"No, I'm not doing nothing I'm raising awareness!"

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submitted 3 days ago by Lauchs@lemmy.world

"No, I'm not doing nothing I'm raising awareness!"
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I feel bad for Americans and kids in general. More fascist radicalization pipelines pop up every single day. The money and effort spent must rival most countries GDPs. Just the media organizations alone..

Some days it can feel like standing at the foot of a mountain watching the entire mountain side crashing down.

Then I realize it's just people. People we can step up to. And slap in the damn face.

I’m not even convinced it’s even real leftists posting this stuff. It often seems like astroturfing. Not only would fake leftists possibly sway undecided voters, but they also tarnish any positivity the left deserves. Win-win for the right.

I was shocked to find out I have a friend I thought was intelligent suggest I withhold my vote for Kamala. Fuck you, dude.

I'd like to think you're right.

But I have heard borderline stuff like this in real life from people whom I know are solid progressives. (Admittedly, these are folks on my soccer team who are almost 2 decades younger than me. I can't imagine what ending their teens during a pandemic was like so I kind of expect their politics to be wildly different.)

"Borderline" is entirely different. Voting for Harris while being salty about it is a perfectly reasonable thing real progressives should do, and it's exactly the opposite of what these astroturf third-party propagandists are calling for even if the (alleged) sentiment is adjacent. That "border" is a knife edge and the difference between a genuine progressive and a[n effectively] pro-Trump useful idiot comes down to which side of it they fall off.

This shows how absolutely broken the American voting/party system is though.

That's absolutely true and very well put. Doing the right thing and being happy about it are two very different beasts.

Thank you!

Konnichiwa.

I understand you are *very* concerned about people voting 3rd party. Considering our broken First Past The Post voting system, I get it.

Did you know that alternative voting systems could alleviate all your worries about people who wish to vote outside the two party system? People could be *free* to vote how they wish, safe in the knowledge that their vote would still count against the Republicans.

How we vote us controlled at the state level, which means we can pass this much needed reform without federal intervention. Actually, some states have already passed legislation doing away with First-past-the-post voting, and even more are in the process of passing it! Exciting times no?

So, in conclusion, I hope you stop by my ask lemmy Post to discuss your post election commitment to replace FPTP voting in your state.

If achieved, you wouldn't have to worry about 3rd parties anymore and your fellow citizens would be involved and contributing to the poltical process.

So, in conclusion, I hope you stop by my ask lemmy Post to discuss your post election commitment to replace FPTP voting in your state.

Sure, I'd be happy to! But the key phrase there is "post election." IMO you should delete it and re-submit it on Wednesday.

Astroturfing exists to poison the minds of on lookers. If useful idiots didn't adopt the warped logic they wouldn't astroturf.

It blows my mind that people are dumb enough for it to work but in an era of razor tight electoral margins, even a few idiots can matter.

Hang around them long enough. They will slip. They inevitably use right wing colloquialisms.

I'm a real leftist who is not voting this US election

...

I'm not an American citizen.

Dealt with someone ostensibly from the UK advocating for not voting and after being pressed repeatedly finally worked their way down to “I’m not voting because I can’t”.

Actual foreign election interference, and the UK has some notable Russian ties. Wouldn’t be surprised if that rube has ties to Russia or is actually on a ruble payroll

Ha, I know exactly who you're referring to!

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It sounds like it’s young people (under 25) who don’t understand exactly how bad it will be if trump wins.

I’ve survived a lot of shit presidents. Trump is the first one who actually scares me.

Hopefully they will do the right thing when it comes time to actually vote.

The time to actually vote is now. I voted a week ago.

Even Dick "I did 911" Cheney is against him. He's an actual evil person who thinks Trump is too evil

Too evil for Dick Cheney is a very special form of evil indeed.

In a way, this is all you need to know right here.

I think 'too evil' is an oversimplification. DC is lawful evil, DT is chaotic evil. It's the chaos DC doesn't like, not the evil.

W was actually worse than trump's first term.

But that's only because W had far more competent people, it's like how Germany was severely handicapped in the war by Hitler always getting in the damn way.

This time I suspect he'd have better minions.

Are these Schrodinger's young people who simultaneously don't vote, but also single-handedly tip the entire election?

If every young person voted, the Republican party would collapse until it took a hard left turn. This is not a paradox.

If wishes were fishes we'd all be in the sea?

Germany's first time voters helped the far-right (Nazi) party AfD getting a lot of votes in the EU elections recently. AfD's TikTok game (with Russia's support) is very strong. Go figure.

It must be them ruskies! And the brainless, easily brainwashed young people's fault!
Seriously some of you need stop being tools and get a grip

If anything, lefties shouldn't be a single issue voter at all. They should be picking someone who might move toward that direction and have the chance to win, not abstaining.

As the famous word goes: Evil triumph when good men do nothing. You can't abstain or do protest vote and expect anything to change under Trump, that single issue you hold so important will get worst, or even impossible.

Well this "single issue" of land stealing, white supremacist subjugation of a people on their native land, ethnic cleansing and genocide, has only gotten worse with every election.

If we look at AIPAC they arent powerful because they influence who wins. They are powerful because they onfluence who looses.

That is why being pro genocide remains a staple of both parties policies. The only way to change that, is to punish the side that claims to not be pro genocide generally, so it has to become against genocide specifically.

And we had one year of trying to do that before the election, where people here and in othernplace vigorously defended being pro genocide, as challenging that before the election would be bad for the election.

We saw with Biden stepping down that challenging the dementia candidate was actually beneficial for the Democrats election chances, despite the same denial and backlash over pointing out Bidens failing mental capacities.

Now i am sure that these sentiments of immediately attacking people who wanted the Democrats to become a non genocide party when it was still possible to achieve that for the election, were stirred by AIPAC and other establishment actors, who would rather have Trump win than end genocide or get to meaningful progressive politics like proper healthcare and workers rights.

Most of what you say is exactly correct. The thing is, you have drawn a little outline of a box around this one situation, and allowed its glow to obscure all else outside the line.

Make the box bigger. Let the other issues that still count and effect people be inside the box.

Trans people need you to vote Harris, because they'll be in extermination camps under Trump. Women in Mississippi whose pregnancies are going to tragically go bad next year need you to save their lives by voting Harris, because Trump will put the final nail in the coffin on abortion. Plenty of people will go homeless under Trump who would have hung on with higher wages and monopoly busting under Harris.

Being a single issue voter is a luxury that assumes everything else is basically solid, so we can press the one issue extra hard and let the rest of the garden tend itself a bit.

We are in the exact opposite of that situation in the 2024 presidential election. Dont confuse the shittiness of the whole situation with relatively much much better choice of Harris over Trump.

Okay, sure, but let's say Trump win and you successfully punish Democrats, the results are...you also punished abortion right, people of colour, the lgbtq community, american with middle-eastern origin, worsening the immigrant deportation, and lastly, eliminating the chance of palestine-israel ceasefire and basically confirming the annexation of Gaza and West Bank. Isn't that the thing you most concerned with? And now the blood is on your hands too. That doesn't sounds like left-wing thinking to me at all.

I leave out a lot of thing, it's really up to you to figure out what you will lose. I'm not even from US and another Trump term will undoubtedly affect the world in one way or another.

So women needlessly dying of miscarriages and trans people getting locked up in camps is fine so long as the democrats are punished.

Mass deportations with sketchy legal grounds are also fine because the democrats will totally learn their lesson this time.

Wake the hell up. You’re only punishing innocent americans. The democrats will be FINE if trump wins.

Can't believe I missed you when I blocked all your little friends.

Why do people feel the need to publicly announce blocks?

Block me as well. Do not forget the blocking user ceremonial reply to my comment!

Ho Chi Minh knew all about America's long history of genocide and slavery.

When the time came to work with the American OSS to fight the Japanese he helped the Americans.

Any questions?

Yeah one question, what did America do to Vietnam after that?

What were the Japanese doing then?

Are you saying we should allow the genocide in Palestine to continue, and add suffering in America too?

Im saying using Vietnam as an example why working with the US is good is the stupidest idea I've ever heard.

In this video, I challenge the dismissive label of 'single-issue voting'. I break down how a focus on an issue like genocide reveals deeper political and moral stakes, rejecting the idea that elections are merely a choice between the 'lesser of two evils,' and offering my reasoning—and hope—for refusing to play the game.

It's all the fault of the Democrats. If they had run Bernie he would have been voted in and we wouldn't be here.

The fact that Bernie endorses Harris is meaningless, because he's not a real Socialist.

Things I've heard today on Lemm.ee

Ahaha, you had me terrified for a sec there.

Who on .ee are you seeing comments like this from?

I've never seen a fellow .ee like this. Curious to hear what communities it's on

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To be fair, Bernie would have won in 2016, and I do blame Clinton for Trump winning in the first place.

Didn’t stop me from voting for Harris though in an actually important election. Just glad it’s not Hillary i’m having to hold my nose over.

Biden got more votes in primaries than all the other candidates combined. That's kind of how popularity works.
People on the internet like to pretend that US has more progressives than it has, but all the statistics show that even the most popular progressive candidate can't get enough support to win primaries, so chances of him winning the general election were even more slim.
Unless that will change, best we can hope for is a competent centrist.

I've heard the "progressives" going on and on since high school. According to them the entire nation is a powder keg primed to blow up into glorious revolution any day now. Any day now...

I mean, they might be right but not for the reason they think and definitely not by the people we hope. "It could happen here" and all that

B-but Bernie is an independent and not in any party. Therefore the democrats can't really run him.

I voted for Obama, Clinton(at an empty polling place BTW), Biden, and will for Harris, all with no snap in my step and a funeral dirge in my heart, just so I can say I used what little power I have for harm reduction.

I'd rather not have fascist scapegoating along with our antisocial, rigged crony market capitalist economy we don't get a vote on sucking us dry as we struggle to subsist. We only get a vote on how to address the social issue symptoms of that economy, if at all, and who to blame, and sadly it's never the private shareholder class that should be.

Let's be clear , we're circling the drain. Inequality will continue to increase as greed induced climate change increases scarcity for the non wealthy masses, D or R, but at least with D, we won't arbitrarily point the finger at brown people and hit them with sticks. That's is the extent of our vote, whether to starve us or starve us while beating us.

We need a new constitution, one that punishes greed, with life imprisonment when applied to politics, and rewards prosocial activity. This country died under Reagan as anything more than a money printer for the tiny class of people that don't see you or as human, just resources to extract MOAR value from.

But since that won't happen, I'll do the right thing without hope in the face of Armageddon, harm reduction. A vote to leave the water pumps running on this sinking ship, nothing more.

I’ve had people telling me that I have “blood on [my] hands” because I’m voting for Harris. It’s insane. These people have no fucking concept.

If Harris wins, it will be by razor-thin margin. If she loses, trump wins. If trump wins, the genocide will get cranked up to 11. So voting 3rd party means even MORE “blood on my hands” than a Harris vote.

At least with Harris, there’s a CHANCE she can be reasoned with and stop the bloodshed.

These “Harris = genocide” people are liars, just trying to get trump elected - to sabotage this country.

Even if that 1 to 10 scale was in magnitudes (10^n), 11 would still be an understatement for what Donald Dump would encourage Israel and Russia to do.

There is a world where abstaining could be a reasonable approach. That world probably disappeared before I was born.

They aren't wrong. At least not in spirit. In a non-stupid system they'd be correct at every level.

Https://youtu.be/s7tWHJfhiyo

Until everybody in the conversation understands the contents of that video, you aren't at the point where you can have the conversation meaningfully. It changes the whole game.

And once they understand it, the remaining conversation may just be a mutual nod of understanding. First past the post is a third party killer, and not because the idiot populace lacks the will. The actual voting math itself is the problem, and ranked choice (or similar) solves the voting math problem in a way that third, fourth, fifth parties can exist and win, instead of debuffing allies and by so doing helping their enemies.

If Democrats really cared about beating Republicans, they would be fighting hard for ranked choice voting. Instead, their primary concern is setting up a scapegoat so they can blame "the left' if they lose.

This is the scapegoat I'll always remember:

Did the democratic party ever update their vetting process since she was elected?

Idk. Tbh for me this was a huge turning point of distrust. They had the power and couldn't get a $15 minimum passed. I've since kind of fallen down the "the system is working exactly as designed" rabbit hole. From where I am, I don't believe a vetting process will really help.

We all already understand how it works. Every single third party voter hears this stuff constantly, from literally everyone. It is impossible to not hear it while telling people you're voting third party, even if you tried as hard as you could to block it out.

Maybe someday you'll actually understand then.

Your little party literally cannot win at anything beyond the local level.

Has your third party run for any local positions? No? They only show up in presidential election years?

That tells us they are horrible people who know damn well that they're helping Trump.

I understand already. The problem is that none of you understand or have any interest in engaging with what third party voters actually believe or why we reject your arguments, you just want to repeat the same BS over and over in hopes that we fall in line.

The only people who are helping Trump are Trump voters, because that's how votes work.

That’s not how votes work. And I’m not going to explain it to you because EVERONE here already has. You have absolutely no intention to argue in good faith at this point.

In FPTP, any vote not for one, is an assist for the other. Period. End of story. Case closed. No more debate on it.

That you’re here to continue arguing with people illustrates that you’re not here to discuss it in good faith at all.

Therefore, I’d ask anyone reading along to just disregard this person as a bad faith actor and don’t engage with them any further on this.

So if I don't vote for Kamala, I'm voting for Trump. But hold on - by not voting for Trump, that's also a vote for Kamala! But I'm also voting for the person I actually voted for. Am I casting votes for three different candidates?

The way votes work is that they tally up all the people who *actually* voted for a candidate, and that number is higher than the people who *actually* voted for any particular other candidate, then that candidate wins. Third party votes do not get added to either candidate's vote total. So not voting for one is not an assist for the other. Period. End of story. Case Closed. No more debate about it.

What you believe doesn't matter. What reality is, and how it works, and what is on the line is what matters.

Here are two candidates, and you vetter like one of them, because that's all you get, otherwise we couldn't call ourself a "democracy" anymore.

The concept that voting for a third-party candidate is somehow "helping" one of the major party candidates is based on the assumption that the third-party candidate's voters would have otherwise voted for one of the major party candidates.

I mean, voting third party in America is functionally not voting. I'll absolutely shit on people for not voting.

It's worse than not voting. Because of the Spoiler Effect, voting 3rd party actually helps your least favorite major candidate.

No, it's based on the assumption that they *can otherwise* vote for one of the major party candidates, which is true.

In vacuum I agree. In the US electoral system voting for a third party is almost the same not voting at all, so it really doesn't matter if you vote for third party or you vote for nobody. My issue is that in the context of America voting third party makes no sense, especially this election. By voting third party you don't care who gets elected and it makes no sense to me because who goes "I don't really care if fascists come into power and start oppressing women and foreigners". Who the fuck is indifferent to fascism? Apparently third party voters.

I appreciate the effort but I'm not American. I simply follow American politics because sadly American politics impacts the rest of the world.

Nope, not how it works. You don't need all of them to vote for one of the major parties. It's often only a fraction. Florida 2000 final tally was less than 600 votes difference between Bush and Gore. Less than 1% of Nader's own 97k votes would have needed to flip, and we'd be talking about a very different country right now.

This also applies to a few other states in 2000 that had close votes. Florida wasn't the only story there, and no, neither was the Supreme Court.

Binary thinking strikes again.

But Palestine hurr Durr

You dumb fucks know how many more Palestine's there's gonna be if he gets in? You can kiss Ukraine goodbye, and probably hong kong too. This is nothing.

2016-2020 was the beta test. If this goes into production we're all fucked.

I echo the sentiment (regarding Trump being a much, much worse outcome), but you can already "Kiss Hong Kong goodbye". It's part of China, they have cracked down, and the two systems has been reduced to like 1.5 systems ahead of schedule.

I am genuinely curious what you think either presidential candidate would do about this, considering they will continue to espouse the One China policy. Where they might differ is in their support of Taiwan, whose status is much more murky.

Hong Kong though? Pretty sure that ship sailed once the UN decided: no Empire no longer, and the 99 year lease came to an end.

Lol, yeah this makes more sense. Thanks for clarifying 😅

Nah china already has that under control with their summer camps and organ harvesting

You dumb fucks know how many more Palestine’s there’s gonna be if he gets in?

It seems like such a basic concept; trump means more dead Palestinians. How can someone simultaneously claim to support Palestinians and advocate for more dead Palestinians?

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Advocating against voting for Democrats, no matter what the particular language, is advocating for actions that will increase the chances of Trump getting elected, of Republicans having majorities and of Israel's further escalation in Palestine, in addition to all the other bad things Republicans will do.

The time to move Democrats on the issues is not now. Those times were during the primaries (in which I voted uncommitted on the presidential level and for pro-palestinian candidates on other levels) and after the election through things like lobbying.

If there are particular third-party candidates who have any reasonable chance of winning rather than being a spoiler (I don't know of any), it's reasonable to advocate to their electorate that one vote for them instead of the Democratic candidate. However, if one supports Palestinians and opposes genocide, the best vote in the presidential election and in most national or state elections on November 5 is for the Democratic candidate. That's not a "vote blue no matter who" opinion or an "all you need to do is vote for the Dems" opinion. It's harm reduction in the short term so that we can ensure that there actually are medium and long terms for as many people as possible.

You dumb fucks know how many more Palestine’s there’s gonna be if he gets in? You can kiss Ukraine goodbye, and probably hong kong too. This is nothing.

Tankies would love that, though.

I haven’t done the math. Assuming full support, is there a 3rd party candidate on the ballot in enough states to actually win?

The last time a 3rd party candidate had an actual shot (and it was a looooong shot at best) was in 1992 when Ross Perot ran. He split the R vote badly enough that it handed the election to Clinton.

So long as we're using first past the post a 3rd party candidate has a vanishingly small chance of doing anything other than helping elect the opposition.

And the lesson the Republican Party learned from that was to support the Greens—or any vaguely left party—hard.

Yes, I was there and that’s not what I was asking.

Admittedly, watching PR play out across the rest of the world kinda scares me. Israel is paralyzed into a destructive war because the ruling party is in a coalition with a few crazy extremists who will bring down the government (and thus expose Netenyahu to criminal trial) if their increasingly wild demands aren't met. Germany's having a clusterfuck of a time etc.

While there would be different parties, imagine the horribleness of a PR system right now in America. You could easily see a scenario where RFK acts as kingmaker and gets to demand whatever from trump or Harris. Given that trump would sell his children (maybe sub Melania for Ivanka) for the presidency, who knows what insanity would ensue? And there would be no real mechanism between the election and the next one to reign them in.

I didn't think there was anything scarier than a trump presidency until thinking that one through. Uggggh.

Nope. The Green party's got their candidate on the most states' ballots, and they only managed to get 38 states. Granted, it's still mathematically possible, considering the threshold is 270 votes, and the states that have Stein on the ballot comprise 440 votes... but still. Would be incredibly, almost impossibly difficult.

It doesn't even matter whether or not the Green party is technically able to win. As long as America has this first-past-the-post voting system, people will have to tactically vote for Democrats, because otherwise the Republicans will win. To stop the current duopoly, there needs to be an electoral reform first. It's probably nearly impossible to get that through but there's no other way.

If it's "probably impossible" then can you explain why Alaska and Maine have already been successful implementing electoral reform? Why are several states working towards getting rid of First Past The Post voting right now?

It's not impossible. This reform is possible at the state level. We don't need an act of God from congress to make this happen. It's already happening, and it can happen in your state to!

yes of course it's possible at state level, but it's the federal level that's hard

Stein and Oliver both do, though that's certainly not going to make a difference in their actual chances

No. Because even if they carried 100% of the vote in a state, the delegates can and most likely would just cast their votes for one of the major parties.

Do you mean the electors? Delegates are part of the nomination process, not the general election. The electors for a party are chosen by that party, then the voters cast votes for the electors. It's unlikely that electors pledged to third parties would be faithless, as they probably deeply identify with the party ideals.

I cringe every time I see this come up.

Because it isn't what you actually mean, and the horrible logic of it makes it easy for the Lemmy Lefties to dunk on.

Of course a 3rd party vote isn't a vote for Trump any more than it is a vote for Kamala.

What it *actually is* is a discarded opportunity to vote *against* Trump. Which is also dispicable, but actually accurate.

Everyone knows that's what you mean by this, but the Lemmy Lefties will play dumb and latch onto that logical fallacy every time.

It's the trolley problem again. This time, you have 3 tracks and 2 switches. The trolley is headed towards 5 people, one switch sends it to 1 person, and the other switch would send it to 0 people, but it's broken. Voting third party is pulling the broken switch, knowing the 5 people will die but you've shifted the responsibility from yourself to whoever was supposed to fix the switch.

Excellent analogy. If anyone still plays dumb after reading this, they probably are

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I like your analogy. Let me expand.

This same situation happens every day. For years now, 1 person has died every day. Nobody pulls the broken lever, but if people started pulling it, it would start working. For the first couple days or weeks, 5 people would die each time, but eventually we would be able to get the train on a safe track.

The whole post is an example of a propaganda technique where you keep repeating one thing over and over until it becomes a default thing where people don't even question the logic.

The ones capable of refuting it feel tired because of the sheer number of posts while the vulnerable ones get affected.

Today both sides "feel" that the use of this propaganda is fair game cuz the other side is already doing it.

I really like your take on this. So how is the switch going to get fixed, when the only time anyone pays attention to the fact that it's broken, is when lives are on the line?

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Why do neoliberals bring up the trolley problem as if it is some settled debate among scholars that there is one clear possible answer?

I'm not a neoliberal, I'm a socialist. I'm just not an idiot who will give a fascist free rein just because his opponent has the same shitty foreign policy as every politician in the whole fucking country has. There is a difference between the status-quo level of bad and catastrophic.

Harris supporters on Lemmy have called for me to be put in a concentration camp.

*Harris supporters with violence fantasies:
https://lemm.ee/post/45695948/15722267

Your fears of fascism are ignorant of the capacity that Democrats exhibit.

Harris supporters on Lemmy have called for me to be put in a concentration camp.

Yah, I'll take "Things that didn't happen" for a thousand, Alex. Let me guess, they did the "you're going to be the most _ person in the camps" joke and you took offense to the harsh, practical truth of it, so rather than reconsider whatever performative BS you were trying to use to justify voting against a clear and present danger, you decided to do exactly what the right does, and spin natural consequences and hurt feelings to make yourself a *victim*.

edit: I was absolutely right, 100% accurate. Lets just ignore the clowns, shit's too serious out there to fuck around with this performative BS.

Harris supporters on Lemmy have called for me to be put in a concentration camp.

Lol no they haven't.

Edit: I think my point was too subtle. What I meant was that it seems like lefties will bicker and infight rather than focusing on the bigger enemy first, until that enemy manages to seize power and it's too late. We'll be "united" in that we'll be executed together.


Sometimes, I wonder if a Trump victory would be the only way to get the various leftist factions to stop arguing and stand together, side by side, united in the fact that fascists don't care what flavour of ideological opposition they're executing.

Who gives a shit about whether the Trolley Problem is settled - it's about your answer: Which option do you endorse?

It didn’t in 2016. I wouldn’t expect it to be different now.

Eh, he didn't quite have the same "desperate christofascist enabler" vibe back then

We had a Trump victory once. Spoiler: it didn't unite the factions.

I didn't mean "unite" in the sense of "we'll work together" so much as "if he manages to pull off his idol's stunt and execute his opponents, we'll all die together"

Some people say this out of desperation about the french left : what if we had five years of Le Pen, wouldn't that consolidate the left? Well, perhaps. Should we try something else first? Probably

Yeah, that was actually my point, but it was phrased poorly: Trump talks about sending the military against citizens. If he gets his way, we'll stand sideby side - in front of the firing squads.

As a center-leftist supporting third party candidates (Go Claudia de la Cruz!), no a Trump victory won't unite the left, because a Trump victory won't make me like the Democrats more than I do now. If the Democrats want my vote, they will have to start appealing to me as a voter (stop supporting Israels war, reduce military spending, etc)- but the Democrats don't have these policies and a Trump victory won't change that.

Tl;dr a Trump victory changes nothing for my stance as a third party supporter

You missed my point. If Trump manages to pull off what he literally and explicitly endorses, we'll land in the same grave together and be united that way. He has praised Hitler. You know, the guy who used a fire to suspend civil rights and persecute political opponents.

Support progressive politics in local elections, but right now, damage control is the strategic option.

Put differently, is "protect civil rights" not an issue on your ballot?

The trolley problem isn't "settled debate" for the same reasons that Kamala vs Trump isn't "settled debate".

The point of the trolley problem and why it's analogous is that it's coming up fast and you *must* choose to either pull that lever or not. Whichever choice you make, that's the moral character you've chosen to exhibit.

What is the moral character of someone incapable of questioning the validity of orphan crushing trolleys?

Imagine being able to walk and chew gum at the same time!

They loved Bernie and praised him to the skies.

Then he endorsed Biden and Harris.

Now he's a 'sheepdog' that rounds up people to be slaughtered.

That's a new one, what are you referring to by him being a sheepdog?

Edit: Funny people on here and reddit just downvote people instead of replying when they post incorrect information and get asked about it

I saw "sheepdog" for the first time yesterday. As I stated in my first comment, I take it to mean that he's rounding up sheep to be slaughtered.

To me, expecting any candidate to be perfect is silly.

I like NYC Mayor Ed Koch's line. "If you agree with me 51% of the time, vote for me. If you agree with me 100% of the time, see a psychiatrist."

If nobody votes 3rd party then we'll never have a 3rd party candidate that matters.

It's like bicycle infrastructure. Nobody wants to ride bikes on a highway, but you won't see bike riders until there's a trail somewhere for them to ride on. You can say it never matters and that there aren't any cyclists out there, but you're wrong. I think there's a lot of Americans looking for another party right now.

Under FPTP, we'll never have a 3rd party candidate that matters.

The 2-party system is a direct, mathematical result of FPTP + time.

Not everyone lives in a swing state where votes actually matter.

I think we have the best chance to break the third party at the local level.

Do you know what will definitely NOT help get rid of the electoral college? People wasting their votes on 3rd party spoilers

Do you know what would MORE LIKELY move people to demand the elimination of the electoral college? Harris getting 10 million+ more votes, and Trump either winning the electoral college or attempting a coup based on lies because a swing state was close.

The more votes Harris gets, the clearer the will of the people, the harder it is to pretend there was voter fraud.

"You have to vote for a candidate that refuses to represent you so that people who don't care about the will of the people will think that you support that candidate." is a new one.

What a bold and bizarre claim to think there is any winning margin that would repel suspicions.

If Harris wants liberal votes, why is she courting Republicans?

I must have missed that footnote in their rhetoric.

Come on, guy.

I'm not your guy, buddy!

Hey, not only am i your buddy, I'm also your fwiend, guy.

Check my history. Vote third party if you don't live in a swing state is *literally* what I have been saying.

Ex https://lemmy.ml/post/21262971, https://lemmy.ml/comment/14519387

Good. Tell your Lemmy Lefty buddies to do the same.

By definition, most people do not live in swing states.

Disclaimers and footnotes are irrelevant.

Thank goodness not enough people in “safe” states think that way.

They use the same logic of people in swing states??

You sure seem to have every excuse in the book, don’t you?

No one is buying the bullshit you have for sale.

The Dems are running on Trump's 2020 platform. Build the wall. Lock up immigrants. Both parties are far-right shitholes, and it's time people started realizing that.

The Dems in 2028 will be calling for mass deportations.

^ This right here. Exactly my point. They are going to keep telling you Kamala and Trump are the same so you spoil your chance to prevent Trump from taking office again.

They are not subtle, and they do not care about the fallout of a Trump reelection. They are privileged enough that it won't affect them or their loved ones. It's despicable.

This went so far past just being wrong that it might just end up creating an entirely new paradigm of stupidity.

shortsightedness is a stubborn affliction

I imagine that folks on both sides believe this comment is about the other one.

I wish that more people could see that there aren't two sides. Neither side is on your side, nobody is on your side, and you can think you're on their side but it just doesn't work that way.

Good point. Same goes for fake news.
Let's address the fear and anger on both sides first, only then we can get some facts in.

What other side? America is a one-party country with a republican cancer metastasizing.

Reason for deletion: "Misleading name for a theory"

What does this even mean? I just quoted "Duverger's Law" which is could be proved multiple times in plurality voting systems, especially in 2016 and 2020 in the US.

Also: David MF Duke from the MF KKK endorsed Jill Stein. Now go and ban me if you want.

Wait, so they're saying "Duverger's Law" is really just a theory? That's not quite as dumb as calling evolution "just a theory", but it's up there.

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Is it really censorship when you're a troll evading about 30 bans now, antiyanks?

Yankies, I swear to fucking god - don't you fucking dare.

all they have to do is point out that they don't live in a swing state and that's it, there's nothing else to say, they just made a strong case and you have no rebuttal

lol

There's tons to say.

Well, not tons, but a solid-ass rebuttal.

Those states do matter. They only "don't matter" because everybody in them has historically done and is predicted to do a certain thing. If enough people learn of that prediction, become unmotivated, and don't do that thing anymore, then those states become swing states which could swing the other way. It's not guaranteed to always be the way it's been.

"Blue state" and "red state" aren't unchanging aspects of the geography, they're the actions of individuals as seen from an aerial view.

Strongholds fall, and the commanders who act like theirs never could have a way of not writing history.

Strongholds fall, and the commanders who act like theirs never could have a way of not writing history.

And yet, this logic doesn't apply to unseating the existing parties, for some reason. If Illinois could eventually turn red, then it follows that it could eventually turn green. In either case, it's just a matter of "enough people" changing their behavior.

New parties have to get big at local levels first before shooting for the stars

The difference between red and blue is often about 5-10 percentage points. But if you're up 5, that means your opponent is down 5. Because it still has to add up to 100.

To turn a state green, that party would have to be up at least 50%.

You see how that's a problem, right?

But while Green is pushing ahead, where do you think those votes are coming from?

If the Greens pick up 5% of the vote, they need to take those votes from someone, and that's most likely the Dems. Now they have 45% of the vote, because percentages still have to add up to 100, the Republicans have 50%, and handily win the election.

For greens to replace, most likely the democrats, would involve the left loosing every election for about a decade or two. Just completely having no voice in government.

You see what parties don't switch like that right? No, the party has to collapse, and then a replacement has to step in.

And in order for a party to collapse, it needs to be a coalition party. Like the Whigs. https://www.history.com/news/whig-party-collapse

Something that is unlikely to happen to a modern party.

Thus the only way for the greens to gain power is to change the voting system. Real voting reform needs either Approval or STAR as the voting system. (there are a few more, like Ranked Robin, but the main point is that it needs to be a cardinal voting system.)

The Green party under Jill Stein mildly supports RCV, a system that deeply flawed and will not actually fix things.

I see you understand the flaws of First past the post voting quite well. We definitely need people like you to help fix how we vote so you don't have to have this conversation over and over every 2 years.

Swing by my ask lemmy Post to discuss your post election commitment to replace FPTP voting in your state. Appreciate your time either way. Peace.

If the democrats started losing every election because of the greens, then I expect what would happen is that they'd start supporting voting reform, and if that happened, I'd be willing to vote for them so that they can implement it. But currently, while there are a handful who do, they are incentivized not to support it, since FPTP benefits them.

het.jpg

I already voted for Harris. No need to discus this any further.

Like this?

I live in a swing state, and a frightening number of my friends are refusing to vote or voting 3rd party. When pressed if they truly felt that there would be no difference in their lives or the world between Harris or Trump, they just double down on regurgitated excuses and bury their heads in the sand. I really don't get it.

Lol they're big mad about this one but it's true. Next they're gonna go blame the left in states that voted for Kamala for her loss.

Well in that case it's not really relevant.

Right right and many of the posts that we've seen here over the past 3 months forget about that key point, which is just an insult to the majority of voters in the United States.

And that's how the Democrats can lose political support. That's how they can alienate potential allies.

Just make sure it does work, this plan.. The world doesn't want Trump back...

What bothers me about the people taking the bit of time and effort to go vote for 3rd parties is that there's really no point to it. Making sure your own vote doesn't matter is insane to me when voting isn't mandatory. They could've just done nothing and achieved the same outcome.

Why are you encouraging people not to vote?

tbf if you don't live in a swing state, your vote doesn't really matter either way

They only be a statistical footnote that almost nobody will notice.

Even if a notable number of people voted 3rd party, they're still going to be treated the same as those who didn't vote at all, because in a practical sense, thats what they are.

Why are you encouraging people not to vote?

Edit: sorry I thought you were a different poster. I am not trying to spam you multiple times

Any time you vote for a candidate that loses, this is the case. And of your preferred candidate wins in a landslide, every extra vote they didn't need might as well have been blank.

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Brother, I'm voting *against* the party with the absolutely insane and oppressive *declared policies*. What are you talking about?

I'm happy for those people who have enough privilege to sit this election out; but to even try and imply that the two dominant parties are even similar is an insult when only one of them wants to fucking kill me.

There is plenty of black and arab people, who are at an immediate threat by Trump too. But if it becomes normal to murder them abroad it is also easier for it to become normal at home.

Trump and his followers are the ones fostering hate and resentment though. America needs a break from that jackass.

This is only true under a better voting system than first past the post. In first past the post, you've got a dumbass set of broken game rules where once two parties get big enough, they become the main and only characters, and all third parties can do is debuff one of them so the other one wins.

It's such a reliable thing that the two parties often try to *fund* third parties the other party's voters will like.

Obligate games blow ass.

Yo dude.

Worried about malicious interest groups funding 3rd parties? When we pass state level electoral reform, people would be able to vote how they wish, secure in the knowledge that their vote would still be counted should their number 1 preference not win.

I encourage you stop by my ask lemmy Post to discuss your post election commitment to replace FPTP voting in your state.

Then we wouldn't have to worry about buffs or debuffs at all.

Sounds like you're very concerned with the spoiler effect that is inherent with First Past The Post voting.

Feel free to stop by my ask lemmy Post to discuss your post election commitment to replace FPTP voting in your state.

Edit: whew this comment section sure was a trip. You blue conservatives are some of the most terrible people I've had the pleasure of talking with. You are just awful people, and I am ashamed of sharing a country with you.

Blue MAGA indeed.

I was really frustrated with my state legislature in Oregon. They put ranked choice on the ballot this year, but it was poorly written. These things are hard to revisit once passed, so I eventually decided to vote it down. Hopefully they'll put it on in 2 or 4 years, but better written.

I don't need any mental gymnastics or long winded explanation. Both of the major party candidates have parts of their platform that are deal breakers for me. So, I will exercise my right to vote for someone that more aligns with my values.

You very much do have the right to do that, as you should. And you don’t have to justify it for any reason.

But IF you have a preference between the R and D candidates, and somebody points out that you mathematically helped the one you dislike by voting third party or staying home, they are still correct. It’s not any kind of moral or ethical thing on its own; it’s just a side effect of how our voting system is designed.

I don't understand how it's not a moral or ethical thing. Morals and ethics literally define which policy you vote for and mathematically helping or being neutral to the side you know will do things worse for your morals I feel like is pretty directly connected.

Don't get me wrong, I sympathize. My preferred candidate has done some bad things but it's not even close to how bad the other candidate is. If the two candidates were Hitler and mecha Hitler like I'm not gonna be happy but I'm voting for the less bad of the two. Third parties are just not mathematically viable

Also vote shaming is like peak democracy. You have a right to disagree with me and vote however you like. I'm not trying to take that away from people voting third party but I also have a right to complain about it

I meant that pointing out that you’re helping the person you don’t like isn’t a judgment call or an insult or anything. It’s just describing the mechanics of the system, whether you prefer the good guy or the bad guy.

Your actual vote choice is chock full of morals and ethics though!

Ethics and morals are a murky thing. Simon de Beauvoir wrote a whole book called *The Ethics of Ambiguity* on it and everything. Wouldn't it also be unethical for me to vote against my own conscious?

It's objectively false to say that you "mathematically helped the one you dislike." If you remove a third party voter from existence, then both major parties receive the same number of votes and have the same chance to win. What you mean to say is that third party votes pass on an opportunity to help/hinder the candidate the voter prefers more/less.

Man…

How many people are you going to get wrecked by before you stop? I’m seriously embarrassed for you.

You have no logical point to make here. And it’s been pointed out to you to the point that you HAVE to be trolling. There’s no other reason for someone to be this stupid unless it’s purely intentional.

This is dumb. Both candidates are trash but a Harris presidency is way more preferable to a Trump presidency. But you do you

In a different voting system that would be true, and if you don't have the somewhat obscure and technical piece of voting knowledge that this video explains *really* well, there's no reason not to think that:

Https://youtu.be/s7tWHJfhiyo

Once you understand that the dumb is baked into the voting math itself, "too dumb to vote third party" clarifies into "first past the post is shit", and the solution becomes pushing like hell for ranked choice voting, single transferable vote, alternative vote, etc. Stopping the fourth reich is an implied portion of that process, as a way of preserving voting itself.

Make sure to watch that video because you're thinking correctly, just without factoring in one key game piece that there's no reason for you to have heard of, one that kind of flips the while thing around.

I will say, the voting system that we advocate for is important.

There are three common choices. RCV, Approval, and STAR.

RCV has some momentum, but is just a bad voting system. It's arguably worse than Fist Past the Post, because in a way, it is FPtP. Or rather, it's several FPtP elections in a row, dropping the lowest each time.

Which is where a problem creeps in. See, it's drop lowest, and then never hear from that person again. So if they are the literal second choice of 99% of voters, they're dropped in the first round and never seen again.

This leads to ballots that look like this;

1 - dropped in 4th round
2- dropped in 1st round
3- dropped in 2nd round
4- dropped in 3rd round
5- Guy you kind of hate and only listed because the rules said you had to list 5. He's the one who got your vote.

If you had dropped your first choice, Your second through third might have won.

There's also a version of the above ballot that doesn't have a number 5, in that case your ballot is just thrown out as exhausted. Up to 18% of ballots get thrown out as exhausted. At least that's what the data from California and Maine has said.

Most countries that use IRV (RCV's real name) don't publish any election data, so we use what we've got.

Anyway, Approval and STAR are both immune to shit like the above, because how you rate one candidate has zero bearing on how you rate another. Woo for cardinal voting systems.

This article helped me understand the advantages of STAR. Hope it helps someone else.

That and the fact that it's legally impossible for one to win the presidency, yeah.

I love the "You should just vote in the primaries" Democrats, who didn't even blink back in 2020 when Chris Matthews was on national television screaming that Bernie Sanders supporters were going to drag him into Central Park and shoot him.

This is the state of modern American politics. Republicans are told that they need to vote for the most reactionary, fascist, fringe candidate or they'll be murdered by migrants. Democrats are told that they need to vote for the most centrist corporate shill in the Senate or they'll be invaded by Russia.

Everything is fearmongering all the time. Nobody even talks about policy anymore.

Every 4 years, hundreds of millions of people set their conscience to the side and continue to vote for the thing they'll complain about until the next time, when they do it all again.

Voting/Electoral Fetishism replaces actual political action:

Issues, policies, and outcomes are all carefully manufactured and managed by a small number of power elites. The media, political parties, security forces (psych-ops), even the mafia and intellectual and artistic elites all work together to shape a *political simulacrum within which our limited discourses and actions circulate.* source

It's pretty simple actually, I'm not voting for him.

No one said you’re voting for him, but not voting against him is absolutely enabling him while simultaneously saying that you’re completely fine with either outcome.

Come on man… read the rules.

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Only in the sense that I am "enabling" every single event happening in the world right now.

Yeah. I’m not arguing with your sarcasm. Have a good day.

"The only thing necessary for evil to triumph in the world is that good men do nothing." But hey, I'm sure those good men felt the same way you do.

That quote is such a funny thing. My mom once quoted it to me as a reason to support the Iraq War. I didn't even know how to respond to that because it was so completely backwards. The way I saw it, the invasion of Iraq *was* evil triumphing because good people did nothing to stop it.

That's how I feel about you saying it to me now. Evil is triumphing in Gaza precisely because people aren't willing to take a stand on it.

The Iraq war protests were *huge*. But the protests didnt matter.

Ahhh yes, the oh so helpful stand of not voting for a party that could win.

Like, you do understand that Harris likely means fewer dead Palestinians than trump, yes? This isn't complicated.

Harris is vice president. There's a genocide ongoing under her and Biden's approval. End of the story. She has also repeatedly expressed her lack of will to change the current situation.

Ahhh yes, as VP she shouls strike out and create her own foreign policy while under another administration!

The irony is I don't imagine you understand how ridiculously silly that statement was.

Though I'm curious how helping trump will somehow help the Palestineans.

I understand your feelings, and sometimes I feel the same way. But what you didn't tell us is the steps you've taken to make life better for people in Palestine and neighboring countries who are dying now.

If you want to argue that Harris is the lesser of two evils and that you're also working to prevent her from being as evil as she has been in the past, you actually have to say that. Or don't say it, and we'll assume that you're doing nothing because you don't care, and the future is going to be just like the past, which is not acceptable.

I don't feel the need to get into a pissing contest over who is doing more. Nor do I think it's particularly helpful to demand everyone live like I do. That being said, if you are curious:

I have taken a 25 or 35% pay cut (40 if the last headhunter is to be believed) so I can work for a non profit and get underprivileged kids a post secondary education, haven't bought sweatshop clothes in a decade etc. I door knock for every election for the party furthest left that can win. I'm Canadian and relatively support my Leftist party's positions but generally write in where possible.

Were I American, I'd be door knocking, volunteering and everything else for every damned primary as that's how we move things.

I don't believe in the ideology of lesser evilism. The refusal to hold politicians to any sort of standard whatsoever is a part of why we're in this situation in the first place.

I don’t believe in the ideology of lesser evilism

That's a very easy view to hold when you aren't one of the Palestinians who will die because of people like you making the same choice.

Small comfort to the people whom you pretend to care about.

I am doing something. I'm voting for the issues at my doorstep. I have a gay child, and a non-binary child. I have another that is autistic.

If Trump wins, there's a non-zero chance that my children will be in danger.

I'm also an advocate for the homeless (don't correct me. I used to be homeless, and we hate "unhoused"),.

I advocate for foster youth, a sector no politician cares about.

All you do is complain about one issue. There's scores of issues. Jill Stein isn't happening. Vote in reality, and for reproductive rights, non-cis rights, rights for the homeless, and for someone that will actually win.

I won't say a vote for Jill is a vote for Trump.

A vote for Jill is the same as not voting. I tell people that didn't vote "you don't vote, you don't have a right to bitch"

I respect your decision. But I'm not going to do the same. If Palestinians can be sacrificed today, I can be sacrificed tomorrow. If a line cannot be drawn somewhere, then we will all be fucked, and this is where I have drawn mine.

That's your decision. In my opinion, it means your not voting. Your line helps nobody.

Does everyone see how this person offers nothing but contrarian nonsense disguised as ethics lessons?

Please call them out and move on. Don’t waste time on this.

Right, because Trump is pro Palestine. Why don't you do something that will actually help. And I'm not talking about voting...

If you had to vote for Trump or Kamala, which would you choose?

Don’t waste your time with this person. They’re only interested in giving smug ethics lessons that don’t even apply to the situation. Maybe it makes them feel superior to everyone? Who knows, but it’s a waste of time either way.

Trust me, I'm well aware of Objection.

I wouldn't. I'd stay home.

Not an option in this hypothetical.

Can you answer the simple question?

Why isn't it an option in this hypothetical? Is there a gun to my head?

I guess I'd either try to spoil my ballot, or just sit there with the pen in my hand until they either shoot me or leave me alone.

Again, the question is Kamala or Trump, no other options.

Can you answer this very simple question?

I was going to have a witty exchange with you and have an example of what you're doing, but frankly I'm tired.

I'm tired of everything about you people.

So, I'm just going to block you.

Why do people feel the need to publicly announce blocks?

Block me as well. Don't forget to chant the blocking user hymn in a reply to me!

Apparently not voting for the Diet Fascist party means you automatically voted for the Fascist party. The mental gymnastics of these election meme spammers are wild to behold.

Remember, voting is not the same as support. But also, voting third party is supporting Trump.

Voting third party, or not voting, is choosing inaction. It's still a choice. The basic trolley problem of the trolley will kill 10 people if you don't pull the lever but 1 if you do is analogous to this. Choosing to not divert the trolley is still a choice. However, you're not culpable for the fact that people are tied to the rails in general. You're only accountable for the thing you had power over.

We don't have the ability to have a third candidate elected, or to change the candidates who are running. We can only elect one of the two. It's really very simple. It's the absolute *basic* thing you'll learn in probably the first day of an ethics course. If you can't understand the bare minimum, we'll I don't know what to say except that I'm sorry. It is pretty weird to argue you have the moral high ground *and* to struggle with basic ethics though.

Edit to add: There are also other actions you can take outside of voting to try to change opinion and create action that agrees with you. Do those. However, I *promise* one of the two candidates will never listen to you, and most likely will make it hard to impossible to take these other actions.

Ah yes, the first day in ethics they tell you how the Trolley Problem famously has one objective answer that everyone agrees with. You have clearly, definitely attended an ethics class.

Dunning-Kruger in full effect here.

Dude… your spend all day smearing the walls of lemmy with pseudo-intellectual rhetoric! How can you sit there all smug and sarcastically accuse others of attending an ethics class.

In five days, Everyone knows you are going to vanish from here. Frankly, I’m amazed anyone is taking you seriously at all.

The trolley problem famously has a near infinite number of variations to tease out people's ethical boundaries. The first basic one is the starting point. It's a point pretty much everyone agrees on. Theoretically you could disagree, but I've never seen it. Everyone almost always understands that more people dying is bad, and that pulling a lever is a minimal action that you should feel obligated to pull if it saves lives.

The variation where you push someone onto the tracks to stop the trolley? There are lots of disagreements about that, because you're actively killing someone to save lives. That's not so with the lever.

Edit to add: Yes, I have taken ethics courses. I had a professor who was in the CIA, which led to some *interesting* discussions of ethics, as I'm sure you can imagine.

well, we are all indeed aware of your ignorant idiocy so you have succeeded there

You gotta hand it to the conservatives. Even if Trump loses, they were successful in pushing the Democrats further to the right. Imagine arguing that the genocide they're aiding and abetting is the least evil choice.

If you're not in a swing state, and Harris is going to win your state easily, it's fine to vote for a third party. If there's even a slim chance she is going to lose your state, you can't justify it. Harm reduction, guys.

As a Californian I'd have agreed with you except I think even a vote here signals something we need: the dire need to get rid of the electrical college. If Harris wins the national popular vote 60-40, it's even more obvious how busted it is. She wins Senate and House? You might see change. At least, as likely as a 60-40 win, lol.

That said, let's be honest, Green hasn't deserved a vote in decades. I really wish they'd try smaller races they could win and build momentum.

Sending an electoral college message is a decent argument. I'm not persuaded about the house and senate argument though. In my case, I may not vote for Harris, because as somebody from Washington, she's not gonna lose Washington. But I'm voting for a bunch of downballot Dems because they're better progressives on a bunch of issues that Harris is not a good on. If it were even within fifteen points in Washington I'd vote for her, but I don't want to vote for genocide if I don't have to.

It helps I don't see it as a pro-genecide vote, I guess. It sucks you can't that pride in casting a vote for someone who seems like a genuinely good candidate on many other issues. Not that the situation in Gaza isn't genecide, but that it's probably not as easy as people think to wane ourselves off Israeli support. After all, Harris is clearly very calculated and rational in her stances and it's clearly better calculus to disavow Israel *unless* there's something we don't know. I trust her to try and make the choice that leads to less death.

If I had to guess, Iran probably scares those in the know and Israel is being used as a counter measure. Recent escalation suggests as much. After Iraq, we don't exactly have a lot of support in the region and after Trump tanked our deals with Iran, they probably have nukes by now or are damn near close. But that's just a guess.

Of course, I'm not trying to sway you, an inconsequential voter. Just, it seems unfair to assume anyone supporting Harris is somehow pro-genecide. Hell, my number one issue is education and that's not even on the board!

an active genocider running with the policy of continuing it getting 60% of popular vote will be the most shameful thing in our history.

Even in your hypothetical, Trump getting ~40% of the popular vote in that scenario is more shameful.

No. Your vote still counts. Don't throw it away on a third party "just because.".

Vote third party in your local elections, where they actually can do something. Get them into the system. Do not waste it on a zero chance presidential election.

got invited to a 2016 watch party my a political junky friend. room full of people talking about how awesome it was that hillary would just win so they got to pick their dream 3rd party and make a statement with their vote. i didn't even stay to watch my state get called. they were crushed by the realization that so many people were in fact exactly who they'd said they are. couldnt watch them experiance that, couldn't find any sympathy to offer them.

Those people didn't even look at a poll (which were actually fairly accurate that year)? They didn't even check to see if Hillary was within ten points of losing their state (a greater margin of error than any modern polling miss)? That's on them. That's not what I'm advocating here.

they did though? this wasnt a room full of people still amped up becauee they'd just learned about the spanish civil war, or that anarchism isnt random acts of chaos. the party i attended was a room full of people who understood the electoral college well enough to make their own bingo style drinking game from it. we all got printed game sheets when we arrived. people who'd not voted for nader because they knew the price of that. everybody though the corpo democrats would show up. they thought a lot of republicans would vote for the overqualified lady who didnt smile enough inside that private voting booth when none of their friends could see. they all thought we were done with the klan until they watched an actual klansman winning. the fucking klansman is right there running again, we already watch how this thing goes.

Voting for the Dems, a centrist party, in a non swing state, IS throwing your vote away. It will not make a difference and you're not expressing who you really support. The point of voting is (in order) to (1) reduce the terrible shit that's happening in our country and (2) to express your political preferences. If you're in a swing state you cannot do (1) by voting, and if you vote for the Dems you cannot do (2), assuming you're not a shitty centrist.

If it's meaningless, it's meaningless either way.

The important fact here is that strongholds can, in fact, fall. Especially when people stop guarding it because it never fell.

There is no such thing as "not a swing state" in this election. Take it from me, a Georgian: in 2020, my state wasn't a swing state until all of a sudden it was. If people here took your advice, the Democrats would've lost the Senate that year.

I'm in Washington. The Dems are not losing Washington. You're in Georgia. The Dems stand a good chance of losing Georgia. That's the difference.

I think people forget what it's like to not live in a swing state. I haven't seen an ad for a presidential candidate all year.

I voted Stein in Georgia. My vote never belonged to Harris, so me not voting for her has taken nothing away.

Maybe stop assuming people will vote for candidates, and start earning those votes.

Unfortunately, the US's winner-takes-all voting system makes it so that your (entirely reasonable and otherwise simply correct) mindset leads to what's called the Spoiler Effect, where a third party vote actually just ends up helping your least favorites. Because of this, the winner-takes-all system inevitably leads to two dominant parties, and being forced to vote for the shiniest of two turds. To fix this, we just need a different voting system. I'm partial to approval voting, but more likely that'd be ranked choice.

I think the confusion here is that Harris voters, even the reluctant ones, see her as an acceptable alternative to Trump. But I don’t. Both of them are so completely unacceptable options for me.

Imagine the election were between Donald Trump and Rudy Giuliani. Or Hitler vs Mussolini. Or whatever match up would finally make you say, ‘I can’t possibly support either of these hideous fucks.’ I’m already there with Harris vs Trump.

I’ve seen so many thousands of images and videos this year of children torn to shreds in Gaza. I just can’t fucking do it.

There isn't a third option.

You get the neoliberal that will be broadly disappointing, and likely perpetuate the situation in Palestine, or you get the open fascist that will make everything far worse - including Palestine, and potentially end US democracy. Both are bad, there's a yawning chasm of difference between the two.

Your spectacularly priveliged abstaineousness and the false equivalence you're drawing (even on the single issue you've pointed to) in such a critical swing state is cripplingly naiive, and gambles with the lives of who knows how many Palestinians, Ukrainians, and Americans. To sit back and vote for a Russian asset in this context is frankly disgusting.

There are 1,458 days of the election cycle to push for better - there's only one for keeping the fascists out of power, and you chose not to.

Are we re-using the “we’ll push Biden left” lie again? How’d that work out?

It’s your vote. No one else’s. And Harris didn’t earn it. That’s not your fault. It’s hers, and the Democratic Party.

The confusion is that you, and others who are spouting off the same nonsense, really seem hellbent on ignoring that you're getting one of them as your next president if you are a citizen of the US.

"I'm not voting for either" gets you nowhere. Worse, it withholds a vote from a candidate who isn't a full-blown, mask-off, dangerous fascist.

This is the compass you have to work with:

I presume you want to be somewhere around here:

Or even here:

But *you can't get there from where we are right now*, and you sure as hell can't do it if you end up with the red circle.

The closest you can get to what you want *in this election* is the blue circle. So the logical thing to do *in this election* is to hold your nose, get over your "moral authority", and vote for the one viable option that is even remotely close to your ideal candidate.

Voting third party in FPTP doesn't benefit any candidate except the viable candidate least aligned with your ideal. You are contributing to a possible Trump victory by refusing to vote for the only other candidate that can win this election.

Everyone I've encountered who regurgitates the "Harris isn't acceptable" line of thinking falls back to "voting for Harris makes you complicit in the ongoing genocide in Gaza" but refuses to acknowledge that, if we apply the same logic, voting for a non-viable candidate makes you complicit in the *same genocide*, along with every other shit thing that will happen in a second, more disastrous Trump term.

"I didn't vote for him though," carries no water, because if you lean left of Harris and vote third party in this election you've taken support from the only viable candidate and in doing so made the shift towards fascism easier to enact.

I’ve been holding my nose for decades now. Voting for the blue circle doesn’t get us any closer to the left. In fact, voting for the “lesser evil” is still getting us pulled farther right, to the point that both options openly support genocide.

If luring Dems left is even possible, it has to be done by making them lose. Rewarding them with a win, after they go further right, just encourages them to keep moving right.

All you do by "making them lose" is make shit worse for everyone who isn't a full-blown right-wing religious nutter.

Voting for the blue circle helps ensure that you can ever have a choice again. Voting for anything else if you're left of the blue circle provides succor to would-be tyrants.

And that's on you. That's your failure of logic helping to pave the way for an even harder shift to the right.

What's the term for someone who helps fascists get their way?

I find this stance wild. Like I none of us are happy with what's going on in Gaza, but some people are completely blind to the various ways the current US government has been using its political might to try prevent the war from spreading. People can argue that those steps may or may not be working, that's fine, in glad people have that opinion.

But how can those same people look at Trump and their statements and views on this subject and think "yes that's better"? Trump has blatantly said that he things Israel is doing a good job, he also thinks that USA should not be invoived in any humanitarian aid in Gaza.

If Trump is elected, the situation in Gaza is going to get substantially worse. If you actually care about Gaza, the strategic vote is Harris. It's not a perfect vote or even a great vote, but that's what FPTP forces, when there is a single issue you're passionate about, you have to vote strategically. That means looking at the candidates and picking the candidate who most closely matches your views and is also most likely to win. Otherwise you're throwing your vote away (assuming there were an issue you're supper passionate about, if there are no super important issues then it's justifiable to vote for a candidate you really like)

the various ways the current US government has been using its political might to try prevent the war from spreading.

You mean asking nicely and then sending more weapons when they completely refuse to cooperate? Or perhaps you mean setting "red lines" and doing nothing when they're gleefully crossed? Maybe you mean signing off on supporting Israel's expansion of the war into Lebanon?

If not, I would love to hear what the hell you *are* talking about.

Like there will be a next time is Trump wins

I’d vote for Stein if she were to made even the smallest effort to earn it. But cozying up to genocidal dictators and not doing jack shit three out of every four years isn’t going to net her any support from me.

Personally, I’d rather vote for someone that may not be perfect, but at least can show their work.

Genocidal dictators like Netanyahu are acceptable?

I wanted to vote for De La Cruz, but Dems sued her off of the ballot in my state. That cost them my down ballot support, too.

And what exactly has De la Cruz done to earn your vote?

I support her policies.

She has no policies. I’ll ask again. What has she DONE.

LIKE, what action has she made that has done anything to earn your vote, besides stating she will do things she has no clear path to realistically be able to do?

I'm german and since 2016 I learned a lot about the US political landscape, figureheads, voting systems, political events, media etc.

I don't want to be condescending. It's just l spent way to much time reading articles, watching us media and documentaries to let that knowledge go to waste, so...I'm pretty confident to say that voting 3rd party, no matter who, is a bad decision. This election even more as the long-time future of your country depends on it so much.

You probably heard of the main argument against 3rd party already, namely the winner-take-all system:

Imagine 1000 people in an election district. 500 are hardcore MAGAs hellbent on voting orange Mussolini. 400 are "Vote Blue no matter who", 100 are "Both sides bad let's force a system change".

Ok got it? Mussolini wins. Even worse: he wins all of the electoral college voters of the district which unanimously vote the president. This pretty safe wasn't a very accurate description and the numbers are purposefully skewed to illustrate the principle. But at the end this is it. Your whole presidential election system needs to be reformed to truly can be called fair, democratic and make every vote, even 3rd party, count. If you want to know it more specifically google "Duverger's Law".

I repeat: Every 3rd party vote is a vote for Trump. That is why the European Greens have just advised Jill Stein to suspend her campaign. MAGA did this by letting Robert F. Kennedy suspend his campaign and endorse Trump. They learned from 2016 that when 3rd party voter turnout was at a record high 6% that it made Trump president. 2020 was only 2% 3rd party voter turnout. Good for Biden.

This all is bad enough and all the neverending crimes against humanity in Gaza are horrifying but under Trump the genocide will get worse. To understand this I would have to deviate into the connection of the US radical evangelists, the Heritage Foundation and Trump as well as his shared interest with Netanyahu. Oh yeah you also will get the chance to watch the USA transform into its final form of a white, rich, male, christian hypercapitalist dystopia.

Hope you can see now how 3rd party could backfire gigantically. If you understood it after considering the facts again, don't be angry with yourself. Just make sure you prevent others from making the same mistake these next 2 days when you see them walking into the same fatal trap.

Tiiiired of the same loser rhetoric of voting for the lesser evil of two consistently deteriorating parties.

Dummies, where will it end? Put these corporate cock suckers on notice. Do not legitimize their rule with your lips.

End the duopoliticial tyranny. Used to be whig party vs democratic party. Used to.

You don't end the duopoly by voting third party. You end it by organising between elections. But it's so much easier to virtue signal now and then lay back on the couch for the next 3.5 years plus you get the smug sense of self-satisfaction!

Also the last democratic presidency has sucked a lot less corporate than previously.

What were you doing? Clearly you understand the faults of the voting system.

Let me rephrase that: why are you okay with people being underrepresented by the voting system?

Well we tried that by demanding proper primaries and putting non genocide candidates on the ballots. And we got called being Trump shills for that. We also got called Trump shills for saying Biden is clearly too old for office. If it wasnt for Harris to replace Biden, the race would already be over.

No one called anyone a Trump shill for supporting progressives in down-ballot elections. If you're just talking about the start of the presidential election cycle, that's too late.

Deine bisherigen Posts haben nicht gerade den Eindruck erweckt, dass du in diesem Kontext von "wir" sprechen solltest - bist du in den USA wahlberechtigt?

I have raised my voice to push voting eligble people to do so. Unfortunately the US has so much power that non US citizens also need to form opinions and raise their voices, as little effect it has.

It will end when a democrat gets rid of first past the post. Here's why:

Https://youtu.be/s7tWHJfhiyo

Liberals explaining how "harm reduction" means voting but never demanding anything while calling anyone who criticizes them a "Russian bot":

Sounds like a Russian bot

Ah im sorry I mean I fully support the party and would never betray it. I apologize for my thought crimes and will fight for democracy by blindly supporting the party :3

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Liberals during election time: VOTE BLUE NO MATTER WHO
Liberals during the rest of the 4 years:

Liberals during the rest of the 4 years: Still getting beaten by police trying to change the system

I'm sure electing a cop will change everything.

Third party voters during election time: RHEEEEEEE! I refuse to vote because of [CURRENT ISSUE THEY HEARD ABOUT FROM A FRIEND IN PHYS ED]

Third part voters the rest of the four years:

Wait… What issue?

Also third party voters during local and regional elections: *crickets*

I’d make a far leftists troll meme, but you’re just not relevant enough to waste the time.

Actually… that should be the meme.

How meta!

Honesty I spent three seconds making that low effort meme

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