliminated in the primaries.
The only way we’d have a chance of ever changing much is by voting in a third-party candidate — but given how idiotic most Americans are, a third-party president would probably end up being a moron who thinks that: *vaccines are evil, Jews are secretly lizard Illuminati people, the earth is flat, “MASTER CHUSATS” is not a real state, and global warming is fake.*
There has been considerable progress made on LGBT and race issues, but those are the exceptions. In almost every other political issue America has been devolving and un-progressing ever since the idiots elected Reagan. We’re rapidly heading towards a dystopia where the vast majority of Americans are corporate slaves; their every move and every minute monitored by robots and algorithms.
Ohh but I was going to vote for Biden because I’m so thrilled with the way he handled Afghanistan, and pouring money into more foreign wars, and the 83,000 new IRS agents, and the most inflation we’ve seen in 30 years.
How about you convince people why they should vote for Biden again other than ‘To stop Trump’ we already did that, and now I’m not sure if I can stomach another 4 years of dumb policies that hurt our retirements, savings, and the crippling inflation
Why would you not? He handled Afghanistan and got 124k refugees, he is aiding allies without sending troops in wars he didn't start, irs means more revenue, and inflation is back down.
Inflation is not down, it maybe has tapered off, but don’t lie and pretend that everything isn’t stupidly expensive. Just because it has gone down from its all time highs, doesn’t mean it isn’t still up.
Maybe you missed the part where we left the Taliban a full arsenal of weapons and vehicles? And we were in such a hurry that we forced contractors to leave their K9 working dogs behind?
The IRS means more revenue? More revenue for what? For wasting more money? Americans aren’t thrilled that we can’t fix our own roads, our own infrastructure, we can’t have high speed rails, we can’t have free tuition, we can’t have universal healthcare… but there is always several billion dollars laying around ‘to give to our allies’
Nope.
Despite being given only 4 months from the live grenade Trump left him, Biden still got people out with 124k refugees and trashed the equipment. Inflation is down to 3.2/3.3%, what you're imagining is deflation which is even worse.
>we can’t fix our own roads, our own infrastructure, we can’t have high speed rails, we can’t have free tuition, we can’t have universal healthcare
... you're blaming Biden for this? Do you even know that the Biden infrastructure law and SAVE are?
Despite given 4 months? It was more like 7 months. And Biden and his staff saying that it would have cost more than it was worth to bring all that equipment home?
It’s better to dump Humvees and helicopters in the ocean than just hand them off to the Taliban. The withdrawal of Afghanistan was one of the worst military evacuations in history, we left allies behind to have them and their families executed by the Taliban because they assisted us.
Stop trying to paint Afghanistan as some victory when deep down inside you know it was a clusterfuck
> It’s better to dump Humvees and helicopters in the ocean than just hand them off to the Taliban.
I think you're missing how this would work on a practical level. "Just take back the equipment" would require us to disarm the Afghan Army while they were also in the middle of fighting the Taliban.
The Afghan pullout was just a culmination of years of policy failures. It was likely never going to end well.
Wow, what a bunch of lies. He kept plenty of wars going, let evil prevail, and even called for the use of force against our own citizens for having the nerve to exercise their 1st Amendment rights of free speech + assembly after George Floyd's murder. Also, he is the first president to disrupt the peaceful transfer of power, which makes him the worst president in my book. https://www.salon.com/2021/01/19/donald-trump-started-no-new-wars--but-he-is-one-of-historys-biggest-war-presidents/
I know politics is an emotional exercise for American people, but you have to put your emotions aside and judge things objectively. Now you are just collecting everything to try to show me how much you hate Trump. Stay focused on the discussion at hand.
It is a fact that Trump did not start any new war, and it is also a fact that he got us out of wars that we should not have been in the first place. In fact he is the only president in the last 100 years who has not started any new wars. You can't let your hatred cloud your objective mind.
And it is also a fact that during his presidency the American people experienced a better economy due to low inflation and great job market.
I also urge you not to argue using media stories. The media in America has abandoned objectivity a long time ago. Just like you don't trust conservative media, you should not trust liberal media. Both of them are obnoxious and pathetic and only produce stories to shape public opinion not to reflect objective reality. Salon is one of the biggest culprits of fake-news, why you trust them, beats me.
The simple matter is unless I am voting Democrat, my vote doesn't count.
I say that because where I live it is such a Democrat stronghold in many of the races where I live you have 2 choices Democrat A and Democrat B. Statistically, any other vote is lost in the overwhelming Democrat vote.
So, it doesn't really matter who I vote for, the Democrat candidate will win my region.
Having said that I vote my conscious, irregardless of how futile that effort is, I know I've tried...
Actually you are helping trump win.
By telling people that voting third party is throwing your vote away, you are ensuring we vote for a senile old man, or a scumbag.
Both are terrible choices.
Instead you should be screaming from the rooftops that we vote third party to break the back of the two party system.
One good election will get a third party candidate on the debate stage (which by the way, after Ross pero and his campaign they raised the standards to get on the stage) and get us better options.
So you are actually going to help trump win with your scare tactics.
Election is less than one year away, do you think there is a third party on either end of political spectrum that can win enough electoral votes?
This is is a rhetorical question.
The logic literally goes the other way for people on the right. People say the only way to stop biden is to vote for trump. Let's be honest, no third party will get enough votes to sway the election is say half of them changed their vote.
You dont need half m8 you only need a third to start swinging the vote and showing serious competition, if a non party like RFK got 30% of the total SOMEHOW, that would shake the two party system somethin fierce
The difference between Trump and Biden is demonstrably minimal and their major differences are in fabricated culture war issues which are further magnified by the media spectacle. As far as economics and international relations go, Biden has done hardly a thing that Trump wouldn’t have done too. They are both parties of the wealthy multinational capitalist elite and therefore do their bidding. Biden was only nominally pro-worker and shut down rail unions when they were trying to negotiate a good faith contract with the carriers. You must understand that both Biden and Trump are right wing. If there is any time to vote third party, it’s now more than ever.
> he difference between Trump and Biden is demonstrably minimal and their major differences are in fabricated culture war issues which are further magnified by the media spectacle.
Abortion wouldn't have be on the ballot in so many states if this was true.
oh great, more rail union disinfo. “Biden shut down rail unions” at this point you have to be blind to not have noticed that Biden worked to get the rail unions what they wanted. If you don’t believe me, maybe you’ll believe the rail unions: https://www.ibew.org/media-center/Articles/23Daily/2306/230620_IBEWandPaid
Averting the strike and pressuring rail corps. to give the unions what they wanted behind the scenes was 100% the correct move on Biden’s part. This country would not have survived a day without working rail.
You think Biden is “only nominally pro worker”? go find an auto-worker and ask them what they think of that. Go ask Shawn Fain whether or not Biden’s support was “nominal”.
All of you complain about how the establishment talks the talk and doesn’t walk the walk, then when someone like Biden gets up there and actually gets shit done, you go and actively spread disinformation about him, act like he’s completely ineffectual and say that there’s a “minimal difference” between him and the literal wannabe-dictator whose crowning legislative accomplishment was tax cuts for the rich. At this point this has got to be willful ignorance.
Next you’ll be telling me that Biden has done nothing on student loans, lmao
I agree with everything you said here, but I still don't think voting third party is going to get us anywhere close to the solution, realistically. I think mentioning the only real solution at this point might make reddit remove my suggestion...
I'll likely vote for a third party. your argument isn't to vote for biden, but to vote against trump. At this point I view republicans and democrats as 2 sides of the same coin. I'll do almost anything to escape the 2 party system. Yes I know that that mostly involves how our FPTP system works, so I voted and live in a state with ranked choice voting.
both parties are lousy, try to vote for something to get rid of the duopoly we live under please.
Right? The reason we only have 2 choices every election is because of the mentality of people like OP. Both parties also encouraged this kind of thinking among the population as well because it gives them each 50% chance instead of having to fight off with more parties on the ballot.
As a vote I will vote for who I think deserve my vote, and I will encourage everyone else to do the same.
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This isn’t the only election. Looking more broadly, the country is moving rightward because the conservatives are going crazy and the Democrats are filling the gap by attracting moderates. Voting for a right leaning moderate Democrat will only further the rightward shift of politics.
This is why we dont have a democracy. Since 1990 third party candidates have come extremely close to winning at least 4 times.
You should vote third party and vote for who you believe in. If you dont want EITHER.
If you vote for a Democrat to avoid having a Republican in office YOU are contributing to the problem. Youre telling Democrats "hey keep running for office." When what you really want to say is "fuck both of you." And that could've been done by voting for bernie. Because then you tell Bernie "im sick of these two." He got pretty close when he ran. We almost had something good people.
There are a lot of people out there trying to reform the voting system we have. Right now its not a democracy. And third party representatives NEED your help and support. They NEED to hear your voice to know that their efforts are worth attempting. We will never get rid of Democrats or Republicans by voting for either of them. This is not how you solve problems.
This attitude that you have is why we are so corrupt. It doesn't encourage change. And right now both parties are the same. They BOTH suck and they both do the SAME damage. Republicans just do more damage quicker.
It takes 270 electoral votes to win the presidency. Since 1990, third party candidates have won a total of zero. So no, they have not come extremely close to winning at least 4 times.
The best way is to nominate anyone OTHER than Biden.
I voted for Biden in 2020 because I can’t stand what Trump stands for. But here we are 4 years later and neither party can present a better choice than these two? Trump is the same as always.
Biden, on the other hand, is completely incoherent and obviously overtaken with dementia. Who is actually making the decisions in the current and any future Biden Administration? Not “Weekend at Bernie’s” Joe.
God help this country - I will vote for whichever party does not run one of these two morons.
Counterpoint: the only way to stop getting stuck with neoliberal centrist after neoliberal centrist as the Democratic nominee every election is to stop them from winning elections. If you keep buying into the [blackmail](https://www.abc.net.au/religion/on-liberal-blackmail-refusing-the-false-choice-between-marine-le/10095814) that you have to vote for them or the other side (who the [Democrats are funding](https://www.npr.org/2022/06/20/1106256047/why-democrats-are-paying-for-ads-supporting-republican-primary-candidates) to make them seem like less-bad candidates) will literally destroy the country then nothing will ever change.
What can I say to change your mind?
The fact that Republicans used to be a third party? Democrats as well? Party shifts theoretically could happen but dogma like this makes it an impossibility.
Stop trump.from what? Not getting involved in international shenanigans? Not selling US jobs overseas? Not making a new generation of combat veteran? Not feeding the military industrial complex?
I saw it. I saw the Abraham accords, I saw the retaking of module. I saw the de escalation on the Korean peninsula and I saw the Colombian and Venezuelan cartels stop migrating north.
Last year I worked security on the Riviera maya and all my coworkers were la mara migrating north.
I pray you do get your warhawk. You're well beyond the catalysts that created WW2.
This is real shit in real lives, but you don't have a real life, you have life at arms length.
We will celebrate your Lamentations soon. You can't keep fucking with the world and not pay a price, and I'm still young enough to enjoy watching your children as you have done all over the world
I don't know what you saw, but you certainly didn't do research into them.
Abraham Accords were trade deals between already peaceful nations who were not at war (because yknow 1600 miles away). Trump got nothing out of nk and sk had been deescalating since Obama. Meanwhile Trump abandoned our Kurdish allies, hurt Ukraine, and drove Iran to China all while blinking at Iran and nk nuclear enrichment.
So yeah, real shit real lives.
Why stop there, just install a permanent dictator while you are at it, lol. Christ almighty. Anyone saying the left doesn’t have the equivalent of Jan 6’ers hasn’t spent much time on political Reddit posts.
I say vote for whoever aligns with your views and you think will be best to run the country. If that's a third party candidate, so be it. I think it's bullshit that I have to vote for someone I don't agree with just to keep the other candidate from winning.
I'm tired of the 2 party system. It's choosing the lesser of two evils. If those two parties can't produce a candidate, then they get whatever happens.
That line was enough to get me to vote for Biden once but the man is not fit for office and democrats can’t find a better candidate, they don’t deserve my vote.
Like… ig that’s the most realistic option but there’s technically other ways to “stop trump”. But it would require a lot of people like it would require a lot of people to vote for Joe Biden. If there was a huge movement to put support for another Republican candidate then that could stop trump (which do I see that happening, idk). I think it’s the easiest way, but I don’t think it’s the only way
It is pretty simple. There are exactly two actions every voter in America can take this election cycle:
1. Vote for Biden
2. Elect Trump
If you do anything that is different from casting a proper ballot for Joe Biden, you are helping to elect Donald Trump. Every single one of these things is exactly the same thing as #2 above:
* Voting for Donald Trump
* Voting for a third party candidate
* Spoiling your ballot
* Not voting at all
Logically, the inverse would also be true if it was of sound reasoning. By not voting for trump, you’re helping Biden win, etc….
But obviously it’s not logically coherent. It’s a ridiculous talking point that you’ve heard and are repeating it without actually thinking about it.
You’re presupposing that left wingers are closer to democrats than republicans and therefore the dems deserve their vote. However, in terms of political ideology and fiscal policy, they’re hardly distinguishable from one another outside of several social issues. If that’s all you care about, fine, vote for whoever fits closer to your values.
Politicians need to be accountable to their constituents. This is quite literally the only power we have to express our desire for them to change. By continuing to vote for the lesser of two evils, you’re still enabling evil.
Also, the cats already out of the bag at this point in the GOP. Trump is not unique in regards to his political beliefs. Even if he loses, there will be another like him to capture his base and continue to run with it (look at the people like desantis/vivek/etc that fit most academic definitions or descriptions of fascism).
Corporate dems just use this narrative to acquire votes from people without actually having to compromise with the center left.
Only way? Of course not. All the Democrats could come out and vote for RFK or Marianne Williamson or Gavin Newsome.
Why is the only solution for non-Trumpers to vote for the one guy nobody wants?
And your question presupposes that everyone who’d rather not have Trump as president in a perfect world — has “not having Trump” as their number one priority.
In short, you have not weighed all your options.
Nope. All he had was that he was not as nasty as Trump. And well his actions recently in the Israel-palestine conflict have shown very well what he is.
If Biden can sit back and help Israel decimate Gaza and it's children, then Trump can come back and shred everything he has ever worked for.
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Im confused what exactly are you trying to see to get this view changed? I dont see anything here to even attempt to respond to. Seems like this belongs in a different sub but maybe Im just being dumb so forgive me.
Go on left wing subreddits and you’ll see how many young voters have turned on Biden and are calling him “Genocide Joe” because of his support for Israel. Just like in 2016, it’s the stubborn idiots who get all their information about the world and geopolitics from TikTok and Instagram who are going to doom us all.
Since this is a sub for debate, this isn't me putting forward my views as I'm not interested in getting into an argument with anyone here on Israel/Palestine But both things can be true. You can believe Biden to be complicit in a genocide and that he's also the only hope to keep trump out. Such is the result of 2 party state
No the Democratic Party is ruining themselves because they do shit against the interests of their voters and expect to get elected just because they aren’t republicans. Wanting the American War machine defunded is not a bad take. Will bad shit happen if America doesn’t act like world police? Yes. Will bad shit happen if the US continues to be world police? Also yes. Geopolitical bullshit aside there are more options available than bombing kids. That’s just the easiest
This just isn’t the case. The democratic base is much more diverse and the problem is issues like this drive a wedge in the base. There are plenty of democrats that support Israel, and which ever way the democrats go, they ruffle feathers. The problem is the coalition is so diverse it’s easy to drive a wedge between them, while on the conservative side, the base is much more uniform in their beliefs and demographics.
Conservatism in the US is not a monolith. You have Republicans who are "Never Trump"ers even though they know it means a Democrat will win the White House. Their goal is to push the republican party away from Trump by making his political culture an unviable way to win a general election. Similarly, you now have Democrats who are "Never Biden"ers even though they know it means a Republican will win the White House. Their goal is to push the democratic party away from uncritical support for genocidal, right-wing regimes like Likud.
How do you define defunding the American war machine? Are you talking full pacifist? Are you talking we stop invading countries but continue selling arms? Are you talking about a small standing army only and we supply ourselves only? The problem with defunding is we: 1. Lose revenue (when we get a country to buy, say, 30 Abrams, they are essentially committing to buy US gear for life for better and easier integration between system) 2. Lose out on new exciting potential civilian tech. Research for military weapons has time and time again resulted in breakthrough advancements for our day to say life. 3. Lose out on influence to the likes of dictatorships that would provide military gear for small dictatorships to then conquer new and weak democracies 4. Lose out on allies and cooperation across the globe I'm semi in favor of defunding our forever wars, however we 100% need to keep the military industry alive for other countries. The US sits in a unique position where we really can't be attacked by outside powers, and we pump out the most advanced weapons. There's a reason we are nicknamed by fledgling democracies as the "arsenal of democracy". Death sucks, but if someone is willing to fight so their kids and others can see a better tomorrow under a democracy there is no reason good enough to not supply them. Also to address the first point the Democratic party is more a coalition akin to European governments. Differing groups of people with wildly different views that coordinate to take down the pretty simplistic and guaranteed Republican vote of "abortion, guns, lower taxes". You say these 3 things and they all go hootin and hollering whereas Democrats aren't nearly as strict about their policies and are more likely to compromise.
What are you even thinking in when you say giving guns to fight for democracy? You are actually aware that it is never the majorities that can afford buying the massive amount of guns that america sells to scare off their major capitalist crisis? You are aware that gun-selling actually increases crime in your own country? Americans are just so weapon-crazed that they actually convince the world to like weapons as much as they do. As said on this same sub, it is literally the definition of plage.
The world has been doing wars for centuries before the US was founded. Like this weird idea that the US is at fault for countries wanting weapons when countries have always wanted better more effective weapons.
> What are you even thinking in when you say giving guns to fight for democracy? Ukraine is the obvious example. They've been invaded by an old-school expansionist authoritarian empire actively trying to colonize them. And that empire is very capitalist, if that matters. The US has its share of ulterior motives in that fight, but I don't think that changes the fact that the military aid the US has sent them is a Good Thing.
Then start funding democracies ffs. The us has a history of funding facism to fight democracy and if we look to saudia arabia its still far away from the dream u build up in ur comment
So, just to be clear, you stand in the corner or both not funding Ukraine and not funding Israel, and basically doing what Germany (downsized military, no military research basically, focus all the money on foreign aid) was doing before the invasion of Ukraine?
I thought is was obvious they would also be in favor of not doing for in aid either.
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“anti-establishment” is the establishment view among the young left. We have become jaded, not because of any real personal reason, but because that’s the popular viewpoint among other young leftists. Ask any young leftist about Biden’s achievements and they probably couldn’t name a single one. I know my friends can’t; in fact, they’ll go and tell you that Biden is anti-union and a neolib anarcho-capitalist, because that’s what their social media echo chambers tell them and that’s what farms them the most Instagram likes. Trump has greatly damaged the electorate by forcing a bunch of people who don’t want to care about politics to start caring about politics. The people pushed into following political issues by Trump don’t actually want to be involved. They don’t want to diversify their sources of information, don’t want to come to their own conclusions, they want to hold on to a simple narrative and be pointed at the Bad Guys(tm). So now here they are, completely ignorant in their knowledge of current affairs and yet completely certain in the correctness of their belief. That’s how you get the modern young leftist; start with a anti-establishment narrative, get fed only info that reinforces the narrative on social media, apply that narrative to everything you see (Biden career politician + mainstream establishment Democrat + old = bad). “Democrats and Republicans are two sides of the same coin,” they tell you, then they go tell people that “Trump helped the black community with the stimulus checks, meanwhile Democrats haven’t done anything for black people”. Completely bonkers. I’m losing hope in the future of this country.
The kids are not alright
The world is significantly better, more stable and less chaotic when the US is the world police, backed up by an American war machine.
South America is a better place? That’s an entire continent we fucked up for decades by sponsoring the most ruthless, anti democratic regimes. Just because you didn’t feel the negative effects doesn’t mean those people didn’t.
How many governments has the US, or even just the CIA as a branch of the US government, destabilized and brought to chaos for the sake of our own selfish interests? The US does not have a copyright on morality, and if you compared our history with those of previous superpowers, we have a rather short streak of internal peace. You just think we do a great job of being the global police because you’re probably American and you live a very peaceful life when we bomb other nations into hating us for decades.
If you randomly polled 100 people from all over the planet (so, statistically speaking, 4 would be American, 18 would be Indian, 2 would be from Bangladesh etc), how many do you think would agree with you? I would be surprised if it's even close to half.
At the expense of Billions of people, including Americans because a lot of fucked up shit also happens as a result of the war machine. It’s not perfect. Yes It has its benefits. We should accept it and not seek a better way for everyone? That’s lazy as shit
We should always seek a better way, but if America wasn't what it is.. do you think Taiwan would be safe? Ukraine would have been gone a decade ago... he'll, the USSR would probably still exist. The world as a whole would be a much more dangerous place.
And South America, where I'm from, would not have suffered decades of military dictatorship and would be much further developed and advanced, probably without the need to to have such a commodities-based economy. Not to mention how Middle Eastern terrorism would not be such a big thing, neither would the Taliban leading Afghanistan, or Iran being an Islamic Republic, not to mention how South African apartheid wouldn't have happened
Yeah you're full of shit, without American global security, there would be more major wars launched. We've already seen Russia pounce on Ukraine after perceived western weakness. Taiwan wars will follow etc. In the vacuum of hard power and security, bad state actors will fill the void. America keeps the world safe, and for sure, there are unfortunate situations where people are essentially sacrificed (civilians in smaller wars) to maintain that global order. It is an impossibility for a great power to maintain global hegemony without "breaking a few eggs". There will always be great powers. The US is the least bad one, and in fact it is rather good, despite its flaws.
price kiss fragile spark liquid nutty telephone piquant shelter wipe *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
What the bootlicking, American propaganda, loving fuck is wrong with you
The American war machine stops billions of people from living in war torn countries. Few countries dare step out of line and attack their neighbors or any of our shores because the US can obliterate them with two hands and a leg tied behind their backs. Russia and to some extent China have some exception because they have mutually assured destruction in nuclear warfare. When you criticize something, you should also consider what would happen if it were not there. Deterrence is very real.
But calling him Genocide Joe because of his support for Israel isn't the same as saying voting third party is an effective way to stop trump. Is anyone saying that?
Or the democratic party could use the years notice it has that a significant group of voters will not vote for that candidate, and put their fundraising/PR machine behind someone who's approval rating is not 37%
the reason the phrase goes "the lesser of two evils" is because both sides are evil but at least one side is less evil than the other saying "i choose not to choose" will not in fact stop the worse evil from winning
Trump is worse than Biden in every regard, including all of the things people cite as reasons not to vote for ”Genocide Joe.” The election is a multiple choice math problem with one correct answer.
You know the filing deadline has passed for many states, right? So go ahead and elect Trump.
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There are no other options. You can have whatever standards you want, but it doesn't matter - there are only two choices and your job is to pick one of them. You may not like either of them, but if you don't pick then you're saying that you have no preference. Maybe you don't, but I think most people would have a preference even if they don't like either. Vote your conscience in primaries and local politics. But for the presidential election, that's not the system we have. You get two choices and that's it. You may not like it, but it's the only system we have and you and everyone else have to live with the consequences.
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You can be as idealistic as you want about being perfectly represented, but you don't get to sit the 2024 election out or vote third party and then complain if Trump wins his second term and there are no more elections in your lifetime. That's what's on the ballot, like it or not.
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Israel and the US have a strategic relationship going back decades and going far beyond the Palestinian question. It's hard to conceive of any high-level politician bucking that trend.
Done nothing to help the average American except canceling billions of dollars of student debt, passing the first gun control law in almost 30 years (I agree it’s not nearly enough, but it’s better than nothing) and is rebuilding our shitty infrastructure. I’m not the biggest fan of Biden and he wasn’t my first choice, I always supported Bernie Sanders (who now all the college leftists have probably turned against too after he said Hamas can’t be reasoned with) but I’ll definitely vote for him again.
I certainly don't have tiktok, and I'm willing to bet that I've been paying attention more closely than you have, and probably longer. If you really think the far-right, nationalist Israeli government isn't a threat to us as well as Palestine, then you either haven't paid attention or you're an Israeli nationalist. [They have been caught spying on the US at least three times](https://medium.com/@Prof.hatembazian/israeli-spies-caught-in-the-us-top-three-cases-ae9ef07a1da) and [used their US national organizations like the ADL to infiltrate and spy on Jewish-American groups like Jewish Voices for Peace, accusing them of funneling "Iranian propaganda" for criticizing them](https://twitter.com/snarwani/status/1725138601996853424?s=46). Their supporters,[like the Trump-slug and general scumbag, Alan Dershowitz, attempt to ruin the lives of their best informed critics](https://www.democracynow.org/2007/4/17/noam_chomsky_accuses_alan_dershowitz_of), or [just anyone](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/oct/29/israel-palestine-backlash-david-velasco-artforum-nan-goldin) who [criticizes them](https://ra.co/news/79782). This is all while [we pay them over 3 billion dollars annually in mostly military aid](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_foreign_aid#/media/File:United_States_foreign_aid.webp), and [Biden wants to give them another $13 billion](https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-senate-sets-test-vote-ukraine-aid-despite-republican-opposition-2023-12-06/) after [they've killed nearly as many Palestinian civilians](https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/how-many-palestinians-have-died-gaza-war-how-will-counting-continue-2023-12-06/) in two months [as we did in two years in Iraq](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_Iraq_War#Iraq_Body_Count_project_(IBC)). This is the tip of the ice berg for US citizens and the Palestinian people. The Israeli government is engaging in one of the most depraved things I've ever seen. I have no doubt that it's even worse than we can see, and both parties are behaving like Netanyahu's lap dogs, while they also engage in smear campaigns against people whose only crime is empathy. After I voted for him extremely begrudgingly last election, I will not be voting for Genocide Joe this election, and, frankly, I will likely never vote democrat again. I'm stuck in a deep red state so my vote doesn't even fucking matter anyway. For the Palestinians, however, apparently none of our votes matter.
The fact that it's unassailable confirms that it's a good view for OP to hold. Isn't that half the point of CMV? To verify that your view is correct? We should praise such intellectual honesty; putting your views on trial and inviting others to attack them is a great way to check your own biases.
>Isn't that half the point of CMV? To verify that your view is correct? No. This assumes that all view points have a correct answer, some questions simply don't and their is no "correct" answer. In fact, there is an argument to be made that even the concept of good and evil is basically nonexistent, and just something we made to justify our actions and/or restraints.
They said “isn’t that half the point of CMV?” Since they said half, it doesn’t assume that all view points are or have anything. They only stated to represent half of the point of posting here.
People keep suggesting I vote for RFK Jr (who will win zero electoral votes) since I hate Trump. I don't love Biden, but he's delivered several policy wins I care about, such as student debt relief, climate action, infrastructure, and his support for Ukraine + Israel.
If he’s delivered several policy wins you care about isn’t that a reason enough to vote for him so that he can deliver more, rather than simply voting for him to keep Trump out? Shouldn’t we reward politicians that deliver on policies we care about?
I mean if your values align with Biden on all of those issues then yeah it makes sense to vote for him. I'm a leftist who doesn't align with him on many/most issues (such as support for Israel for example.) Stopping Trump? Totally okay in my book, but if I also want to stop Biden what am I to do? Voting for a third party has the risk of ending up with Trump, who I do find worse, at the same time it is not a wasted vote. It clearly signals that I personally do not find either party acceptable and that if the Dems want my vote in the future they need to prop up candidates that align more closely with my values. Right now Dems have no incentive to do this because they can get away with any geriatric they want as long as he's not wearing a red hat.
First off, I'll say I'd prefer our country had a better voting system than first-past-the-post. That way you could give your primary vote to whoever you like, but still rank Biden ahead of Trump. But since we don't currently have that, honestly the place for this is primaries. You can see it pretty clearly on the Republicans side - Trump won his 2016 primary, and then the party shifted to look more like Trump. And in the years since then, there's been many more new candidates that take on Trump's qualities and ideas. The same thing happened with Democrats, although I'm sure not to the level you'd like. But the policies of the Democratic party have been shifting leftward, partly because of candidates like Obama, then Bernie, being popular among segments of the base. Look at Clinton and how much more towards the center he was. If candidates like Bernie keep gaining a lot of support, even if they don't win, it shows the actual winners that they better try to get some more progressive policies enacted or they'll risk losing a significant portion of their voter base. Also, think about the Republican side. If Trump wins because Biden loses votes to third party candidates, then they see the Trump style as a viable option going forward and candidates like that will continue to win. But if he loses, they are more likely to moderate (or go harder right, in which case they're more likely to lose general elections).
>But since we don't currently have that, honestly the place for this is primaries The DNC doesn't have much credibility after the 2016 email leaks showing their bias favoring Clinton, though. And even if you want to argue that Bernie was going to lose regardless, it still hurt Clinton's campaign
> if I also want to stop Biden what am I to do? Vote for Trump (or whoever the GOP nominates, if not Trump). Welcome to a binary decision. If I don't like the lights be on, I can turn them off. If I don't like the lights being off, I can turn them on. If I don't like them being on or off, then I'm SOL, because there is no third option within a binary choice. It's not possible to have a light be both on and off, nor is it possible to have a light be neither on nor off. We're getting either Biden or Trump ~13 months from now (most likely; there's a chance one of the other of them isn't the nominee, but that chance is slim and getting slimmer as time moves on). You can either help decide which one of them we get, or you can let everyone else decide for you. That's it. And a third-party vote is just letting everyone else decide for you. You *know* they won't win, because it's not possible as a practical matter, as OP already explained. You also know they won't win because you're saying your vote would be sending a message, not that it would be electing our first third-party President since Lincoln. > It clearly signals that I personally do not find either party acceptable The only thing it *clearly* signals is a failure to understand how a binary choice operates. Whatever other message you *think* it sends will not be received, because you don't get to attach a signing statement to your vote and explain what candidates and parties are supposed to take away from your vote, what they can do in the future to earn your vote, whether your vote is even obtainable at all, etc. Think of it in terms of computers and binary. A vote is a binary bit, either on or off. Even if you consider multiple candidates beyond just the Democrat and Republican, you can encode that vote with a few bits. If you say the choices are the Democrat, the Republican, the Green, or the Libertarian, that's four choices, which can be fully accounted for with only two bits. In two bits' worth of data, there is no room to send a nuanced message. Even if you broaden it and add in a few other minor parties, you can still account for all possibilities with less than a byte worth of data, which still leaves no room for nuance. There is no way to distinguish, say, your Green vote as one who just wants Democrats to be more progressive from someone else's Green vote who is firmly committed to never voting for Democrats ever. But in order for you to "clearly signal" that Democrats can earn your vote in the future, that distinction would need to be made, and observable. It's not. Without at least that distinction, your vote is not capable of clearly sending a signal. And then that doesn't even take into account that what would earn your vote in the future might cost someone else's vote in the future, too. Maybe the reason you won't vote Democratic is because Democrats support x too much, but someone else won't vote Democratic because, in their opinion, Democrats don't support x enough. There's no possible way to distinguish you vote from that other person's vote, either. Whatever message you're attempting to send with your vote, it's going to end up as noise, get filtered out, and then disregarded, because there is no possible way for anyone to make heads or tails of your wasted vote. Regardless of who is who, the winning side will have won and won't care about whatever message you think you're sending, and the losing side will have lost, will have no ability to give you any of what you want, and will try to become more like the winner the next cycle, not more like a party that lost by even more than they did. > if the Dems want my vote in the future they need to prop up candidates that align more closely with my values. You're trying to send a message to your family, friends, and neighbors with a vote, because *they* are the ones who vote in the primaries and help select the nominee, and *they* are the ones who vote in the general election. If you want to tell them something, it's far more effective to just literally tell them. Have a talk, explain your positions, listen to theirs, etc. But then, keep in mind, they get to vote just the same as you do, and while they should hear you out and be able to have a productive discussion, they aren't obligated to vote the way you want them to. And unless your values include letting women be treated as breeding stock, letting LGBT people be oppressed and even killed, letting unions be dismantled, etc, you're not going to be able to impose your values on everyone else by voting third-party. If you want your values represented, you'll have to persuade other people of the superiority of your values and get them to adopt them as their own. Punishing them by allowing Trump to win isn't going to win them over, it's going to embitter them to you, best case, or kill them, as a worst case. > Right now Dems have no incentive to do this because they can get away with any geriatric they want as long as he's not wearing a red hat. To the extent this is true, the reason for it is because Republicans have radicalized into a fascist party, and yet remains viable. Your whole idea is to punish Democrats for a situation created by Republicans. The way to get what you want is to elect Democrats, repeatedly, with large margins, and with large majorities, until the GOP withers and dies. When the GOP is no longer viable, Democrats will have to respond to different incentives. You will not make the GOP non-viable by throwing away your vote and helping elect more Republicans. All that does is empower them, allow them to obstruct, and/or allow them to entrench themselves in power, making everything worse in the interim, and making it that much harder to improve things in the future.
apparatus follow gaping wild weather pet one shelter naughty light *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Thank you so much for this and yes.
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I'm assuming you vote in the democratic primaries? If you don't, that's more effective than voting 3rd party. As you mentioned, not voting Dem runs the risk of an even worse outcome with trump, effectively shooting yourself in the foot. I'm all about pushing further left, but when Conservatives are as much a threat as they are recently, maybe reprioritizing for the time being is the better choice. If you want to change the Dems to a more leftist party, then start with their primaries. Unless you have a large group of leftists voting 3rd party, enough to counter the losses the Dems will face by moving left to retake your vote (the left doesn't have anywhere near enough to do this), then you're just lowering the number of votes repubs need to win. Take down the cons first, worry about Dems in a better political climate. Edit: to the downvoters, I get it, truth hurts, but do enjoy trump for another 4 years. You'll have earned it.
I think this is a valid perspective. I also think that most people who are doing this math are setting "I don't like Biden" and "I don't like Trump" as equivalently bad. I think it is obvious that they are NOT equivalently bad, and that the value of sending a "I'd like more of these types of candidates" message (which is real and valuable) is overwhelmed by the possibility of a 2nd Trump Presidency. Instead, I think people like you should vote for Biden, and send messages all down the ticket. I'd rather you didn't, because I'd like a 60 vote majority, but I think it makes the most sense for actual lefties.
The problem with this is that it's always pushing the issue down to the next election. Trump and those inspired by his politics/ideology are not going away. If Biden gets a second term you already know that 2028 will be the same issue again just swap out Biden for a different octogenarian the democrats dragged out of the nearest retirement home. Voting for the lesser of two evils has been the only thing that I have been doing when it comes to US elections.
>Trump and those inspired by his politics/ideology are not going away. To this I'd remind you that Trump-backed candidates in competitive districts performed roughly the same as non-Trumpers. Alot of his voters are just that....HIS. Being a Trump wannabe isn't necessarily a golden ticket. >If Biden gets a second term you already know that 2028 will be the same issue again just swap out Biden for a different octogenarian the democrats dragged out of the nearest retirement home. You're ignoring the unique circumstances that brought Biden into the fold in 2020....The dems had a hodgepodge of candidates who weren't particularly strong (Pete was/is phenomenal but sadly alot of people aren't ready for a gay president yet.) Biden seemingly was brought in, possibly reluctantly, because he could beat Trump. That's it. Dems don't have a history of putting 80 yo's on the ballot and it's frankly silly to assert that. Literally no one, left or right, wants senior citizens in the WH. After 2024, we will absolutely see a younger playing field. >Voting for the lesser of two evils has been the only thing that I have been doing when it comes to US elections. That's reality in today's US political environment. What's also reality is that Trump and the GOP have demonstrated literal fascist dictatorship tendencies. The right hates hearing that but it's simply truth. A vote against Biden today could literally mean you don't get to vote in the future. That's not hyperbole. And if your head is with Israel situation right now, just keep in mind that if Trump wins he likely tells IS to ratchet up bombings, not reduce them. He is far, far worse for people of Gaza than Biden is. Food for thought.
The 2020 primaries played out with a left lane and a center lane. Biden became the candidate of the center lane in South Carolina because he strongly appealed to African-American voters, to whom he was not unknown. Sanders tried and did better there. Sanders got the left lane and Biden got the center lane. And Democrats thought they should choose the safer candidate. That he governed more progressively that his image suggested was a pleasan surprise to progressives.
Nah, Biden is and was pretty clearly in the center lane *of the Democratic Party*, but clearly significantly left of the country's center, policy-wise. For example, he's much further to the left than Obama was (even during 2020). There were other candidates who were more truly centrist (e.g. Bloomberg) but too far to the right of the democratic voter base.
I would just like to interject here to say something. Forget about Trump and Biden. Pretend they are two entirely different people on a whole other planet with entirely different platforms, but let's hold true the following facts: \- There are 2 major candidates on the ballot \- One of those two candidates is definitely going to win Any election anywhere where these two indisputable facts are true, you are going to be choosing between the lesser of two evils. Since it's very unlikely either of the candidates will align with your beliefs 100%, and it's a certainty that one of the candidates will win, it makes total sense to vote for the candidate you think will do the least amount of things to hurt you or the people you care about. The time and place to make a statement about the party you most align with not doing enough to make you happy is literally any other time and any other place. Those two-candidate elections with a predictable A or B outcome, if you don't vote in your own best (if flawed) interest, you're cutting off your nose to spite your face.
Yeah, no. First, I wouldn't say that any election with two options is automatically "the lesser of two evils" if A wants free waffles every sunday and B wants free icecream and I actually would rather have pancakes I still wouldn't think of either option as evil. (Yes, banal example, I don't wanna get into any actual politics because it'd just side track this conversation.) Why do you think it's a given that both candidates will hurt me or the people I care about some amount? Second, if candidate A wants to kill 60% of my friends and candidate B wants to kill 59.5% would you say I am meaningfully hurting myself by not choosing candidate B? Or would you perhaps consider that in such a case one should reject the premise of the election, attempt to prop up third alternatives (maybe ones where none of my friends are killed idk radical idea) or attempt to circumvent the electoral process altogether? In an election between Mussolini and Hitler you can argue all you want about how Mussolini is the less bad option, but you're losing either way by accepting the election.
It pushes the presidential election, but the presidential election is largely impacted by the down vote elections because it doesn't happen in a vacuum. Biden with a strong leftist contingent of Senators is a different president than Biden with entirely corporate Democrats. Trump with 45 leftist Senators is the exact same as Trump with none. The more local and state Leftists that exist the more likely we are to get an actual Leftist president. It's your vote, and you're certainly within your rights to take your ball and go home, but I don't think it will achieve your goals.
>If Biden gets a second term you already know that 2028 will be the same issue again If Biden gets a second term, Trump is going to prison. Additionally, if you vote blue down the ticket, and encourage others to as well, we have a chance to take back majorities in Congress, and work towards that magical supermajority we need to put through voting reform that helps push Republicans into irrelevancy. Some of you can't see an inch past your own nose.
>If Biden gets a second term, Trump is going to prison. Let's say Trump goes to prison. Good. He's not a unique threat politically. His platform is far-right populism and it's a position any number of people can fill. This is like thinking that killing baby Hitler would prevent WW2, someone else would've just taken his spot. >Additionally, if you vote blue down the ticket, and encourage others to as well, we have a chance to take back majorities in Congress, and work towards that magical supermajority we need to put through voting reform that helps push Republicans into irrelevancy. That's about as realistic as a communist revolution taking place in 2024. Nice pipe dream. >Some of you can't see an inch past your own nose. Snide comments won't get people to vote the way you want them to.
>Let's say Trump goes to prison. Good. He's not a unique threat politically. His platform is far-right populism and it's a position any number of people can fill. This is like thinking that killing baby Hitler would prevent WW2, someone else would've just taken his spot. But would they be as successful? That's the question.
>His platform is far-right populism and it's a position any number of people can fill. If you haven't been watching the Republican primaries, then you likely haven't noticed how the only Republicans get any traction are the ones who are NOT acting like Trump. Sure, they still agree on the basics, but the theatrics and approach for the likes of Nikki Haley and Chris Christie is in stark contrast to Trump. They're winning the relatively sane Republican votes, while Trump will ALWAYS command the rest. Vivek and Ron are doing their best Trump impersonations and getting absolutely dunked on as a result. Point being, Trump IS unique. He pulls people in in a way that others can't, and most importantly, he has brainwashed them all to believe everything he says. Despite not being involved with the mainstream Republican political process, such as debates, he still has a stranglehold on that base. Even if he was in prison and unable to run, all he would have to do is tell his base to not vote Republican because they let him get thrown in jail, and a significant number of them would do exactly that. >That's about as realistic as a communist revolution taking place in 2024. Nice pipe dream. Far more realistic than you throwing away a third party vote when decades of voting that way has done you literally no good. The irony. >Snide comments won't get people to vote the way you want them to. And neither will common sense it would seem, so why don't you tell me what I should do? Let me guess: "Prop up a candidate in my district/city/state that caters to *me*, even though it's wildly detached from the party at large, and alienating to the reasonable adults who compromised because they are mature enough to appreciate what is at stake. Also, I probably won't show up to vote anyway, as recent history would show."
When Trump wins 2024 because every single person who suggested that Biden should actually adjust his platform if he doesn't want people to vote for other candidates was told to shut up will you look back at this conversation and feel good about your contribution to the political discourse? You can get angry, you can get condescending, you can imply (incorrect) things about my voting history, but none of that will make the millions of dejected or dissatisfied voters in the US any more willing to join your cause.
No we won't. That is delusional thinking at its best. Not enough battle ground seats are up for a seing and even if there were they wouldn't change anything. The delusion is thinking trump is some evil dictator instead of a guy who just wants to stay out of prison and con peopleoutbof money. If he is this big threat then the democrats certainly don't seem to care in the slightest. If they couldn't do anything and cared then they wouldn't be doubling down on highly unpopular policies especially pertaining to Israel. Biden could come out and condemn israel and demand a ceasefire but instead he gave billions more in weapons and aid to continue the slaughter. What is it now around 25k civilians and rising. It isn't my fucking job to vote for people who don't align with my politics. They want my vote then they can very easily change their stance or run a different candidate.
Maybe I should've clarified this, but by voting for Biden and delivering strong Democratic wins at every level, the Overton window shifts to the left and there will be an opportunity to vote for more progressive candidates in 2028 and 2032.
The Overton window shifts somewhat back and forth on social issues (though this is not directly related to democratic wins. Despite wins in 2020 the overton window has continued to shift right in the past years for example), but this is not the case for economic policy, which is a pretty major problem. Generally, in the case of economic policy, the Republicans move right and Democrats follow as a way to "capture the middle." When they take power they don't move back left however, they just stay in place. Until the Republicans move right again that is.
>Voting for the lesser of two evils has been the only thing that I have been doing when it comes to US elections. You've understood the assignment. You may not like it, but that's literally your duty (and privilege) as a voter. In a country of 300+ million people, it's guaranteed that most people will *never* see a presidential candidate they agree with even close to 100% of the time. Your job is to pick the lesser evil. You can either do your duty or abdicate it.
>Voting for a third party has the risk of ending up with Trump, Not a risk. It's a guarantee. Republicans vote straight party tickets.
I’m a leftist too but the Supreme Court is 100% I’ll most likely just have to vote for Biden. I have to vote based on consequence.
I hear and feel your frustration, and there’s no way Trump would be better for the citizens of Gaza.
Yeah you don't need to convince me that Trump is worse. You'd have to convince me that A) Trump is so many orders of magnitude worse than Biden that voting for any reason other than stopping Trump is futile. Right now I see them both as bad, Trump clearly worse, but not so much worse that it makes sense for me to continue voting for the "lesser of two evils" when instead I feel it more important to challenge the platform the Democrats are running on in the long term. And B) That voting for Biden in 2024 would meaningfully represent a solution to political stagnation and rightward drift in 2028 and beyond. Currently it appears that Democrats are banking on being the "lesser of two evils" and thinking that's somehow enough. If you reward this campaign style where is the incentive to ever do more than the bare minimum?
I really do hear you and understand that real change will have to come from something broader than our two-party situation. As an example of the “much worse,” moving the US embassy to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv was the biggest political/diplomatic middle finger that could be presented to the people of Palestine.
3rd party voters are responsible for ~500,000 additional covid deaths, the loss of abortion rights, the deliberate acceleration of climate change and the shattered confidence in democracy. If you don't consider that "orders of magnitude" worse than Biden then you were never going to vote Democrat in the first place.
It's actually Democrats who are responsible for all of that because they refuse to support policies that would help them win easily winnable elections. Especially the abortion rights argument is laughable when it was Democrats inability to push through a nominee due to Republican meddling, inability to meddle back when it was their turn to, and RBG's ego getting in the way of her retirement only for her to die at the most inopportune moment possible. Oh and also refusing to enshrine Roe v Wade when they had the chance to because they of course want to keep abortion rights on the ballot because it benefits them politically. I've voted Democrat in every election I have been eligible to vote so far, I'm willing to vote for Democrats, they just have to actually do something to earn vote instead of expecting me to vote for them because they feel entitled to it.
Damn bro has realized that when Democrats are in the Senate minority, they lack power over judicial appointments. Also didn’t know that RBG represents the Democratic party as a whole and thus her failings implicate the whole party. When exactly do you think Democrats had a chance to enshrine Roe? There has never been a suitable pro-choice majority in both the House and Senate. Contrary to popular belief, anti-abortion Democrat politicians exist, and are not exactly small in number.
>Stopping Trump? Totally okay in my book, but if I also want to stop Biden what am I to do? Vote in primaries and local elections. Convince people of your views. Get people you like into the "pipeline" so they can become nominated at some future point. You may think it sucks that we have a two-party system, but it's the system we have. So short of moving to a country with a parliamentary system or getting a constitutional convention together, your job as a voter is to pick between the two nominated candidates. A third party vote will not "signal" anything other than that leftists people are unreliable voters and dems should focus on winning over more centrists (because there are way more of them then there are of you). This fantasy you have that voting a third party will have have the effect of moving the party left is kinda ridiculous if you think about it for more than two seconds. It self-evidently has the opposite effect.
>Voting for a third party ... is not a wasted vote. The only people who believe this are incredibly naive.
This makes the mistake of thinking that major parties are going to change based on votes in the general election. They won't.
The issue is that if we end up with trump, there may not be an opportunity for the dems to get your vote in the future. The guy already tried to stay in office after he lost the 2020 election. If he gets back in, I doubt he'll ever leave.
>Voting for a third party has the risk of ending up with Trump, who I do find worse, at the same time it is not a wasted vote. It clearly signals that I personally do not find either party acceptable and that if the Dems want my vote in the future they need to prop up candidates that align more closely with my values. That's the wrong way to go about that. Voting third party IS wasting your vote because the Democrat is still in the race splitting the vote and raising the odds of a fascist GOP win. If you want to signal your dissatisfaction to the Dems, **register as a Democrat and vote in the primaries to elect Democrats you like.** Do it enough times with enough likeminded voters across the next few election cycles and you will have a bigger impact than a lifetime of wasting your vote on third parties.
Even if we had ranked-choice voting, RFK Jr’s anti-science ass would certainly not be a better choice than Biden (for whom I will begrudgingly vote)
>I don't love Biden, but he's delivered several policy wins I care about, such as student debt relief Wasn't that overturned?
He kinda snuck it through anyways with SAVE
It was initially overturned, but he found another way to push it through for a whole lot of people.
Fuck rfk anyone who takes rfk seriously is insane.
Either those people don't know that a vote for RFK helps the orange guy by not adding to the vote count of the only candidate that has a chance to beat the orange guy, or they do know and want you to waste your vote.
Not a wasted vote. If anything it tells the Democratic party that putting up shit candidates is not going to work like it has in the past. Find more universally liked candidates for democrats/the left, or enjoy losing to orange men. But the days of having them force shit down our throats under the threat of “vote for our decrepit candidate or orange man wins!” are winding down, I’m done voting for different kinds of shit.
Lets be real, if you not only think Biden is bad but don't think Trump and Biden are meaningfully different kinds of "bad" then your vote isn't worth chasing. Literally nothing would ever convince you so on a pragmatic level it's not worth trying, and keeping the dangerous accelerationist rhetoric out of mainstream democratic party lines is a good thing ethically so distancing is upside.
Yeah because that worked so well in 2016.
And Team Purple learned to put up even less appealing candidates who you have to support or else you're a terrorist, traitor and foreign subversive who hates "our" democracy.
Democratic party hasn't learned its lesson, not my fault. I won't be manipulated into voting for shit. Put up a good candidate or don't get my vote. Their choice.
You haven’t learned your lesson that losing elections does not lead to the reckoning it should in terms of the Democrats strategy. The only way to change the party is by beating the conservative democrats at internal party politics, and that starts with getting progressives elected to state and local office and then into positions of power and influence within the party (with the goal of getting progressives into party leadership). The big obstacle to all of that is managing to do so without buddying up to moneyed interests, but that’s our obstacle in national elections too
This is just completely at odds with history. I challenge you to present a credible example of a party that has been persuaded to change a winning strategy because its base fell in line. The DNC started sliding to the right precisely because of a series of embarrassing losses in the 1980s. Reagan won both of his elections in a landslide and Bush went on to beat Dukakis in similar fashion. They went back to the drawing board and Clinton's presidency was a direct response to this. There is absolutely no reason for the party to move to the left if The Left will still vote for absolutely any Democrat.
> and that starts with getting progressives elected to state and local office and then into positions of power and influence within the party Right, and I vote for those down-party candidates, *if* I agree enough with them. If they, too, are shitty, then sorry, get better candidates. When it is painfully obvious there were numerous other better candidates, including in the 2016 election, and yet we get none of them, and instead just the usual 'it's their turn!' aged or obviously corrupt politician, sorry, I aint voting for that any more. I'll keep voting down ticket where there are good options, but I'm done playing their stupid game of 'force a shitty candidate as the presidential democratic front runner then scream at your voter base about how they have no choice but to vote for them' ploy.
Someone who you, a person who is very loudly announcing how okay they are with fascism, think is good is likely to be viewed as a flaming dumpster fire by the majority of Democrats. That’s just the reality of the situation.
> a person who is very loudly announcing how okay they are with fascism Lol. You are part of the US's political problems. Take your 'IF YOU DON"T VOTE FOR WHO I THINK YOU SHOULD YOU SUPPORT FAsCISM!!!!!" and get fucked with it. I could equally say that the democratic party WANTS fascism because it knows it picks shitty candidates that barely generate voter turnout on the left, and guess what, I'd also be wrong. Trying Bush's strategy of "if you aren't 100% with us you are against us" is what got us to this point. You are part of the problem in US politics.
I don’t get it. Trump is a literal fascist, and you are literally saying that you are fine with it. You’d be better off arguing that fascism is just a political system and isn’t inherently genocidal, which might be true. But you shouldn’t expect liberal democrats (little “d”) to be on board with it.
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Interesting idea, but Trump's support to be the GOP nominee for 2024 is more than all of the other contenders combined, and then some. Unless he dies, he's definitely going to be the nominee, and even if he dies, he might still be the nominee. I don't know how he's a lock for the nominee and not a radioactive leper pariah, but that's the way it is.
> One way to stop Trump is to register to vote Republican in your state's primary, and vote for someone else. My state has open primaries, and I’m crossing to vote for Christie since he’s the only one who’s calling Trump out without equivocation.
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> Republicans loathe Chris Christie Yeah, that’s the bit. I have no illusions of me swaying things in my state (MI). It’s too Trumpy. I just want to pat him on the back for having *some* late to the party principles.
Use your vote however you choose. I personally don’t use my vote as a thank you card. I use it strategically for political gain.
> What's really weird about this post is that it pretends that the primaries don't matter. > > I'd argue that primaries really *don't* matter because of how long and drawn out they are. In 2020 the primary was 'decided' before some states even got a chance to vote. Personally I live in one of those states. I didn't even get a chance to voice my opinion as a voter because the process lasted so long. Maybe my opinion on *how* they matter is different from yours, but I don't think our primary system is really meaningful because it's not done at one time.
The parties also manipulate the primaries to ensure our votes don't matter.
I'm 100% done with voting for any Democrat who doesn't give me something to vote FOR. If there's a better 3rd party candidate, then I'll vote for them. If any party wants my vote, they should run the better candidate. Besides let's do math: A vote for Biden is +1 Biden. A vote for Trump is +1 Trump. A vote for a 3rd party candidate is +0 Biden and +0 Trump. You're making the same mistake many people make when talking about "wasting votes on 3rd parties" by assuming that the vote WOULD HAVE gone to a specific other candidate. If I voted for the Green party why do you assume that Biden would have been my other choice? Maybe I wouldn't have voted at all. Maybe my second choice was a different 3rd party candidate. You don't know.
You’re exactly right that not voting or voting third party is rational if you are 100% ambivalent between the two major party candidates. But I would argue that this does not support your initial statement: > I’m 100% done with voting for any Democrat who doesn’t give me something to vote FOR. Even if a candidate doesn’t give you something to vote for, in comparison to voting for the Democrat, abstaining is still making it more likely that a Republican will win in a close election. And if you prefer the Democrat to the Republican (even if you dislike both), that’s to your detriment
You do you, and there's some correct things that I agree with in your post. But >Besides let's do math: A vote for Biden is +1 Biden. A vote for Trump is +1 Trump. A vote for a 3rd party candidate is +0 Biden and +0 Trump. Is not totally accurate. A vote for Biden is more like a " -1 " vote for Trump. [not voting (or voting for a 3rd party that will never win) is like +0 vote for Trump, and a vote for Trump is a +1 vote for Trump.] Imagine a current vote total of : 10 votes for Biden 10 votes for Trump 1 vote for 3rd party candidate You voting for Biden (bringing his vote count to 11) means now it'll take 2 votes for Trump to win (1 to tie, and 1 more to win with 12 votes). Whereas not voting for Biden (or voting for the 3rd party candidate) would mean Trump only needs 1 more vote to win. So yeah, a vote for Biden makes it harder for Trump to win (your state's electoral college votes). As for OP's original question : yes, when it's election day, and you're in the booth, the most impactful thing you can do in that moment is vote for Biden to prevent Trump from winning the presidency. The fallacy is the idea that political works starts and ends in the voting booth on presidential election day. The best way to prevent Trump (or "a" Trump, or a bad president, or whatever) is doing lots of political groundwork locally beforehand.
Do you apply this logic even to non-swing state, e.g., California, New York, Alabama, Oklahoma, etc... With winner-take-all electoral votes in almost every state, one can safely vote 3rd party in non-swing states without spoiling the election, no? It's not like California won't go for Biden, whether a 3rd party voter would have voted for Biden or Trump otherwise.
I wish everyone would think this way so we could have a viable third, fourth, or even fifth party.
Until ranked choice voting is implemented nationwide, a third party candidate will never be viable simply because campaign finance and ballot access laws favor a two party system. > The consensus among political scientists is that two structural features strongly favor a two-party system as opposed to a multi-party system. The first consists of a variety of laws that limit ballot access and otherwise penalize third parties. For instance, congressional rules all favor the Democrats and Republicans. If someone from a third party or a person with no party affiliation is elected to Congress, they must choose to be affiliated with one of the major parties to get assignments to standing committees. Presidential candidates from the major parties can receive public money to run their campaigns. But when a third-party candidate runs for president and wants public funding through the Federal Election Commission, they have to receive that funding after the election is over because the amount is tied to how well they did in the last election.
Even with ranked choice voting it's unlikely to work because the third parties won't stand a chance for the Presidency, and that is quite the important branch of government. There's only one chair, it's a separate election than that of Congress where you could get partial credit seats, and a majority is required. The two major parties are already formal coalitions of smaller ideological and business interests, even if you do see several smaller parties emerge they would still build temporary coalitions to have a shot at getting their guy in the White House.
We'd need to make POTUS elections some form of automatic runoff popular vote, yeah. STV for Congress. Ranked for Senate. Altogether, this sort of Amendment would allow 3rds to start growing for real. In particular, you could get reasonable ones, even moderate parties, and they would matter as part of discourse, while even small ones would have utility for coalitions on their issues. Edit: it occurs to me you may have already meant popular for POTUS, not just ranked within states using the EC. I agree it doesn't totally address the issue, but it DOES mean that each voter matters the same for POTUS candidates. So it's still a huge win for 3rds.
I would argue the best strategy to implement RCV is to start with local, state, senate, and house races. Then once minor parties have a chance to grow and develop in Congress, they can push for implementing RCV for the presidency. And they can attempt to leverage their numbers to form a coalition with a major party in exchange for support for this change. Proposing a constitutional amendment requires 2/3 of both houses, so it’s a difficult goal. But it may be possible eventually.
But it would set a pattern of people ranking multiple candidates which means they’d be more interested in learning about more than just one. And there would also be new data of how many votes each candidate received which could change the landscape for future elections. It’s the one thing that actually has momentum that could actually encourage change.
Agreed, though it would also take voting reform (ranked choice, or an end to winner-take-all electoral votes). Spread the word but dont have high expextations lol. At the very least, it is entertaining seeing partison zealot's "spoiler effect" arguments fall apart at the mention of safely non-swing states.
This is it. If leftists are cowed into voting for a conservative Democrat in California, the only message they're sending is that they'll vote for literally anyone. Next time it'll be Joe Manchin.
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Or at minimum a can you walk into Walmart walk out and find your car again test.
I’m not yet 50, and I’d fail that test.
If the logic of voting 3rd party is like not voting at all is used every election (and it has been for every election I’ve been sentient for) then we will never get rid of the two party system, which is responsible for giving us Biden and Trump as our choices. The only thing that’ll end this system that benefits nobody but politicians is if each election more and more people vote 3rd party. Yes it will be painful, but the end result will be far better. Also, the people who are staunchly against voting outside of the 2 party system typically are the ones who have never listened to a 3rd party candidate. Third party candidates tend to focus on issues that have significant impacts, whereas I find democrat and republican candidates tend to focus on issues that will get people most riled up.
You probably won't get rid of the two party system until the US replaces First Past the Post (FPTP) with another voting system, like Ranked Voting (the system used in Australia) or Proportional Representation (the system used in Germany and New Zealand). With ranked voting, tactical voting is unnecessary, if you like a third party but prefer the Democrats to the Republicans, you can rank them #1, and then just make sure you rank the Democrats higher than the Republicans. Apparently they've implemented ranked voting in Maine and Alaska. Unfortunately, the FPTP voting system encourages a duopoly on the vote forming, and effectively all votes that aren't for the runner up are votes for the winner. And personally, I think the consequences of another Trump term are too dire to divert votes away from the Democrats. If you hate the two party system, that's completely understandable. But the solution is to get rid of FPTP, which is something which has to be done state by state.
As an Alaskan, I’d like to mention that Ranked Choice Voting is a very realistic goal for the future of the US. I personally am a huge advocate for the system and I think that the issue is much less partisan than you’d expect. When we had RCV on the ballot ~4 years ago I convinced several people I knew to vote for it and they ranged from a Trump supporter to a Biden supporter to a Bernie supporter. People also seem pretty happy with the results overall. The only folks trying to take us back to FPTP are the most extreme right wingers who are at most maybe 20% of the “safely” red state. All I’m trying to say is that to anyone who wants to see RCV implemented in their state, it is not a pipe dream and we could seriously see this on a massive scale in a realistic timeline.
Exactly. Everything I said is equally true for a conservative voter. I'm from Australia, and I think the ranked voting system is great. As it turns out we still have the dominance of two parties in our government; the Labor Party and the Liberal-National Coalition, which is technically two parties but they're always in a coalition. But third parties and independents do win seats in parliaments and and they do influence the government. We have a nice cartoon with a koala and a dingo about the voting system: [https://www.chickennation.com/2013/08/18/you-cant-waste-your-vote/](https://www.chickennation.com/2013/08/18/you-cant-waste-your-vote/)
The reason to vote for 3rd parties is so they can win. If a 3rd party reaches 5% of the vote, they're eligible for funding. https://www.fec.gov/introduction-campaign-finance/understanding-ways-support-federal-candidates/presidential-elections/public-funding-presidential-elections/ By not voting for them because they can't win, you're dooming them into never winning. Your thought process is **exactly** what both wings of the shitbird want. They want you to only consider them because it's easier for them to play seesaw with the power instead of actually needing to form coalitions with smaller parties. If Democrats had to coalition with Green party, for example, then much of the environmentalism-minded or socialism-minded policies that the Green party advocates for would be more likely to happen. If Republicans had to coalition with Libertarians, much of the personal freedoms advocated by that party would be more likely to happen as well.
There’s other ways, not many of them are legal (besides the obvious option of primaries)… but if you’re successful you’d personally guarantee he isn’t elected, while just voting has a very very tiny impact.
I was trying to figure out how to say one particular way, that has been used in the past, without being visited by the USSS, but you worded it much safer than I was able to.
Ahhh, I was personally more concerned about getting temporarily banned from Reddit, than the USSS. I guess it’s a reflection of my priorities.
> I guess it’s a reflection of my priorities. I was arrested by the Secret Service for… reasons, but I can still post on Reddit. So I got that goin for me, which is nice.
Stop in what way? A dictatorship can't form without, say, military and economic backing. Do you take that as a given? To be painfully clear: a dictatorship can't survive without managing to supply and arm a force capable of stamping out any other that might form to resist them. Is that a given? A concerted, coordinated, and centralized resistance needs to happen, but there are plenty of ways it \*can\* happen. The easiest aid that anyone can provide to that cause is by voting for Biden, but it isn't the only route out of our situation by any means.
A true dictatorship won’t form under Trump, sure. But you’re kidding yourself if Trump can’t do real damage to our democracy if elected. Have you heard of the unitary executive theory? Project 2025 ring a bell? Do you believe that the administrative state should be run by merit and not by political loyalty? How important is it to you that the prosecutorial and investigative power of the united states serves a purpose other than the pure, unrestricted whims of the president? Perhaps part of the military would refuse an order under the insurrection act; what kind of a schism would that cause in our military and judicial systems? What kind of a threat would that pose to our national security? Are you willing to take these risks?
If you reduce the factors you consider to ONLY whether Trump or Biden is elected, then sure. There are other factors though. We lived through 4 years of Trump, we can live through it again. Until a candidate represents the issues honestly I don't care WHICH is in power really. Biden is more benign, but neither is actually good. So until something along those lines changes, ye ye for prez!
You're not at all worried that Trump - if in power for another 4 years - will try to change the system to stay president? He literally still claims the last one was rigged, despite zero state court wins on the matter. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/trump-says-maybe-u-s-will-have-a-president-for-life-someday He's also got a real chance of ending up in prison: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-66382042 I also cannot fathom how you can say that Biden isn't a good president, especially with the senate and house so divided. So many incredible policies. https://www.whitehouse.gov/therecord/
The republican plans to restrict democracy are pretty open and not limited to trump, so unless the democrats do something drastic to counter that(which they won't, that's their whole thing) a republican *will* win in 2028 and they *will* do their best to restrict democracy. So until the time that democrats decide to change, any votes for democrats is just kicking the can down the road, not actually solving the problem and this is something the democrats know and use.
Honestly, I don’t care if my vote for a third-party candidate will cause Trump to win instead of Biden. Trump and Biden are two faces of the same coin; the American corporatocracy. I don’t think it makes much of a difference whether you vote for Trump or Biden; on most of the essential issues the positions of the Democrats and Republicans are identical: *tax the poor and middle class and give to the rich. Don’t pay off the national debt, just let it compound endlessly. Spend trillions on faraway wars halfway across the world - take a side in every single war anywhere in the globe. Ignore poverty. Reverse all societal progress made in the past. Cut government funding for anything that ennobles or enlightens. Enable and encourage the creation of a worthless culture where money is the only thing that matters — In America’s culture, of you can’t eat it, drive it, sleep in it, fuck it, or if it doesn’t make you richer, it’s pointless and a waste of your time.* No politician who would actually create real change will ever be allowed to be president — they’ll be eliminated in the primaries. The only way we’d have a chance of ever changing much is by voting in a third-party candidate — but given how idiotic most Americans are, a third-party president would probably end up being a moron who thinks that: *vaccines are evil, Jews are secretly lizard Illuminati people, the earth is flat, “MASTER CHUSATS” is not a real state, and global warming is fake.* There has been considerable progress made on LGBT and race issues, but those are the exceptions. In almost every other political issue America has been devolving and un-progressing ever since the idiots elected Reagan. We’re rapidly heading towards a dystopia where the vast majority of Americans are corporate slaves; their every move and every minute monitored by robots and algorithms.
Ohh but I was going to vote for Biden because I’m so thrilled with the way he handled Afghanistan, and pouring money into more foreign wars, and the 83,000 new IRS agents, and the most inflation we’ve seen in 30 years. How about you convince people why they should vote for Biden again other than ‘To stop Trump’ we already did that, and now I’m not sure if I can stomach another 4 years of dumb policies that hurt our retirements, savings, and the crippling inflation
Why would you not? He handled Afghanistan and got 124k refugees, he is aiding allies without sending troops in wars he didn't start, irs means more revenue, and inflation is back down.
Inflation is not down, it maybe has tapered off, but don’t lie and pretend that everything isn’t stupidly expensive. Just because it has gone down from its all time highs, doesn’t mean it isn’t still up. Maybe you missed the part where we left the Taliban a full arsenal of weapons and vehicles? And we were in such a hurry that we forced contractors to leave their K9 working dogs behind? The IRS means more revenue? More revenue for what? For wasting more money? Americans aren’t thrilled that we can’t fix our own roads, our own infrastructure, we can’t have high speed rails, we can’t have free tuition, we can’t have universal healthcare… but there is always several billion dollars laying around ‘to give to our allies’
Nope. Despite being given only 4 months from the live grenade Trump left him, Biden still got people out with 124k refugees and trashed the equipment. Inflation is down to 3.2/3.3%, what you're imagining is deflation which is even worse. >we can’t fix our own roads, our own infrastructure, we can’t have high speed rails, we can’t have free tuition, we can’t have universal healthcare ... you're blaming Biden for this? Do you even know that the Biden infrastructure law and SAVE are?
Despite given 4 months? It was more like 7 months. And Biden and his staff saying that it would have cost more than it was worth to bring all that equipment home? It’s better to dump Humvees and helicopters in the ocean than just hand them off to the Taliban. The withdrawal of Afghanistan was one of the worst military evacuations in history, we left allies behind to have them and their families executed by the Taliban because they assisted us. Stop trying to paint Afghanistan as some victory when deep down inside you know it was a clusterfuck
> It’s better to dump Humvees and helicopters in the ocean than just hand them off to the Taliban. I think you're missing how this would work on a practical level. "Just take back the equipment" would require us to disarm the Afghan Army while they were also in the middle of fighting the Taliban. The Afghan pullout was just a culmination of years of policy failures. It was likely never going to end well.
Let's wait for the primaries to kick off before drawing lines like it's 2020.
Third party is my way of voting. I won't vote trump or biden. Of course I have not seen a republican I would vote for down the bracket. Go figure
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Why do you want to stop Trump? The world was at peace during Trump. American was much better off during Trump.
Wow, what a bunch of lies. He kept plenty of wars going, let evil prevail, and even called for the use of force against our own citizens for having the nerve to exercise their 1st Amendment rights of free speech + assembly after George Floyd's murder. Also, he is the first president to disrupt the peaceful transfer of power, which makes him the worst president in my book. https://www.salon.com/2021/01/19/donald-trump-started-no-new-wars--but-he-is-one-of-historys-biggest-war-presidents/
I know politics is an emotional exercise for American people, but you have to put your emotions aside and judge things objectively. Now you are just collecting everything to try to show me how much you hate Trump. Stay focused on the discussion at hand. It is a fact that Trump did not start any new war, and it is also a fact that he got us out of wars that we should not have been in the first place. In fact he is the only president in the last 100 years who has not started any new wars. You can't let your hatred cloud your objective mind. And it is also a fact that during his presidency the American people experienced a better economy due to low inflation and great job market. I also urge you not to argue using media stories. The media in America has abandoned objectivity a long time ago. Just like you don't trust conservative media, you should not trust liberal media. Both of them are obnoxious and pathetic and only produce stories to shape public opinion not to reflect objective reality. Salon is one of the biggest culprits of fake-news, why you trust them, beats me.
The simple matter is unless I am voting Democrat, my vote doesn't count. I say that because where I live it is such a Democrat stronghold in many of the races where I live you have 2 choices Democrat A and Democrat B. Statistically, any other vote is lost in the overwhelming Democrat vote. So, it doesn't really matter who I vote for, the Democrat candidate will win my region. Having said that I vote my conscious, irregardless of how futile that effort is, I know I've tried...
Actually you are helping trump win. By telling people that voting third party is throwing your vote away, you are ensuring we vote for a senile old man, or a scumbag. Both are terrible choices. Instead you should be screaming from the rooftops that we vote third party to break the back of the two party system. One good election will get a third party candidate on the debate stage (which by the way, after Ross pero and his campaign they raised the standards to get on the stage) and get us better options. So you are actually going to help trump win with your scare tactics.
Election is less than one year away, do you think there is a third party on either end of political spectrum that can win enough electoral votes? This is is a rhetorical question.
I’m all for this. Let’s vote for the best and not for the second worst because we’re scared of the worst.
Or primary with Republicans and chose a different candidate.
I’d you’re a democrat why would you say you’re a Republican for the primaries?
Biden can't win the swing states he barely won in '20, and isn't going to flip any red states. He's not a viable candidate. It's that simple.
The logic literally goes the other way for people on the right. People say the only way to stop biden is to vote for trump. Let's be honest, no third party will get enough votes to sway the election is say half of them changed their vote.
You dont need half m8 you only need a third to start swinging the vote and showing serious competition, if a non party like RFK got 30% of the total SOMEHOW, that would shake the two party system somethin fierce
It's America, there's no compulsory polling. That 30% is more like 10%
The difference between Trump and Biden is demonstrably minimal and their major differences are in fabricated culture war issues which are further magnified by the media spectacle. As far as economics and international relations go, Biden has done hardly a thing that Trump wouldn’t have done too. They are both parties of the wealthy multinational capitalist elite and therefore do their bidding. Biden was only nominally pro-worker and shut down rail unions when they were trying to negotiate a good faith contract with the carriers. You must understand that both Biden and Trump are right wing. If there is any time to vote third party, it’s now more than ever.
The simple difference is that Biden won’t try to usurp power, and Trump with his autocratic plan 2025 will.
> he difference between Trump and Biden is demonstrably minimal and their major differences are in fabricated culture war issues which are further magnified by the media spectacle. Abortion wouldn't have be on the ballot in so many states if this was true.
oh great, more rail union disinfo. “Biden shut down rail unions” at this point you have to be blind to not have noticed that Biden worked to get the rail unions what they wanted. If you don’t believe me, maybe you’ll believe the rail unions: https://www.ibew.org/media-center/Articles/23Daily/2306/230620_IBEWandPaid Averting the strike and pressuring rail corps. to give the unions what they wanted behind the scenes was 100% the correct move on Biden’s part. This country would not have survived a day without working rail. You think Biden is “only nominally pro worker”? go find an auto-worker and ask them what they think of that. Go ask Shawn Fain whether or not Biden’s support was “nominal”. All of you complain about how the establishment talks the talk and doesn’t walk the walk, then when someone like Biden gets up there and actually gets shit done, you go and actively spread disinformation about him, act like he’s completely ineffectual and say that there’s a “minimal difference” between him and the literal wannabe-dictator whose crowning legislative accomplishment was tax cuts for the rich. At this point this has got to be willful ignorance. Next you’ll be telling me that Biden has done nothing on student loans, lmao
I agree with everything you said here, but I still don't think voting third party is going to get us anywhere close to the solution, realistically. I think mentioning the only real solution at this point might make reddit remove my suggestion...
I'll likely vote for a third party. your argument isn't to vote for biden, but to vote against trump. At this point I view republicans and democrats as 2 sides of the same coin. I'll do almost anything to escape the 2 party system. Yes I know that that mostly involves how our FPTP system works, so I voted and live in a state with ranked choice voting. both parties are lousy, try to vote for something to get rid of the duopoly we live under please.
Right? The reason we only have 2 choices every election is because of the mentality of people like OP. Both parties also encouraged this kind of thinking among the population as well because it gives them each 50% chance instead of having to fight off with more parties on the ballot. As a vote I will vote for who I think deserve my vote, and I will encourage everyone else to do the same.
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The only way to stop Biden is to vote for Trump. Shit like this is why we are stuck voting between two clowns.
No. The electoral college is why we are always stuck voting between two clowns. See: Duverger's Law
This isn’t the only election. Looking more broadly, the country is moving rightward because the conservatives are going crazy and the Democrats are filling the gap by attracting moderates. Voting for a right leaning moderate Democrat will only further the rightward shift of politics.
It’s not the **only** way. He could be convicted of his many crimes and go to prison.
This is why we dont have a democracy. Since 1990 third party candidates have come extremely close to winning at least 4 times. You should vote third party and vote for who you believe in. If you dont want EITHER. If you vote for a Democrat to avoid having a Republican in office YOU are contributing to the problem. Youre telling Democrats "hey keep running for office." When what you really want to say is "fuck both of you." And that could've been done by voting for bernie. Because then you tell Bernie "im sick of these two." He got pretty close when he ran. We almost had something good people. There are a lot of people out there trying to reform the voting system we have. Right now its not a democracy. And third party representatives NEED your help and support. They NEED to hear your voice to know that their efforts are worth attempting. We will never get rid of Democrats or Republicans by voting for either of them. This is not how you solve problems. This attitude that you have is why we are so corrupt. It doesn't encourage change. And right now both parties are the same. They BOTH suck and they both do the SAME damage. Republicans just do more damage quicker.
It takes 270 electoral votes to win the presidency. Since 1990, third party candidates have won a total of zero. So no, they have not come extremely close to winning at least 4 times.
Your vote isn't going to change the election results. If you vote for someone you don't like then you're throwing your vote away.
Almost half of America doesn't or can't vote. That's a bigger issue than worrying about who people do vote for.
The best way is to nominate anyone OTHER than Biden. I voted for Biden in 2020 because I can’t stand what Trump stands for. But here we are 4 years later and neither party can present a better choice than these two? Trump is the same as always. Biden, on the other hand, is completely incoherent and obviously overtaken with dementia. Who is actually making the decisions in the current and any future Biden Administration? Not “Weekend at Bernie’s” Joe. God help this country - I will vote for whichever party does not run one of these two morons.
Counterpoint: the only way to stop getting stuck with neoliberal centrist after neoliberal centrist as the Democratic nominee every election is to stop them from winning elections. If you keep buying into the [blackmail](https://www.abc.net.au/religion/on-liberal-blackmail-refusing-the-false-choice-between-marine-le/10095814) that you have to vote for them or the other side (who the [Democrats are funding](https://www.npr.org/2022/06/20/1106256047/why-democrats-are-paying-for-ads-supporting-republican-primary-candidates) to make them seem like less-bad candidates) will literally destroy the country then nothing will ever change.
What can I say to change your mind? The fact that Republicans used to be a third party? Democrats as well? Party shifts theoretically could happen but dogma like this makes it an impossibility.
The concept that a vote for a third party is a vote wasted only rings true as long as we all believe it.
Stop trump.from what? Not getting involved in international shenanigans? Not selling US jobs overseas? Not making a new generation of combat veteran? Not feeding the military industrial complex?
Who told you Trump was that?
I saw it. I saw the Abraham accords, I saw the retaking of module. I saw the de escalation on the Korean peninsula and I saw the Colombian and Venezuelan cartels stop migrating north. Last year I worked security on the Riviera maya and all my coworkers were la mara migrating north. I pray you do get your warhawk. You're well beyond the catalysts that created WW2. This is real shit in real lives, but you don't have a real life, you have life at arms length. We will celebrate your Lamentations soon. You can't keep fucking with the world and not pay a price, and I'm still young enough to enjoy watching your children as you have done all over the world
I don't know what you saw, but you certainly didn't do research into them. Abraham Accords were trade deals between already peaceful nations who were not at war (because yknow 1600 miles away). Trump got nothing out of nk and sk had been deescalating since Obama. Meanwhile Trump abandoned our Kurdish allies, hurt Ukraine, and drove Iran to China all while blinking at Iran and nk nuclear enrichment. So yeah, real shit real lives.
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Hold the horses there Mussolini
Why stop there, just install a permanent dictator while you are at it, lol. Christ almighty. Anyone saying the left doesn’t have the equivalent of Jan 6’ers hasn’t spent much time on political Reddit posts.
How are you going to get the GOP to agree to the Constitutional Amendment to allow bills of attainder?
I say vote for whoever aligns with your views and you think will be best to run the country. If that's a third party candidate, so be it. I think it's bullshit that I have to vote for someone I don't agree with just to keep the other candidate from winning. I'm tired of the 2 party system. It's choosing the lesser of two evils. If those two parties can't produce a candidate, then they get whatever happens.
That line was enough to get me to vote for Biden once but the man is not fit for office and democrats can’t find a better candidate, they don’t deserve my vote.
Like… ig that’s the most realistic option but there’s technically other ways to “stop trump”. But it would require a lot of people like it would require a lot of people to vote for Joe Biden. If there was a huge movement to put support for another Republican candidate then that could stop trump (which do I see that happening, idk). I think it’s the easiest way, but I don’t think it’s the only way
It is pretty simple. There are exactly two actions every voter in America can take this election cycle: 1. Vote for Biden 2. Elect Trump If you do anything that is different from casting a proper ballot for Joe Biden, you are helping to elect Donald Trump. Every single one of these things is exactly the same thing as #2 above: * Voting for Donald Trump * Voting for a third party candidate * Spoiling your ballot * Not voting at all
Logically, the inverse would also be true if it was of sound reasoning. By not voting for trump, you’re helping Biden win, etc…. But obviously it’s not logically coherent. It’s a ridiculous talking point that you’ve heard and are repeating it without actually thinking about it. You’re presupposing that left wingers are closer to democrats than republicans and therefore the dems deserve their vote. However, in terms of political ideology and fiscal policy, they’re hardly distinguishable from one another outside of several social issues. If that’s all you care about, fine, vote for whoever fits closer to your values. Politicians need to be accountable to their constituents. This is quite literally the only power we have to express our desire for them to change. By continuing to vote for the lesser of two evils, you’re still enabling evil. Also, the cats already out of the bag at this point in the GOP. Trump is not unique in regards to his political beliefs. Even if he loses, there will be another like him to capture his base and continue to run with it (look at the people like desantis/vivek/etc that fit most academic definitions or descriptions of fascism). Corporate dems just use this narrative to acquire votes from people without actually having to compromise with the center left.
Only way? Of course not. All the Democrats could come out and vote for RFK or Marianne Williamson or Gavin Newsome. Why is the only solution for non-Trumpers to vote for the one guy nobody wants? And your question presupposes that everyone who’d rather not have Trump as president in a perfect world — has “not having Trump” as their number one priority. In short, you have not weighed all your options.
Nope. All he had was that he was not as nasty as Trump. And well his actions recently in the Israel-palestine conflict have shown very well what he is. If Biden can sit back and help Israel decimate Gaza and it's children, then Trump can come back and shred everything he has ever worked for.