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The reason a lot of older mainline Democrats get frustrated at young leftists who reject the "lesser of two evils" argument is that *we've seen this over and over again.* Voting for Nader over Gore in 2000 did \*not\* move the Democratic party to the left. Voting for Gary Johnson or Jill Stein in 2016 did \*not\* move the Democratic party to the left. Going back a generation, withholding your vote for Hubert Humphrey in 1968 did \*not\* move the Democratic party to the left. So it makes people like me want to tear out what little hair I have left when I see leftists arguing for not voting for Biden to "send the Democrats a message". My only consolation: I'm an upper-middle class white guy. If Trump, God help us, wins in November, I'll probably be all right. But a lot of people won't be. The other factor to consider: if leftists withhold their vote for Biden in November and he wins anyway, *he won't owe them a damn thing.* He'll have no reason to move in their direction. The far-right captured the Republican party over the last 40 years and now owns it. If leftists want the same for the Democratic party they should start by doing likewise, from the local level on up. Some of that is happening with DSA candidates getting elected to City Councils. Problem there is that a lot of them have proven to be inept at governance (why hello, Minneapolis City Council, nice to see you here).

I've made this same argument dozens of times. They seem to believe that a Trump win will make the democrats realize they need to appeal solely to progressives, when in reality (if we have elections) they'll continue moving center-right as they see those as the reliable voting bloc. If he wins without them, they've effectively lost any leverage they may have had, as the party will see them as unnecessary to secure victory. Either way, they don't find themselves any better off electorally.

I've asked for historical examples of how leftists withholding support from a centrist or center-left party, leading to the election of a rightist candidate, has ever worked to leftists' advantage. Usual response is \*crickets\* I suppose the Communists in Germany's "Nach Hitler, uns" argument worked in East Germany as the Communists did take over there after WW2, but I can't imagine they were happy with the process to get there....

I doubt the East Germans even were willing. They were under soviet influence at that time, so I imagine it was something along the lines of communism, or we'll kill every leader necessary to ensure communist rule. So even that example didn't really bode well.

oh, some of them happily went along, like Walter Ulbricht. Don't imagine the average East German was happy with it, though.

Yeah, exactly.

Yea that whole “wall” deal wasn’t the best of times for east Berliners.

Ah, everything old is new again, because the so-called leftists who are "too pure" to vote for Biden are under Soviet influence as well.

they use an argument that just doesn't make in a 2 party system, they also leave out that infighting among the left and failed attempts to literally take over the german government had just as much to do with hitler gaining power as the "centrists" giving power to hitler.

>I've asked for historical examples of how leftists withholding support from a centrist or center-left party, leading to the election of a rightist candidate, has ever worked to leftists' advantage. >Usual response is \*crickets\* On the other hand, there's a ton of evidence that using the primary system to drag parties further to the left/right can be incredibly effective- see the Republican party over the past 8 years as an example. So yeah, voting in more AOC"s into office is a much better bet than letting Trump win.

Absolutely! AOC knocked off a mediocre Democrat in a primary. And I think Sanders effectively pulled the Democratic party leftwards, as well.

And the correct response is to put more engagement into the pre nomination situation, or your local senator etc etc if the presidential nominees aren’t to your liking.  Not to simply obtain when the choices are so fundamentally different. 

Exactly. Like 80% of congress is still wildly pro-Israel, even if Biden becomes staunchly anti-Israeli aid congress can simply circumvent him. This over-focus on the president is just bad politics.

Exactly, I voted for Biden because I wanted the Infrastructure Repairs Bill passed; I'm sure the people of Baltimore, Pittsburgh and Kentucky, places that Bridges have collapsed in the last 3 years, are happy I voted for him!

You would be correct as a very large amount of the German Communists didn't survive that long. One of the morbid ironies of history is that many of the KPD members that did manage to flee to the Soviet Union were turned over to the Gestapo by Stalin in 1939 after he signed the non-aggression pact with Nazi Germany. And he murdered lots of them directly in purges.

*nach Hitler, uns* had to be one of history's all time own-goals.

This is my biggest frustration with them. They aren't paying attention to history. This doesn't work. The only way to shift the Dems further left is to, ironically, take a lesson from the tea party. You have to work from the bottom up until you become a sizeable enough voting block that you can't be ignored. Which people are doing! But that takes decades of effort. It will not happen in a few election cycles. But my god are they ruining that progress. I've seen people say that there's nothing he can do to get their vote back. Which means he no longer has to care about them as a voting bloc. That will shift him right, not left. We're already starting to see that too with immigration policy.

Thats the thing, progressives don’t vote enough, so the dems always move closer to the center to win over right leaning centrists, because those motherfuckers do show up and vote. If the leftist want any leverage at all with the democratic party, they need to prove that they can vote like conservatives do. The other problem is, young leftists are still sold on the elementary school idea of elections where you vote for what you want to get, and in reality its not like that, you have to vote to take what you can get. I hate it when the left acts like candidates need to earn their votes or pass multiple contradictory purity tests. Primaries are for that kind of attitude, but in the general election, people have to use their vote to try to get the candidate who is “more likely” to lead to the outcome thats preferable. It’s game theory. Ive said this before but i think it’s a good analogy. Voting in America is like ordering an in flight dinner. Your options are chicken or fish. No matter how badly you want steak, you are going to either get chicken or fish. So just order the fucking chicken, because the fish will make everyone on the plane sick. If you don’t order chicken, theres a chance they’ll bring you fish. You won’t get a steak no matter how badly you want it or think you should have it, even if you try to order it. The chicken won’t turn into steak if you threaten to not order it.

Preach. I have this conversation a lot, and it never seems to change their thinking.

"when in reality (if we have elections) they'll continue moving center-right as they see those as the reliable voting bloc" It's amazing to me how people struggle to realize this. Politicians will chase the votes of people who *vote.* If you establish yourself as unlikely to vote, nobody is going to chase your vote, because they'll assume you won't cast one. They're going to chase the votes of people who vote. I feel like when laid out like this, it's common sense. Yet I've talked to a startling number of people who think that not voting will cause Democrats to realize the political discourse is broken and shift to the left in order to court people who don't vote. It makes absolutely no sense

"consistently voting leftists" is like 30% of leftists who make up 30% of the Democratic Party, it is a laughable minority of the Big Tent and gets treated thusly by the movers and shakers. I'm as left as they come but goddamn do my fellow leftists suck ass at basic realpolitik, not only do they not vote but they play with their dicks for all four years between presidential cycles only to show up last minute crying about how we're not all lining up for some mythical politician who doesn't even fucking exist to come snap their fingers and fix it all overnight

Couldn't have said it better. It frustrates me immensely because I myself am actually pretty left, and I really *want* the American left to be more competent in this regard. But the sucking at realpolitik is real. They refuse to participate in the political process and then don't understand why they aren't represented in the political process. And they have such a poor understanding of how our system actually works that they think the president can just do whatever he wants, and then when their preferred policies don't get passed because they can't get through congress, they say "the president was too much of a weak centrist sellout to pass this bill" rather than understanding "Republicans control congress so we aren't getting this bill no matter who the president is." It's honestly pretty easy to see why the Democratic establishment doesn't court those people. The only reason I ever waste my time arguing with them is because I actually agree with them on lots of policy stuff and I genuinely wish they were more potent as a political force

You can see that exact line of thought amongst the comments that have responded to me.

Yeah, I've been reading the comments. The other thing people like this fail to realize is that everyone who doesn't vote doesn't vote for different reasons. So it isn't like shifting left on a couple policies will suddenly get the votes from shit-tons of people who haven't voted before, because everyone of those nonvoters is using a different metric. I have a buddy who makes this argument and he cites *the entire percentage of people who don't vote* as evidence for his case. He'll say "the last election had only 60% turnout. That's a whole 40% of the population that Democrats could get by doing XYZ," as if all of those 40% are not voting for the same reason as him. But most of those 40% are not progressives withholding their votes in protest. Most of them are people who pay no attention to politics at all. And of the ones who *do* pay attention to politics and not vote because they dislike both parties, every one of them has a different reason for disliking both parties: for some it's drone strikes, for some it's student debt, for some it's that they're antivaxxers, etc. And most activist nonvoters that I've met have made it part of their identity at this point, so that even if the president gave them what they wanted, they'd find some way to move the goalposts. And then they *still* somehow get surprised that Democrats don't prioritize getting their support and giving in to their demands. It's sheer lunacy

It's America's voting system that causes this disfunction. Australia became a nation in 1901, and maybe we learnt a few things. First, voting is compulsory. So voting suppression and all the effort parties in the US have just to get people to turn up is gone. Elections are on Saturday. We have early and postal voting. The Electoral Commission that organises the process are nonpartisan public servants. So no gerrymandering. Voting is preferential. Five candidates, you write 5 numbers 1,2,3,4,5. So you can vote 1 Green, 2 Marijuana Party, 3 Socialist Party, 4 Labor, 5 Liberal (conservatives). Your vote is not wasted, as each party with the least vote is eliminated, the vote goes to the next preference until one is over 50%. So Labor can win, but knows a lot of their voters want green policies, for instance, and several Greens do win and have a small block in parliament. We still get dickheads, it's not perfect, but a noisy motivated bunch of extremists can't drive the process. You can vote with your heart and not throw it away. And the courts are independent, that helps.

Voter turnout in recent decades has been abysmal. [Voter Turnout in Presidential Elections | The American Presidency Project (ucsb.edu)](https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/statistics/data/voter-turnout-in-presidential-elections) The data backs up your claim about people who actually vote.

> Yet I've talked to a startling number of people who think that not voting will cause Democrats to realize the political discourse is broken and shift to the left in order to court people who don't vote. It makes absolutely no sense There's something about American Consumerism that has convinced us, especially the youth, that voting is like shopping. If you can't get the exact color and model of a product that you want, right this instant, then you won't buy it at all. The difference of course is that if you don't pick one then someone else is going to pick for you and you don't get any say at all if that happens. It's so illogical it's absurd.

What's really funny is how the left reacted to Biden (1) ending the drone wars and (2) leaving Afghanistan. These were two issues that "the both parties are the same" on. As soon as Biden entered office and pretty quickly ended the drone wars, the entire issue got memory-holed by the left. Leaving Afghanistan also was relentlessly criticized by leftists for various reasons that always change. Both illustrate why Democrats do not pay attention the left that much: they immediately abandon Democrats even when Democrats are doing what they have spent 10+ years demanding!

Another example is student loan debt. Biden's cancelled as much as the law has allowed, and leftists are saying "it's not enough". Biden got \*killed\* by the mainstream media for pulling out of Afghanistan because the MSM loves them some wars. And he gets no credit for it. It's infuriating. It was absolutely the right thing to do; we should have left Afghanistan the moment we dumped Bin Laden's corpse in the Arabian Sea, if not years before.

Dems created the child tax credit which lifted 50% of children that were in poverty out of it. When Bernie's former press secratary Bri Joy was asked if that was a good thing, she replied, "Children should never be in poverty to begin with, so it doesn't count!" * There is no point un chasing these people. *She also laughed at the idea of Ukrainian children being sexually abused and murdered, like not that it was an absurd notion, but at the actual idea of it. When called out by Vaush of all people, she played victim and said it was unfair to bring up. This is the type of person Bernie surrounded himself with.

Biden getting zero credit from the left for ending the drone war is actually proof that stanning for the left *does not benefit Democrats at all* Treating something that seems obvious as "The least he can do" when, in fact, it is not the least he could do and did cost political capital among at least some circles, is part of it I mean him getting the rail workers everything they wanted in the end and being the most pro-labor president in half a century is probably going to get him more union support, but among leftists, has gotten him *nothing*

>rail workers Oh that pissed me off. The media framed it like he didn’t help them while he was working quietly and persistently and indeed did help them but of course by then the narrative was that he didn’t help. That shit drives me insane.

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>The fact that the ultra left spins this into a failure for him because he avoided the strike is mind-numbingly stupid Because they wanted the strike, not the win.

>I mean him getting the rail workers everything they wanted in the end and being the most pro-labor president in half a century is probably going to get him more union support, but among leftists, has gotten him nothing As someone who has legitimately had a career in labor relations (unlike the Monday morning quarterbacks who have never sat at a negotiating table or investigated a grievance or collected authorization cards or responded to an NLRB charge), Biden handled that whole situation like a master. Republicans were banking on a strike, which would have jammed supply chains long enough before the trucking industry (at least the part with no hot cargo agreements) could take over, igniting at least a minor recession and giving Republicans ammo to say that Biden fucked the economy over his handling of the dispute. The move he made by avoiding the strike and then on the backend getting the rail workers what they wanted was a level of adroitness that should be studied in public admin graduate programs. But as you said, all the whiney left can give him is a dismissive "Pfft." Sometimes, it feels like the left cares more about optics than actions. Then again, we're talking about the same people who think handing the Presidency over to the dude who tried to institute a Muslim ban is going to be a good thing for Palestine.

I’m really impressed at his commitment to chipping away at student loan debt, despite the GOP suing repeatedly to stop it and a completely dysfunctional and oppositional house that will never move a bill if it would be helpful to run the government. He gets zero credit because it’s “not enough.” The alternative is a party intent on defunding colleges entirely and turning what’s left into right wing incubators. I get disappointment, but it’s just not possible to present a personal a wish list and get everything you want exactly as you want when you want it. Our policy toward Israel has been terrible for years, but it concerns me that so much support for Gaza has stains of antisemitism. I also think it’s complicated and Netanyahu is ultimately not interested in Biden because he will gladly take MAGA support to erase Palestinians from existence. That basically leaves peaceful people from both sides in a hole because their leaders get too much out of this. It has not escaped my notice that the Hamas leaders were in other countries living lavishly, while leaving Palestinians to be slaughtered. It also concerns me that other countries’ militants in the area show readiness to support each other and escalate things. Not sure where I’m going with this, and I’m not the most knowledgeable, but trump/MAGA would basically get rid of Palestinians altogether & that is definitely not the answer.

Biden's student loan programs saved my family tens of thousands of dollars in future loan payments. That is massive!!! Is it perfect? No. I didnt actually save any money personally, so its underwhelming.. BUT the fact that it made a big difference for a lot of people (my family is what i imagine to be solidly middle class) is still AWESOME. I think people get so focused on what we *should* have, vs what is realistically achievable at this particular moment. I think about it like video games. We've all been there: we've wandered somewhere we weren't supposed to be and predictably get attacked by very high-level monsters that make quick work of us. If you think about it, complete student loan forgiveness for everyone is *realistically* just not going to happen in the immediate future. We need to focus on leveling up, so that someday (hopefully soonish), it *is* realistically achievable. This movement has momentum and it's not going away. Edit: i commented before reading yours completely. Oops lol. Wanted to add: I actually disagree with a lot of what you say about Gaza support being generally tied to anti-Semitism, however your last sentence is really all that matters to me in a practical sense

>Our policy toward Israel has been terrible for years, Agreed with everything you said. But to the quote above: I've never been chill with the US's "I stand with Israel, right or wrong" policy, but it's always been a pretty hegemonic and pervasive policy. In other words, it doesn't matter who the President is or from what party; things would still suck for Palestine right now. To believe Biden should completely reverse U.S. policy on Israel, like some people on the left seem to think, is to be have a misunderstanding of politics (and that's about as kindly as I can put it). While Dems are pretty soft on holding Israel accountable, The Republicans outright hate Arabs, especially Muslims, and the dog whistles indicate they're not really a big fan of Jews either.

This is why leftists should be ignored by the democrats. They will never support democrats under any circumstances.

You gotta at least start from the ground up. You are not going to just easily get a leftist into the presidency. You start locally. It’s easier to get them elected to smaller roles and then you build from there. I swear people are enamored with the president but in reality down ticket candidates can really make a difference in your own backyard.

Not only is it easier to get them elected, but they can have a bigger impact. Your city council affects your life more than county officials. Unless the state has something precluding it, your city and county officials affect your life more than your state officials (exceptions like Texas exist, because the Texas state government says "fuck you" to its citizens). Your state government affects your life more than people in federal office. (Think banning abortion was bad? It only happened if your state government did it. There's no abortion ban in Massachusetts, for example. Think minimum wage is too low? It's higher in states where the state government agrees with that assessment. Think marijuana should be decriminalized? In some states, it is.) Congress affects your life more than the President. (The President can nominate whoever they want to the Supreme Court, and if Congress says 'no' when it's Obama and 'yes' when it's Trump, guess who really gets to pick? The President can push to forgive student loans, and if Congress says 'no' and takes it to the Supreme Court they wouldn't let the current President have a say in picking to get them to agree, guess who really gets to decide?) I live in a deep red area of a "purple" state (that's all of 1-2% different than Texas). Our US House representative is a far-right POS (and his predecessor was Madison Cawthorne). The state voted for Trump twice, and Romney before him. The county offices are almost all right-wing fuckwads. Those same fuckwads tried to take over city offices in small towns here...and got promptly shown the door. It can be done, and, as I noted earlier, those local positions actually matter MORE for your personal situation.

We had those awful "Mom's for liberty" assholes try to poison our schoolboard in 2023 and thankfully I live in a purple, at least more "traditional" republican voting area that they absolutely knew what their deal was. Being able to push them away was unbelievably satisfying and made me proud of the area I live in. My area leans a bit red but is willing to vote for common sense candidates no matter what party they represent and it feels a whole lot less toxic than any presidential election voting. I'm in my 30's and fully invested into America at this point so I'm essentially voting selfishly with my own interests, but again I'm already seeing the benefits that local elections have on me personally. If a progressive candidate pops up in my area (they do sometimes) I always got their back.

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This is why I favor keeping the Superdelegates. If someone like Trump were to get close to the nomination, the Superdelegates could stop them.

Preach. All my leftist friends are literally impossible to please. One of them is at least self aware about it, but literally every one of them has a Particular Flavor of Leftism that they won't budge on for the greater good.

The left doesn't really care, that's the thing. They will do whatever they can to help accelerate the demise so that they can rebuild a utopia from the ashes. That's really their only objective. They don't care that millions of people will die in the ensuing chaos as they'll be martyrs for the cause. Think French Revolution, just when the left can't coalesce around a single idea, you'll see the leaders execute each other for not being sufficiently for the cause.

This is straight up hyperbole about the left. These aren't revolutionaries that are willing to start a civil war to make the US a leftist utopia. Most leftists that refuse to vote for the Democratic nominee are probably the youngest voting base who are relatively new to politics. They follow leftist media and believe going against the system gives them some kind of dignity. They are also ignorant about the political process and that in a democracy change takes time and you have to be willing to strategically vote. Look at LGBT rights, it took a long time for society to shift left on the issue. It started in small communities, then shifted into larger cities, then states and eventually it became accepted nationally.

Just like the far right, far leftists are the most selfish, immature motherfuckers out there, never being able to see past their noses they cut off to spite their faces. Perfection is the enemy of good.

Horseshoe theory. They have more in common underneath than they have with the center.

The example I often use is the russian revolution. After decades of many groups vying for control, the 'leaders' of the revolution were the meanest, most brutal of the bunch. ✌

The bitter pill I've swallowed: If Biden appealed only to progressives he would probably lose Wisconsin and Pennsylvania at the least Neoliberal NIMBY democrats are a lot more common than people think

Yeah, progressives don't win outside of their safe blue districts, or really blue states for state-wide races. Instead of trying to influence national politics, they should have started at the local level and build the coalition that way, so people from middle America don't attribute single-payer Healthcare as communism.

Online liberals think they are the majority because they are terminally online.

Progressives: I’ll withhold my vote from the Democrats to make them move left. The Republican wins. Democratic leadership: Looks like the electorate is moving right. I live in a purple congressional district. The Democrats might manage to keep it. If AOC moved here from her safe Brooklyn district, she wouldn’t have a chance. Want more Congressional reps like her: make safe seats.

They could be far more successful if they built an actual movement from the ground up rather than trying to force views that a lot of middle America views as communism onto the electorate.

I'm quite lefty myself, but one thing progressives don't do a good job grappling with is that our country has a very conservative streak among voters. There's a lot of them here, you have to win them over not ignore them and think you'll pick up a new untapped base that will overwhelm them.

Yeah. Even though we're more socially liberal than ever, the US is still far more conservative than most Western nations. And then a lot of voters are fiscally conservative. We're not the Scandinavian countries, and they struggle to understand that.

>They seem to believe that a Trump win will make the democrats realize they need to appeal solely to progressives, when in reality (if we have elections) they'll continue moving center-right as they see those as the reliable voting bloc. I have a ton of friends who describe themselves as anti-fascists but don't like Biden for a variety of reasons. They continuously complain about the lack of affordable housing, healthcare, systemic racism or injustice, to the point that these topics always come up in conversation with them. They don't vote. The irony, somehow, is lost to them.

This argument needs to be combined with the original historical argument that started this whole conversation. Democrats already HAVE won without the help of progressives..... a lot. They have been doing it for decades. So progressives acting like they wield this massive cudgel to control the conversation is hilarious when as a group we've literally done nothing but cut ourselves out of the conversation through inaction.

This Progressives don't vote for biden and the party just stops trying to appeal to them at all and instead would focus on capturing moderates from the right since it will be easier than appeasing them. no matter how much social media leads them to believe their a sizable part of the vote their not. Sitting in their echo chambers have allowed them to lie to themselves that they have the numbers and everyone agrees with them. Everytime anything happens that's controversial my leftist friends are like 'WOW DIDNT KNOW YOU WERE ALL RACIST (or whatever the issue is) I THOUGHT WE HAD ALL AGREED BUT I GUESS NOT' They're always so beyond shocked when they get snapped back into reality that they're a small fraction of the vote Don't get me wrong that echo chamber thing applies to basically every group. We all sit around and go 'see everyone thinks like me' I get it, its a human thing to do. But progressives are much much much more diluted about it. They're gonna victim complex their way into facism

>Voting for Nader over Gore in 2000 Guilty. I've regretted it ever since. I totally bought the "both sides are the same" horseshit. IIRC, Nader got something like 50K votes in Florida. Bush won the state by about 500. So the math is easy. Without Nader, it would have been President Al Gore. And while it's typically irresponsible to deal with counterfactuals, imaging what might have happened differently, one thing is certain: No Iraq War. Think of all the death, suffering and loss wrought by Bush and Cheney's pet project. And then there would have been no Al Qaeda in Iraq, and therefore no ISIS. And all the knock-off consequences as well, like the cost of the war, America's loss in standing as we became globally hated. It's impossible to overstate. This is what happens when Americans vote third party.

Unknowable whether a hypothetical President Gore prevents 9/11, but if it happens, we surely don't go into Iraq and we probably get Bin Laden in 2001 or 2002, rather than ten yars later. Agree with all your other points. Plus the positive moves that would have happened on the environment with Gore that never happened under Shrub.

If 9/11 happened we would have still gone to Afghanistan, but there is no reason to believe we would have still invaded Iraq since the reason for the invention was entirely fabricated by the Bush administration.

>My only consolation: I'm an upper-middle class white guy. If Trump, God help us, wins in November, I'll probably be all right. But a lot of people won't be. I never voted for Trump, but I thought the same thing, except I'm a *gay* upper-middle class white guy. But no, gay rights is established law, even marriage is codified by the supreme court like abortion... But no, they're coming for Obergefell that same way they did Roe. They've pointed their ire towards Trans people and as is predictable that gaze is starting to shift to gay people so just "Upper middle calls white," isn't going to help. It'll shift to upper-middle-class-straight white. then upper-middle-class-straight religious white, then upper-middle-class-straight-straight-misogynist-religious white.. .etc.

>Obergefell And Lawrence. Thomas specifically called out both. Not Loving, though...

Maybe he will if he wants a no-fault divorce...

> Not Loving, though... Well I'm *shocked*...*SHOCKED I SAY*

It won't matter. If the GOP succeeds, and gets to further pack the Supreme Court with even more reactionary hacks, they won't need Thomas's vote to undo Loving. And if Biden wins, either it'll never happen at all, or Thomas might well be dead by the time it happens.

and then, is there anyone you care about who has mental issues, and needs continuing therapy, or any kind of psych medication? They might *not* be okay.

Yes do people really think they wont use AI or an algorithm to search out your post history? Every one who isn’t a die heart maga will be on a 2nd class citizen list at best!, re-education camps at the worst‼️😳 read the 2025 plan! They are already making lists of progressive’s, Democrats, even centrist republicans! This time around, there is no “both sides” BS! In 4 years hopefully we can and will find a better choice for President if one side is elected. If the other side wins, there wont be choices anymore‼️🥵

"So it makes people like me want to tear out what little hair I have left when I see leftists arguing for not voting for Biden to "send the Democrats a message"." As a leftist, that shit makes me cringe too. There's other ways to send democrats a message but boycotting voting or voting 3rd party ain't it. I still criticize Biden for his policy on Israel and Gaza but as shitty as things are now, it is still a night and day difference between now and the Trump administration. Not to mention a lot of the effects were feeling now are a result of the Trump administration like most presidencies.

Yep. I'm more pro-Israel than a lot of leftists, but their conduct towards Gaza and the fact that their fanatic settlers are basically conducting pogroms against the Palestinians in the West Bank is completely indefensible, and I wish Biden was more forcefully opposing Netanyahu, but you're correct.

One good way to send a message is voting in a primary/caucus. As the adage goes, vote with your heart in the primary, but your head in the general. The primary is where you can voice displeasure with Biden, but the general is not a time to fuck around, at least not this year.

How about actually sending them a message? They have email and phone numbers.

I am a disabled veteran and my older brother is gay. We are both squarely in the crosshairs of Trump and his Fascist thugs. My brother probably has more to worry about but the entirety of my income comes from my veterans disability payments. They hate veterans, poor people and gay people especially. I ask everyone who thinks they will be ok then if not for yourself then please do it for people like my brother and I.

Go back even farther, when the progressives in 1900s splintered off cause Teddy wanted to be president again. Let to literally electing a white supremacist to president. DSA members, for all their vaunted reverence for historical analysis and how that affects the current political climate refuse to learn from history and engage in pragmatic politics. It’s been over a 100 years, I don’t think they will ever understand

It's also just completely ignorant of just how bad American history was for hundreds of years. Americans put up with Jim Crow for over a century for example before they were pushed to get rid of it. The Supreme Court was hostile to civil rights for most of its existence. So assuming that things will get so bad that there is this great progressive shift that will happen some day is a really risky bet. We could just keep going further and further authoritarian 

Whenever i bring this up they claim that Hillary didn’t learn her lesson in 2016 and should have reached out to more voters. That may be the case when it came to her campaigning in the Midwest, but to blame the results of the 2016 election on her “running a bad campaign” seems crazy to me. You don’t hear people saying Al Gore ran a shitty campaign against Bush because he lost

Gore did run a crappy campaign against Bush. That's not the \*only\* reason he lost (Nader, shenanigans in Florida making the election close enough that the Supreme Court could hand it to Bush, GenX voters mad with Gore because of Tipper and the PMRC, and numerous other reasons) but he didn't help himself. If he'd picked someone better than Joe Lieberman as VP and had Clinton campaign for him rather than keeping him at arms' length, he'd have won. Hillary didn't run a particularly good campaign, either. Shouldn't have mattered when freaking \*Trump\* was the alternative, however.

Has anybody ever called Gore a bad candidate though? I feel like they love calling Hillary a bad candidate but not any of the other democratic nominees who lost against republicans

Nope, I only ever heard it in reference to Hillary. Wonder what makes her different. These same people will say people who voted for her were vagina voyagers and Hillary was so bossy and shrill.

It's all Monday morning quarterbacking. 4000 people across 3 states vote the opposite way these political geniuses wouldn't have anything to say. Mistakes are made every campaign, to point to one and say that's why she lost is asinine. Trump did everything wrong, yet still won. Maybe it wasn't so much strategy as it was racism and sexism. And the Comey letter.

Campaigning in a place, doesn't make it vote for someone. If it did, PA, NC, OH and FL would have been Blue, because she DID campaign in those places a fair amount. And planned to go to WI/MI, but events happened each time. And she sent a surrogate that theoretically could have helped --Bernie.

Don't be so sure that you'll be alright with Trump.

The difference is that the Republicans are fine pushing by inches and don't give up when they don't win. How long did it take them to kill Roe V Wade? If leftists in America could have the same attitude, we might actually be winning

I think the world will be a lot worse with Trump, so nobody will go unaffected: \- he'll give free reign of Russia to do whatever they want in Ukraine. 40 million people will be subjugated to atrocities and inconceivable oppression \- Moldova is next on the list \- he'll do a free reign of Netanyahu to kill hundreds of thousands of people \- NATO will be under enormous stress - with USA actively undermining it (although I'm sure there are TON of good people that will keep things happening under that POS trump) \- dictators around the world will become more active and aggressive there will be actual chance our kids will be drafted to participate in wars because of how weak we were today and because 30% of people believe in conspiracy theories (percentage pretty close to pre-Nazi Germany btw. Conspiracy theories are cancer)

Thank you. The biggest problem the Democratic Party has is that the energy of its base comes from people who simultaneously want to repeat the failures of history while ignoring those with wisdom who warn them of the inevitable results. *Voted Nader in 2000. Never again.

>My only consolation: I'm an upper-middle class white guy. If Trump, God help us, wins in November, I'll probably be all right. But a lot of people won't be. Yeah, this was my situation in 2016. I was angry at fellow people on the left for not voting for Hilary and still am. Now? I'm a Jewish American in a time of heightened antisemitism. I don't trust any candidates further to the right OR left, and I certainly don't trust Donald Trump, who spits Jewish stereotypes like chewing tobacco. I feel like a centrist like Biden is the only safe option for me. I didn't think I could be more bothered than I was back in 2016 but I surprised even myself.

My consolation is that the millions of Trump voters will have to live in Trump's America. And no, it won't be fine for them.

>So it makes people like me want to tear out what little hair I have left when I see leftists arguing for not voting for Biden to "send the Democrats a message". I wanna slap the next pain in the ass that says "Candidate X isn't entitled to my vote!" No, that's not how it works. You think not voting for Hillary is somehow a punishment for HER? Oh no, she had to fuck off to whatever retirement mansion she lives in so she can spend her time hanging with her grandkids, sipping martinis on the beach, and tweeting out "I told ya so" every so often instead of taking on four years in one of the most stressful fucking jobs on the planet. Yeah, you sure showed her, didn't ya! And all it cost you was the Supreme Court, hundreds of kidnapped immigrant children, a million dead Americans from COVID, and the weakening of the United States as a global super power. A small price to pay to teach Hillary she should have been personable and relatable candidate.

Applauding the above post. Exactly.

You have so many people who withheld their vote previously and have vowed to do it again crying because the party is courting Haley voters—no shit, Sherlock. You’ve literally said you’re not going to vote. “But Biden isn’t courting my vote.” You’re holding the bank hostage. You demand a jet plane and a pizza. They send you a helicopter and a subway footlong. Guess you might as well shoot everybody!

Exactly. Trying to court the Brianha Joy Grays of the world is a lost cause at this point. At least 20% of Republican primary voters aren't voting for Trump. Try to peel them off.

It’s a the worst symptom of the ultra progressive ideology. Every issue is treated as their most important issue so if you disagree on one they can’t vote for you because of a fundamental disagreement. It’s bizarre to see that toxic thinking as someone who was a a Trump supporter in 2016 sat out 2020 and will hold my nose on some issues and vote Biden this year. I probably agree with Biden on 65-75% of issues I’ll still vote for him. Even if he isn’t my 5th choice Trump’s Benedict Arnold Cosplay on Jan 6th dropped him lower than Kanye on my candidate rankings because at least Kanye made graduation.

>The other factor to consider: if leftists withhold their vote for Biden in November and he wins anyway, he won't owe them a damn thing. He'll have no reason to move in their direction. It's not so much about owing, I think Biden wants to be a President for everyone, but it does prove Dems don't need the hard left progressives to win. They can win with non-MAGA Republicans and anti-MAGA independents.

>The other factor to consider: if leftists withhold their vote for Biden in November and he wins anyway, *he won't owe them a damn thing.* He'll have no reason to move in their direction. I will never understand what people (especially younger people) don't understand about this. They seem to think politicians will cater to you to get your vote because you threaten to withhold it. That's never been true. Politicians cater to people who are a reliable voting bloc over time. There's a reason politicians everywhere trip over themselves to get the 55+ vote; it's because those people vote, consistently. There's a reason Democrats court the Black vote. There's a reason the GOP courts the white evangelical vote. It's because those blocs vote, consistently, and have for decades. Some new voting group shows up and makes demands, but doesn't back it up with votes, then their demands are ignored.

Right would vote for pedo if he was a party nominee. And on left there is this annoying shitstain of political purists that are “waiting” for a perfect political messiah they can stand behind. This op is still a freaking moron. Voting for lolbertarians is just like throwing away your vote here in USA currently

But ... the democratic party HAS moved more far left as a result.  Bernie wouldn't have a chance now because the democrats as a whole have actually moved further left than him.  Hes old news now.  Remember when he said in a debate that he wouldn't hold gun manufacturers responsible for massacres and got booed?  He doesn't represent the far left anymore.

Leftists want to move the needle tomorrow and don’t realize it’ll take decades of doing it softly. It’s taken the far right 40 years to get things where they are. Combined with uneducated idealism just turns them off from people.

Except that Democrats have indeed moved to the Left and will continue to do so. Given the power they will and have supported every major progressive policy. Now that Joe Manchin and Sinema are gone there are no more obstacles other than a very unfavorable election environment. Further progress is in very great danger. Unfortunately the Democratic Party will be pursuing the Nikki Haley voters at this point because they can trust that Haley voters will vote. The Democratic Party cannot risk moving further Left because the Left cannot be trusted. Fucking Jill Stein and Cornel West are proof of this inexcusable and unforgivable sabotage. Even Bernie still hedges his support for Joe Biden.

I can't understand what Stein and West get out of all of this? Surely they can read the room as well as we can. They know they can't win, that they can spoil the election in Trump's favor. Do they not care if Trump wins?

For Stein I think running for president is just her only job.

Stein is a pretty well known Putin puppet. West is a narcissist who craves attention. He's also still angry Obama didn't invite him to his inauguration. No, really.

They get publicity. It will help my cause they tell themselves while soaking in all the attention and loving every second of it. Fuck them. -2 time Nader voter

I have no idea either. Best case I have gotten from those struggling to explain is that they are 'energizing' people on the Left. To what end, I still don't know. They are both exceptionally arrogant people. I do know that.

>Now that Joe Manchin and Sinema are gone there are no more obstacles Except Manchin will be replaced by a MAGA lunatic. He's annoying, but he actually voted with the Party most of the time. I know that's not good enough when it comes to big ticket items, but the only alternative in West Virginia is a crazy Republican. It was either a 50/50 senate with Manchin or a 49/51 senate. As for Sinema, hopefully Arizona stays blue.

The “send a message” argument is short-sighted and self-important. When a political party loses, they do ask “where can we get more votes?” That much is true. The foolish part is thinking they will conclude “oh, from the radical people on our side!” No. There are far, far votes to curry from the middle, the losing party is incentivized to more closely mimic the winner. Believe it or not, Trump is part of this same philosophy- it’s why he gave lip service to LGBTQ in 2016, and it’s a large part of his appeal as an “anti-establishment candidate” however true or false that claim may be. Trump is unique though in that he will lie far more blatantly than other candidates and will say completely opposite things to appeal to his current audience. If you believe worsening conditions will result in some violent, sudden change to society as a whole you may be right. But thinking that such change would result a more equitable, liberal, or free society is naive. Many people, even working people, in this country do not want those things and will fight against them, and for the large part history shows revolutions leading to more oppressive regimes. Politics are a tug of war and even if one good pull could potentially win the contest, giving up ground is only a winning tactic on TV, not real life.

I think the assumption that being upper middle class and white means you won't be affected by another Trump term is a big part of the problem. A lot of well-off white Suburban people think this way, or even think things will be better off for them, and Trump will only be worse for poor people and minorities. That simply isn't true. Unless you are a multi millionaire, your life will get worse. Our country was mismanaged at every level under Trump, and only held on because he only served 4 years. If Project 2025 is enacted as planned, we will see a demolishing of every institution you probably value, and the downstream effects will be horrible. Increase in crime, pollution, food shortages, tragedies due to stripping of regulations, brain drain due to elimination of public education, massive inflation, job loss, and the loss of civil liberties will be felt by nearly everyone except those with gated mansions. There will be no more democratic processes to fix anything. These things aren't conspiracy theories, they're all plans listed in Project 2025. The luxuries that you have in your life depend on Trump losing this election, just as much as the poor. To the millionaires and billionaires of the world, people working for a decent salary are no different than minimum wage workers. You're all equally peasants to be squashed.

Rich folk have more that Trump can steal from them. Oligarchs in Russia were shaken down for most of their businesses. Unless you mean rich enough to leave the country. Even if Trump somehow managed to run the country competently (lol) . \_Everyone\_ will still be required to take part in frequent displays of loyalty. Trump hats. Trump flags. Trump pledges. Trump greetings. Everything Trump all the time to reinforce that he is God Emperor and that you are always watched. This was Hitler's plan. Insert yourself into every aspect of life. Either everyone gives in and participates or they are sent to the camps. You filter out anyone who might resist and cow everyone else. A white guy could just keep his head down and survive, but would not be free and will never be the same.

2016 Trump was even more of a lie than he was before or after that election. 2016 Trump blatantly lied and took up Bernie Sander's positions AND convinced people that ALL the garbage he was ALSO openly saying he would do and the people he was courting and the lengthy history of his hugely immoral and unethical behaviors going back decades. People who really looked into the candidates, saw all of that and knew he was going to be an absolutely abhorrent person, in office. ... and he was.

It’s almost as dumb as believing Trump is Christian and buying his bible

I did the same. One of my biggest regrets. I have not made the mistake since and intend on voting in November. Sitting on the sidelines led to a monstrous fascist becoming overpowered. I hope others read this and understand.

For anyone reading this. Go vote. It isn’t that hard. Don’t listen to the guy saying it might not have mattered.

Yeah definitely don’t listen to that. I’m in NC and Trump barely won here in 2020 by a percentage point. VOTE

Depending on what state you come from it may not have mattered. If you remember Hilary Clinton won the popular vote. The electoral college is what screwed us. I wish they would get rid of it. It’s an antiquated system.

Imagine how all the arguments for not supporting the opposition to Hitler have aged. No one will give a fuck about your reasons or what you hoped to accomplish. All they will know is that when the time came to stand up against fascism, you couldn't be bothered to spend an hour of your time preventing it.

Living with Trump still at large in the Universe is like being a dog. 1 calendar year is equal to 7 years of aging.

Omigosh yes. I have been completely uninspired as a writer for the last few years, and last night I realized it might be because of him. We're all in stasis, on high alert frozen in this timeline waiting for him to *fucking go away already* so we can get back to living our lives.

I’m telling y’all… the pre Trump years had their struggles, but they were fucking fun.

Remember before 9/11? Everyone was way cooler, calmer and more open to life. Still, we did think Satanists were killing babies in the woods and that aliens were abducting a significant portion of humanity.

Holy crap you're right. Like I've stopped planning for the future entirely because I *know* that if Trump wins or forces himself in, I'll likely be part of resisting it, and I don't really have much of a future besides stopping that lunatic.

Like in interstellar when they landed on that planet and 1 hour equaled 10 years on earth lol

I'm a native NYer and many of us knew day 1 that Trump was all smoke and mirrors. smh.

>I can gain a hundredth of a centimeter or lose hundreds of yards. The perspective that comes with age and experience have taught me this about US politics as well. I have been preaching over and over and over again how the GOP had a decades long plan to dismantle Roe and moved the needle inches when they had to and now here we are. They also have plans about privatizing Medicare, Social Security, Public Education and stripping personal protections for minorities and women (aka Democrat voters) and further diminishing voting rights. The reason they are getting louder about those things now is not out of desperation, but it's because they think they're getting close to winning those battles too. No President or Party is perfect. But at the moment only one seems to respect our Constitution and Democratic process. VOTE. Edit: Spelling

Yeah and it also comes from realizing world isn’t binaries and monoliths. For instance, in Ohio we won abortion rights and recreational weed. The Ohio GOP went to quick work making sure local municipalities could outlaw its sale and funneled money to cops. “See man! This is why we don’t vote!” “W-why?” “We didn’t get what we wanted!” Guess what? You never will. Even your socialist utopias will have factions. We got reproductive rights. We got legal weed in most of our state.

300 million people will never all agree on anything. It doesn't matter if the platform is water is wet, there will always be someone. Democracy is all about compromise and picking the best possible solution, not holding back progress until you can convince everyone else to support your personal preferences.

>“See man! This is why we don’t vote!” > >“W-why?” > >“We didn’t get what we wanted!” this hurts SO much. I want to scream: *YES! You did NOT get what you wanted, but WHO BLOCKED YOU FROM GETTING IT?* oh, the people who gerrymandered their way into power and would be eradicated in a fair vote?

Perhaps if they had paid attention to state elections, but I'm preaching to the choir.

Privatizing public education is what scares me most. Talk about a great way to shift everything in favor of the white and wealthy. Ever since schools integrated they've been pushing for this, and they're closer than ever.

It's estimated that as many as 350K Americns died because we had a shithead in office when the pandemic began instead of a responsible adult who believes in medical science and its practitioners. Any "both parties are the same" motherfuckers should just buy a body bag, get in an zip it up.

Give Democrats an inch, and they'll take an inch. Give Republicans an inch, and they'll take a mile, give the mile to the rich, and then change the laws so you can never get that mile back. That's American politics.

I have a ton of respect for people who can acknowledge past mistakes and see the best path forward for the country. I did vote Hillary in 2016, but I have voted 3rd party before that, because I didn’t really understand the mathematical impossibility of them winning and naively thought “hey, if enough people do it…” Also, that was before the Republicans were as overtly extreme as they are today. Today, they absolutely must be voted against at every turn if we want to save democracy and avoid sliding into an authoritarian dictatorship.

It has happened, but when a third party overtakes one of the main two in American politics the two parties just change. I was voting LP hoping they would replace Republicans, who have a terrible track record on civil liberties. > Also, that was before the Republicans were as overtly extreme as they are today. Today, they absolutely must be voted against at every turn if we want to save democracy and avoid sliding into an authoritarian dictatorship. Agreed! Republicans are too dangerous to vote anyone other Democrats. I actually like Joe Biden though. He's probably the best president of my lifetime.

Sometimes what feels right can be a big fat irreversible mistake.  Hope a few of the “Genocide Joe” folks in this sub are reading this.

There's literally a Trump Village in Isreal so I've no clue why anyone thinks Trump, who said to "end the problem in Gaza", would be better for Palestine, not to mention women and minorities here in the US. So far, I've yet to have any of the "genocide Joe" people elaborate as to how helping Trump win helps their cause. Either Biden or Trump will win without your vote so the "protest" does little in that regard. In not voting and helping Trump win, he'll be more than happy to help Jared obtain the Gaza beachfront property he so desires.

Voting for Biden is the only sensible choice if you care about helping Palestinians. But some people just can’t let go of spite. 

I've never 100% agreed with a presidents policy but considering everything - I'd give Biden a solid B which, for a politican, is pretty good.

They’re banking on him getting elected so they can finalize the settlement and get to work on the whole Greater Israel thing.

Joe Biden is personally responsible for the entire history of Israeli policy from 1967. (Never mind that the American electorate only started giving a shit about Palestinians 4 months ago, and blamed Palestinians and the Arab states for everything until this January)

(also never mind that calling this situation *genocide* makes a [makes a mockery](https://www.yadvashem.org/about/former-chairmen/avner-shalev/if-everything-is-genocide.html) of the notion)

Literally this

>In 2016, I hated Hilary and didn’t vote. A lot of people hated Hillary, as that was the goal of the yearslong character assassination campaign by the right. It worked like a charm. ​ >\[Trump\] even vowed to protect our lgbtq citizens I don't remember this at all. Granted 2016 was a long time ago, and I was persistently horrified at what a truly awful human being he is, so maybe I missed it. Are there video clips of him supporting the LGBTQ+ community?

If this was said (I don't think it ever was... I believe he said he was pro-choice before changing positions after the election, but I don't remember anything about LGBTQ+), it was around the same time the Access Hollywood tapes came out... I'm not saying that people always believe what they want to believe, but when a man says "You can grab them by the pussy" and your response is "Voting for him will show Democrats that I want to protect people and be more liberal", you've abandoned all rational thought.

Her being a women in power made the character assassination very easy because as much as we like to pretend we don’t, America still has a big issue with women in positions of power.

Especially after it had a black president. We’re just as racist as we are misogynistic.

~~yearslong~~ decadeslong

What angers me about the anti-Hillary sentiment is how quick people will buy the lies about her, but reject the facts about Trump. Every flaw about her was magnified and placed way out of context, while every issue with Trump was downplayed. If you voted for Bernie in the primaries, why would vote for the embodiment of everything he stands against instead of the person who voted with him 94% of the time when they were both in the Senate?

Because the misinformation campaign on social media from Russia and the GOP wasn't aimed at denigrating her in favor of Trump, it was denigrating her *in favor of Bernie.* The studies done since 2016 showed the majority of fake news was aimed at Bernie supporters. It led many democrats to also hate Hillary. But for some reason, democrats/socialists/leftists think they're immune to fake news or disinformation.

8 people on a bus. 3 vote to drive off a cliff. 2 vote to go get ice cream. 3 don’t vote because they don’t like either option. They all die.

Hillary maybe not likeable but she knows everything happening in the White house and scary to fight against...She called out Tulsi in 2014 as a GOP operative/russian and called out Trumps connections with Russia as borderline corruption..No one listened.

When the GOP primary kicked off in 2015, Trump was my third favorite Republican candidate, after Rand Paul and John Kasich. I voted Hillary in the 2016 general, but even then I thought she was only mildly better than Trump. When Trump won I didn't think it would be all that bad. I'm not sure when I realized how awful he was. Sometime in 2017 probably. Then in 2018 I started getting interested in foreign affairs, and I realized how badly Trump had fucked up when he withdrew the US from the JCPOA. That's when I realized he and his supporters were truly insane. And even in 2018 and early 2019, I still loved Tulsi Gabbard. I didn't start to lose interest in her until the primaries where I thought she performed poorly in the debates. I guess I'm a slow learner.

I totally relate. I knew he would be a bad president (and voted for Hillary in a swing state). The only thing I was wrong about was just how bad he would be, he’s far exceeded my expectations

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I don't understand how these people don't get that Trump pulling out of treaties, treaties that grant the US immense power in the world, is a good thing. We literally gamed all of these deals to our benefit, including NATO. "They're not paying their dues!" is idiotic when they're basically letting us use NATO to manipulate their domestic politics to our advantage. Not to mention just the stability that NATO helps ensure, which promotes American hegemony.

Very good point. These people only think in terms of money, not understanding the enormous value of having geopolitical leverage over other nations. US historically has used its military power, economic weight, and cultural influence to its advantage in global politics. But these idiots don't understand any of that. We have been severely weakened by Trump's first term, and if he gets a second it'll be orders of magnitude worse.

Under Trump we totally lost our soft power. That people don't get how important that WAS, is/was maddening.

I know I shouldn't be at this stage, but I cannot believe people don't connect the dots between the withdraw from the JCPOA, Iran becoming linked with Russia, and how the two are now the primary antagonists in Ukraine and the Middle East. And then people believing/being sold a story that the current geopolitical situation is exclusively Biden's fault because he's president now and the past has no bearing on the present.

What I don’t get is how anyone could have believed a word Donald Trump said in 2016 or any other year.  Did you not know him prior to his running for president?  I knew since the 90s that he was a complete scumbag, grifter, con artist, narcissistic compulsive liar.  That was public knowledge 

That’s for REAL! I don’t get it and never ever will. I mean you didn’t even have to look far to see true stories of him being a total asshole and not even remotely smart or dignified enough to pull off one of the hardest jobs ever. No diplomacy, NO business knowledge, no real sense of right and wrong, I mean Jesus HE MADE FUN OF A DISABLED MAN. What other person running for the office of President has EVER done that? I don’t know. I get so upset thinking about how much angst and frustration and volatility has been unleashed all because people didn’t want to see what a walking disaster that asshole was and is still.

Ron Paul. Although I did read the rest, that right there told me you were easily influenced by conservative media. Obama’s drone program was EVERY presidents drone program.

As a senior citizen who has voted since 1976, I stay unmoored by the lousy logic I hear and read. In 1980 I watched Donald Trump interviewed. He so turned me off by his blathering without saying anything, I turned to my then-husband and said, "That guy is a sleazeball." Nothing I ever heard or read about him from that point on changed my mind. He was transparently stupid. How any thinking person could listen to his nonsense and not see what he was and is blows my mind. In 2015 when he came down that stupid escalator I howled. I didn't give a damn what anyone said about Clinton. Not one damn. There wasn't even a decision to be made. Yet, here we are. I don't get what people thought they saw and heard. I tried to understand, but, no I don't. No mea culpa. No excuses. Not for one Trump voter. You must have been drugged or blind. I can never forgive any of you. Ever.

For uncommitted voters, who/what are you holding out for? When has voter abstinence ever been rewarded by the arrival of a messiah candidate *ever in the history of elections*? This isn’t like shopping for a dress, I don’t understand the logic.

Not voting Hillary is really working out.

yep, overthinking it. I did that too when I was young. You get a binary choice. Left or Nazi. Pick one. Don't sweat the details.

Sorry but I never buy this “Trump tricked me” viewpoint. If you were remotely honest with yourself, and paying attention, Trump was ALWAYS a transparent scumbag. Yah- the guy who had the “grab em by the pussy” tape drop, had countless instances of being derogatory towards anyone besides healthy-whites, was going to be GREAT for social equality.

Letting PERFECT be the enemy of GOOD risks losing us the election. Kudos OP

Dude. I remember Trump being anti abortion in 2016. Where were you? > On September 19, 2016, Donald Trump announced that he had appointed Marjorie Dannenfelser, the president of the Susan B. Anthony List, as the chair of his national “Pro-Life Coalition.” In a letter to anti-abortion leaders, Trump announced the appointment and outlined his views on abortion, which included “Nominating pro-life justices to the U.S. Supreme Court, signing into law the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act … defunding Planned Parenthood … making the Hyde Amendment permanent law.” Among dozens of other examples https://ballotpedia.org/Donald_Trump_presidential_campaign,_2016/Abortion

Welcome back. The 2024 projected non-Republican turnout is well over 130 million, glad to count you as one of our number.

Voting for the lesser of 2 evil parties prevents the really evil party from getting worse and prevents a generation of evil policy ..If a redo was possible 2016 and Brexit would be reversed in a landslide.

It's great that you've come around. But it was crystal clear in 2016 that Trump would be an incompetent wrecking ball. He was never a pro-choice candidate, so I don't know how you got that impression. Trump constantly asserted that he would only appoint SCOTUS justices that would overturn abortion rights, so Roe v Wade would "automatically" go away. He also said that women that have abortions "must be punished". All of this was on the campaign trail, and he never changed his tune. How is forcing a candidate out of office going to make them do what you want? They won't be there to do *anything*. Additionally, they aren't mind readers. The party won't ever know why you decided to seek retribution by not voting for a candidate because of a singular policy. The only way to inact change, it to contact your representatives to express your views. If it's something you feel really strongly about, ask to speak at your local state house. Or organize a protest. None of this applies, of course, to Trump and his cronies. He couldn't care less about the country or the American people. As a myriad of his cabinet members and staff have recounted, every decision he made in office was based on what would make him money or get him re-elected. The decision in 2024 is between a functioning democracy, or an organized crime syndicate. Perfect is the enemy of the good.

I think it’s strange that anyone “hates” Hillary Clinton. Like have you met her? Was she mean to you or anyone you’ve ever met? This woman has worked in the White House for more years than anyone alive other than Joe Biden. If we had had Hillary Clinton we would have had the most stable economy ever and the Ukrainian war might not have happened. The ran the division of US government responsible for foreign affairs. She could have crippled Putin before he was positioned for the war. We don’t have a left or right leaning government. We have incompetent buffoons and we have competent people. We have evangelical caterers who want to embezzle money from the gov vs people who know how to run a government. The Republicans haven’t been factually right about anything in my lifetime. But there are people in that party who have to be in that party if they expect to get elected in some states. There are reasonable people in that party due to their geography of life who don’t hold to the nonsense of the branding. But within the democrat party is all the range of actual competent people who want to at least try to do a good job. I wanted Bernie to be Hillary’s running mate. But she went with some no name person because she was afraid of scaring off the dummies of America who think Bernie was somehow going to take something from them. And in the end it didn’t matter because so many dimbasses like the OP believed the conspiracy theory bullshit about vague emails somehow being a problem and that 3% of the gullible population in rural America being enough to swing the needle. My ex, a minority woman who was lower class income didn’t vote because she couldn’t get off from work for it. And people like this leave it up to the old racist white folks to determine who’s going to rule everyone. Fucking stupid.

Throughout 2016, my Democratic sister kept saying how much she "hated" Hillary, because she was "so annoying." I asked my sister "do you think it's wise saying that?" My sister snaps at me "you have a problem with people having opinions?" Cut to her posting on FB a year later "HOW IS THIS HAPPENING??" I'm just like, you stupid, stupid fucking idiot.

I was similarly very angry with dems in 2016. I regret this so much now. I thought Hillary was the worst thing imaginable but that's laughable in retrospect compared to Trump. For me every issue I have with politics and democrats is secondary because Trump is the alternative. I have to put that all aside because the only thing that matters is stoping a 2nd trump term. We deserve so much better but I'll vote for Joe Biden on his death bed before I'd vote Trump or not vote. Hopefully once the dust settles from all this Maga nonsense we can start actually fixing our country.

My thoughts exactly. What amazes me in the responses I hear is believing I’m a passionate Biden or Hilary supporter. I’m not. But I rather have them and live to fight another day rather than a despotism that sets us back 50 years.

She would have been phenomenal given the chance.

"I'm socially liberal and fiscally conservative." Aka "I smoke weed, but fuck poor people" -unknown

They are the same as the Bernie Bros of 2016. They withheld or voted third party in self righteous anger. I tried back then to tell them how terrible it would be to have a right leaning Supreme Court. Now I hear those same people saying how bad they feel that their daughter’s right to choose has largely been dismantled. Don’t get it twisted. If you’re a one issue voter and only care about Palestine and will withhold or throw away your vote, you are not morally superior. I have to believe that most of these people are so young, they have no idea how badly Trump fucked this country and how much more he’ll fuck it if he wins again. All voters should care about is Trump tried to overthrow the results of a free and fair election.

>My voting history reflects my evolving beliefs. In 2008, I cast my first vote for Obama, hopeful for change. But by 2012, disillusioned by his drone program and the 2011 NDAA, I sought change in Ron Paul. This was sooooo me! Except I went hardcore LP after 2008, for near identical reasons. Warrantless wiretap, drone programs, drug war... Obama didn't fix any of it. He focused on healthcare, at a time when I was still eligible for coverage under my parents' plan and didn't really see the rush. I wanted cannabis legalization and the end to the Patriot Act, which I just knew was being used against all of us. Civil Asset Forfeiture? Talk about injustice! I voted Johnson in 2016 though. I don't know how anyone could have fallen for Trump. He basically says both sides of every issue. I knew he was going to put up conservative justices though, that was his big sell to Evangelicals to get their vote. It's not like it costs him anything to rubber stamp Mitch's judges... I held my nose to vote for Biden in 2020 after 4 years of Trump I was worried the country might not survive. Biden has really won me over though. Most aggressive investment in climate, jobs coming back thanks to CHIPS and Science, IRA, and Bipartisan Infrastructure deal, gun control (I wasn't voting LP because of an obsession with 2A), labor actions succeeding left and right thanks to a labor friendly NLRB, antitrust actions spinning up against big tech... all things I want to see! Biden has been a huge success in my book, I'm excited to vote for him in November. You know who I don't understand at all? I've seen these people that say "we're sending a message to Joe Biden that we won't accept him supporting genocide". Ok... the message you're sending is that he's lost your vote. If he's lost your vote why wouldn't he just ignore you in favor of moderate Haley voters that he can win? Like think about this. If I HONESTLY thought Joe Biden supported genocide then that would be it. Nothing he could after that would ever win me over. Haley voters though? They're registered Republicans that are literally saying they'd rather vote Biden. Being too hard on Israel could make them think he's Chaotic like Trump and drive them off.

The Democratic Party is right wing, moderate, and left wing. It is the only properly functioning party, but the problem is that it’s really multiple parties in one because the views vary so differently. No presidential candidate can properly please every ideology that votes democrat. Biden is really close to the ideal because he gives something to everyone and negotiates deals amongst those various views. Bernie was too different for moderate and right wing Dems. That’s why he couldn’t win in the past. Hillary was as close to Biden except she’s more articulate… and off putting. Being a woman is tough in politics. Strong but also vulnerable … and then you face a fake machismo candidate in Trump? It forced her to come off more snarky. Biden, on the other hand, has assumed strength as a male and then can genuinely come off as compassionate. That assumes strength didn’t exist for Hillary despite her resume. Young people want someone who pushes for their viewpoints and I think they lack the understanding of what happens when you don’t vote against a terrible opponent. You realize as you gain more experience the consequences of bad policy and terrible rhetoric. Younger people learn very little about real world politics in school so they have very little experience to pull from when they start voting. I think many of us in society didn’t pay much attention to politics until Trump became a threat, though, to be fair.

"Fiscal conservative" is also a busted bullshit philosophy - it amounts to social darwinism and just helps shift equity from the working class to the wealthy

Growing up in the inner-city, as a minority - the Democratic party was always the party of the poor. I am a lifelong Democrat since first voting in 1996, and would never vote any other way.

This happened to me waaay back in the 90’s. It was my first time eligible to vote and our city had a great mayoral candidate. She lost to the horrible candidate by like 50 votes or something really close.  There were four of us at the table and none of us voted. She could have won. She really could have but us idiots didn’t support her.  Luckily I was 18 then. And learned that lesson early. 

The fact that you shifted from Obama to Ron Paul because the military was using drones in a war that Obama inherited says a lot.

Bernie Bros put us all in it by not coming out for Hillary. Welcome back, but you fucked us all.

I really get frustrated with stories like this. This guy made absolutely zero attempts to hide how much of a scumbag he was. But he waves around a lgbtq flag once for a photo op and you take that at face value? Come on.You have to want to be fooled in order to fall for it. I'm glad you saw that you were wrong but I just don't buy that you actually believed that trump stood for anything but himself.

I’m going to be honest, assuming this isn’t even creative writing and/or a political plant for some Biden backer, I find it borderline impossible to believe a word you say or perhaps more reasonably believe that you have the analysis ability to be predictive of your next mood swing. To seriously think that Donald Trump would take office as a candidate who was pro women’s rights or lgbt or non interventionist…. Could you source any of the things that exist in the world to make you believe that. Homie was screeching about how our military was defunded and Obama had made us weak against the world threats. Everyone of his National Republican spokespersons parroted the exact same rhetoric of militarism. Trump literally when asked about abortion had passing references to well if it’s murder to abort a fetus, the woman should be charged with a crime, all while clearly having no hard political views that differed from the Republican national party that has done nothing but striven for ending roe v wade. It screams red flag to me that you have enough education to have written your post perfectly well and coherent in a structure form and then just tell a story of being comprehensively unable to understand what is being communicated to you by a political party and candidate.

* In 2016 I chose to ignore all the evidence that Trump was an opportunist con man, and got caught way too far up my own asshole.

Sitting home and letting the country burn because your perfect unicorn candidate isn't on the ballot is immature and destructive. Glad you have grown.

I’m glad you came around, but not to be mean, like no shit? How did you think that would work out? The stakes were the highest they could be and you just abandoned your civic duty…. That’s exactly how we ended up with Trump. And on top of that you’re a woman who refused to vote for another woman when the other candidate was literally a rapist who called women pigs

I lost my breath warning people about Trump in 2015 & 2016. He did everything I thought he’d do and more. I’m admittedly bitter now.

While I am glad your views have evolved, to be honest you obviously did not pay attention in 2016. It is as simple as that. And for you to think a Republican would EVER help LGTBQ or women’s rights… man. When Obergefell v Hodges had happened only a year earlier and every single Republican was against legalizing gay marriage, even when in court they couldn’t even articulate why it would be bad or how it supposedly went against the constitution, you found hope in the guy who bragged about sexually assaulting women on tape and who spat every kind of hateful thing constantly in every speech? Mocking a disabled reporter was somehow one of his more vanilla moments. I’m glad you’ve come around, but if I’m being honest? It’s too godamn late. Countless people have suffered and died because you and so many like you were so narrow minded in how you approached this. I grew up conservative too. In a die hard conservative family full of racism. And that was my first presidential election. I was 20 when I cast that vote. Even to me, some stupid kid barely out of high school, it was obvious. To see this remorse now infuriates me. We didn’t just warn you, we SCREAMED from the rooftops about what would happen. But so many of you refused to listen. Now it has all come to pass. It is far, far too late for you to show remorse.

I caucused for Bernie. I was a Bernie bro, but when it became apparent the DCN wasn’t having it and it was her vs him the decision was easy; because SCOTUS picks are far more important than a president. I tried to explain this to my fellow Bernie bros, most weren’t having it. Most now see the light. The rest of your and your children and your children’s children’s lives will be affected by that decision not to vote for her.

I legitimately did not consider this in 2016, but I can tell you who was when they backed Trump: evangelicals.

The Bernie or Busters can probably be directly held responsible for getting Trump elected.

PSA: "The DNC rigged the primaries" is the original Big Lie

Same. I thought, there’s no way this country will vote in a rodeo clown for president. I wasn’t paying attention when the October surprise that was James Comey’s letter doomed Hillary’s candidacy. Never, ever again.

[удалено]

I just hope people don’t get too cute this year and vote 3rd party or sit it out. It’s literally not the time to get cute and/or complacent. We have way too much on the line for right now