Vote abstinence in situations where you dont like any candidate is a valid option and part of your civic duty in a democracy. Not voting for Biden isn’t a vote for Trump, no matter how many times you people try to gaslight yourselves into believing otherwise.
Duverger’s Law makes it very clear that you don’t know anything regarding what you’re talking about.
Not voting for Biden isn’t a vote for Trump
It’s also essentially you declaring that you don’t really mind if Trump gets in. If you were opposed to Trump, you’d actively try to stop him gaining power again. If you’re not voting in a way where you try to prevent him gaining power, sure, you’re not actively supporting him, but you’re still willing to sit by while fascism rears its head. That is what people are judging you for.
To pick an extreme analogy: if there’s a child drowning and you’re in a position where you could easily save them but choose not to because you saw that child being mean to someone once, no-one’s going to call you a child murderer but people are going to judge the hell out of you for being “the guy who doesn’t save drowning children”.
So yes, vote abstinence is an option. But I’d argue what’s more a part of your “civic duty” is to prevent fascists rising to power when you personally have a say in preventing that.
Fine, I’ll play.
Democrats and the DNC hold all of the power when it comes to who they field for the election. If their current chosen is polling poorly, if he’s not energizing the people that the DNC needs to win, then they have the power to nominate someone who does. If they’re willing to risk Trump getting in by fielding the candidate anyway, then they’re indicating their willingness to put stubborn pride and the need for control over doing what they know needs to be done.
The Democrats hold all of the cards when it comes to who to run. If Trump gets in because they cling to stubborn pride, then they have only have themselves to blame.
People really stretching to ignore Pride as one of the cardinal sins against a proper perception on reality.
People’s inability to change or pivot is truly one of our greatest downfalls even if the stubbornness is one of our greatest tools to survival.
“Maybe if the Republicans get elected on a platform of christofascist dictatorship and enact massive disenfranchisement and roll back civil rights, things will get more representative and we’ll see more left leaning candidates in future elections somehow, rather than the people who have promised to ratfuck every election for eternity ratfucking every subsequent election.” This is your ridiculous logic.
People aren’t that smart and don’t think like that. They think that they are hurting and don’t like feeling forced and will look for who is “on their side and punishing up” or even just become apathetic. You are able to see the long picture and be rightfully scared of it but then it’s up to us to point that out to the people who have power and ability to do something about it. And raise awareness where possible.
He, nor I, have any logical statement on how it will get better for it being worse just that reality is what is. It would be likely a lot worse should Republicans get everything they want, but the Democrats need to see they won’t get votes just for whipping like the Republicans.
You are having an emotional response cause you are scared and shooting the messenger.
Actually, no.
My logic: Democrats hold all of the cards. They are not required to run Biden and they have plenty of time to find a candidate that appeals to progressives outside of their core. If they choose to push forward with a mediocre candidate who is currently polling poorly and the worst possible person gets elected, they are responsible for the loss.
They actually don’t have time. The first of the primary caucuses happen in less than a month. You’re talking about putting a full slate of unvetted candidates in front of a national primary with less than a month before voters would have to choose.
The Democrats made an error. They thought the Republicans surely would nominate someone else. They didn’t know Trump would quote Hitler a few days ago. They’re trying to run in an election with an incumbent. That’s how the parties have operated since… maybe the beginning. I don’t know that I know of a time when an eligible incumbent presidential candidate didn’t run. Maybe Washington?
Democrats are making the same mistake that voters are. They’re treating Trump like a beatable candidate, and expecting voters to act rationally. But yet, we see people saying the same irrational thing you are, that it’s better to sit out and let Trump get elected again than it is to vote for a milquetoast candidate like Biden. That’s it’s better for the worst evil to be elected than to vote for the lesser evil. It’s irrational. And yet, here we are, with someone thinking that the Dems can spin up a national primary for couple hundred million people in a couple of weeks.
Sadly the cynic in me thinks it’s precisely the opposite. I think Democrats knew that they would run Donald Trump and just assume he’s an easily beaten target. An impossibly high stakes gamble.
then they have only have themselves to blame.
I don’t mean to be blunt but…are you Russian?
You know that as an american citizen, whoever gets voted in is someone you would have to deal with, right?
Domestically, that would be saying you are no further than “wag finger on a soapbox” towards allowing the voting in of someone who has attempted treason and has said he would go dictator if voted in, while doing speeches that can literally be pulled from Adolf Hitler.
If you are an american citizen, speak like this is your FUCKING PROBLEM
Vote abstinence means what exactly?
Because not voting for Biden is absolutely not the same as voting for Trump. That I agree with. Not voting at all though is voting for either. Only by showing up and literally voting for neither is the only way to vote for neither of them.
But the republicans vote Trump no matter what, and now you’ve nullified your vote in protest
And the Democrats vote for the Democratic candidate no matter what. That they have a better candidate is obvious, but pretending that the core would deviate from voting as they’re told is not supported by their past behavior.
Ideally, Biden steps aside for a better Democrat. That would make me happy.
If the DNC wanted to, it could pass ballot & electoral reform. It doesn’t, because FPTP/winner takes all benefits them doubly - either they lose and can fundraise off “red team bad” messaging, or they win power and get their turn at the levers of power.
If you’re politically homeless on the right, anything even slightly to the right of median is preferential to ‘conserve’ the world you’re clutching to. Slowing or preventing change is your mantra politically, because you like the status quo today/previously
If you’re politically homeless on the left, you’re bullied in liberal unity under big-tent centrism, even though it’ll never effectively serve your core interests like right wing unity would. There may be some overlap, but good luck with actual legislative movement on LGBTQ+, unionization, campaign finance reform, alternative policing, etc
Under a different system we’d actually have coalitions and better representation on issues- especially topics with entrenched left-right collusion like foreign policy.
Jeff Tiedrich is so fucking annoying. I thought I got away from seeing screenshots of his dumbass Twitter posts when I left reddit.
Tiedrich’s useless perpetual crying on xitter is iconic of this political era. What he can’t see is that he does the Democrats damage.
With this behaviour and this thinking you’ll be voting against “The Bigger Evil” for the rest of your life. Your kids will be bullied into voting for “The Lesser Evil” their whole life, your grandchildren will be reminded by their friendly AI legal expert to vote for anyone just not for “Evil Jeff”.
Your whole political conscience revolves around a struggle that doesn’t exist. You do no good voting for any of these manipulative racists, liars and/or genocidal clowns by listening to paid twitter jesters or hollywood stars. The eChoEs of these shouting matches are so loud now, normal spoken words don’t have any weight.
If you put just a fraction of the energy, money or your thoughts into changing your fascist system instead of this useless reality show you call politics every four years (and the years in between), you might be able to die with a knowledge that your children and grandchildren could live in a (more) normal world.
But where’s the fun in normality? right?
How come this genius is still in twitter?
Inertia is a bitch sometimes.
When you use a service for years, multiple times per day, and all your contacts also use it, it’s hard to switch even if you hate what the service has become.
Jeff needs to leave Xitter already
That dictator guy sounds like a doctor, doctors can’t do harm, thus vote for him!
I’m certainly not voting for Joe “I’m a Zionist” Biden.
Though to be fair, I’m in Florida so my vote means fuck all anyway. Maybe if I lived in a state he had an ass chance of winning I’d consider that “least harm” BS.
What is the definition of insanity, again? But, please, go on and vote for the lesser of the two shits, and be surprised that you get… shit
I don’t want Trump to get another term. And Biden putting on his big boy pants and doing popular things is our best chance to preventing a second Trump term. It’s retail politics, not rocket science.
There are tons of popular things he’s not doing. For one, he could just straight up order the decriminalization of marijuana at the federal level. And by that, I mean, banning enforcement of the law.
The marijuana thing is a no brainer. It’s political malpractice they haven’t done anything on that front.
He has, though.
Biden literally instructed the DEA to reschedule cannabis already. This kind of rulemaking requires actual policy studies, as the courts have repeatedly stated that it can’t be done capriciously.
It’s crazy how people know every fucking awful thing the government does but never the stuff they ostensibly support. I’ll say it again - the biggest problem with progressive US politics is the cynicism and engagement gap
Biden literally instructed the DEA to reschedule cannabis already.
He directed them to look into it. That’s not the same thing as telling them to reschedule it.
“Along with the pardons, Biden directed the HHS secretary and the attorney general to review how marijuana is scheduled”
You’re just straight up lying. He hasn’t done that at all. He’s getting them to start thinking about it.
That is literally what they said, your link supports them lol
Progressive politics is when you just vibe how you feel about things, right?
I specifically said he could decriminalize it at the federal level today. He ordered for it to be looked at potentially, but it has not happened, and there is nothing that stops him from ordering it definitively right now.
The user I responded to specifically said that he already ordered the decriminalization of it.
Centrists consider thinking about doing something to be the same as doing it, and become very angry when people expect tangible results.
I’m pretty sure the executive branch can’t unilaterally decriminalize marijuana. And especially not force states to decriminalize it.
I get that the FDA could reclassify marijuana, but the real issue i think is that Congress needs to get on the ball and deal with legalizing it . There are laws on the books that have to be dealt with regarding sale and distribution and banking issues.
Couldnt that be done after decriminalization. Decrim will stop ruining lives and filling jails in an immediate way. People first, then economics would go a long way.
A lot of decriminalization has started with justice department changes. But honestly don’t we want something that will stick and not be taken away as soon as a different party is in charge?
It’s neat watching “Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good” and “Politics is the art of the possible” become “I don’t want to do it, so nothing is good enough.”
I think we want both immediate relief for people and systemic change for laws.
The president is in charge of the executive branch, he can decide to decriminalize it overnight and fire any prosecutor that challenges him. Who is going to stop him, conservative judges ruling by decree in Texas? Hahaha.
You really don’t know how the government works, do you?
I mean yeah. That’s how it has been working for the last few years. Some conservative lower judge decides to kill an executive order and it works its way to the SCOTUS and they kill it.
Agencies within the executive branch have quite a bit of independence, which is a very good thing, because if they didn’t, Trump would have done vastly more damage than he did.
Everyone just needs to do the right thing and vote 3rd Party.
A second Trump term is everything you hate about Biden plus more shit. Biden still the lesser of two evils, you should vote for him.
But I will say Biden is a fucking moron for doing so many unpopular things late in his term. I guess some of these geriatric Dems would rather punch down on the left than secure democracy against it’s biggest threat in decades. I get the frustration.
Everybody needs to vote for who they honestly think the best candidate is. If that’s Biden, vote Biden. If that’s Jill Stein or Cornel West or whoever the Libertarians are running, then vote for them.
Vote your hopes, not your fears. Or, as Jill Stein said, “Don’t vote for the lesser evil. Vote for the greater good.”
Let me know when there’s a third party candidate worth my time. Jill Stein has done nothing to earn my vote, and unless she addresses her anti science remarks, she’ll never get it.
Who is running third party for folks to rally behind? Moreover, who is running that would somehow overcome both major parties’ candidates by drawing enough away from them to win or in some way effect a change in process?
Great plan. Everyone just needs to listen to you, and all our problems will go away!
My brother in Christ, that is not the right thing.
ensue another 30 years of 2 party rule
3rd party 2024
Wow Democrats are eating each other alive at the realization that they may not win. I’m a bleeding heart leftist that would really love if we don’t backslide into a fascist Cristo nationalist state but seriously this screaming anger that people aren’t agreeing with the milquetoast forced pick is definitely not gonna help.
Everyone said that the Republican party would split but no. Democrats will lose again by being angry and not supporting people once again.
A party that looks willing to change to better support the requests of their people is a lot more attractive than one that just wants to push the tower back together and keep playing the same games. And when competing against someone who is able to pretend the rubble is is a castle if you just whip hard enough then you are gonna be against a wall that doesn’t budge.
This look of spiteful anger isn’t going to get people to back the old man and that’s the hard truth that needs to be accepted.
Nobody will ever make me feel bad that Trump is going to win because I’m not going to vote for Biden. Just more blaming everyone but themselves.
One I saw how willing democrats are to sabotage candidates to push ahead “the safe pick” I just gave up. The Republicans went full steam behind their radical, won, committed hundreds of crimes, and are going to win again.
But Bernie sanders and Universal Healthcare? No fucking chance. We can deal with a little insurrection, just throw em in jail. But if everybody got Healthcare, stopped fighting each other, and were healthy enough to fight against the rich people? Can’t stop that.
Fucking moron, hope you don’t have to explain your dumbass takes to a mother/sister/SO
Real activism is enabling fascists, apparently lol
I heard that a million times in 2020. Mostly on Twitter.
They won.
Well it’s a year out and we are all just being reactionary to polling numbers but the more the sentiment sticks the more we shape the future. So I guess we just have to see when an election year actually starts instead of doing nothing and fighting about it.
Also can I just add: doing nothing and expecting the same outcome is insanity
The reason people are worried about the poll numbers right now is that now is the only chance we have to put up a different Democratic nominee. I’m not really sure we have a window of time to correct anything if we’ve already put them up as our nominee.
The window doesn’t exist. No one wants to hear what makes them uncomfortable anymore. They are tired of the same but scared of anything different. And so down we will grind. Biden can win and delay this more but we will see and it won’t be just because he is there like last election.
No, I’m not saying he’s not in trouble or that they don’t need to get hold of the message or change policies in key areas or whatever.
I’m saying that the argument that “shaming leftists for wanting to stay at home won’t work” or that “spiteful anger is not going to get people to back” Biden doesn’t track. We all spent a year in aggresively spiteful anger at a bunch of performative Berniebros all over social media who argued that they would never vote for Biden under the circumstances. Turns out either they showed up, they hadn’t shown up before either or weren’t that many. Because, again, Biden won.
This whole “why don’t Democrats court us specifically” dejection is infuriating, especially because it tends to be a pre-electoral thing only. The way I see it, with the US’s electoral system a leftist is at their most powerless around major elections. They get no choice. It’s liberal centrists or active fascism.
The right time to apply political pressure to Biden or any other centrist democrat in power is during the term, when they need leftist votes to get past narrow majorities and there is a reasonable opportunity to trade reform for commonplace legislation and normal operation. But pressing before elections? All that gets you is the only one of the two factions you can influence in any way losing all power, and as a result you losing all power.
Vote for democrats and then apply pressure between terms or go start the revolution. But whining about Dems not caring about you just before an election is not it.
It’s not just about the fucking Berniebros. It’s about the silent majority of Americans who never say shit and just vote or don’t. It’s about the people that really matter and I’m trying to speak for them. The idiots who will eat up whatever confirms their current ideas of how everything is going that you get from being down on their level and talking to them.
Christ you pick your boogymen and stick to it and direct all your anger and energy at the people being vocal and not notice the everything else.
It’s about giving those people an idea of a choice, it’s why I have called for Biden to do some debates or make an effort to campaign a little and toot his own horn. Fuck I would love him to be rallied by a leftist and show that he gets more of the middle by being a slow and careful old curmudgeon but you stick to one stupidly flawed argument that it’s about the people being vocal.
Whatever. The easy target is the one that puts it’s head up to talk. This entire chat is full of people that are scared and simply screaming at the people that try to offer a conversation to point out ideas that they aren’t thinking of. But stay with blinders on. Shut up the people that try to say anything and just be shocked and remember our names as the problem if it all goes sideways because someone has the audacity to say something you didn’t want to hear.
But that’s my point, the Berniebros were the ones saying that the silent majority would stay at home because they were being berated about Trump being an existential threat. Turns out, the silent majority did need the raised alarms and the sense that they needed to get off their ass, so the allegedly arrogant tand not constructive raised alarms were both effective and necessary.
Instead, a sector of the left assumes that the silent majority agrees with them specifically and doesn’t get the ripples of people raising their voice to say that inaction based on mild dissatisfaction with liberals is a major, major mistake that may take the US past the point of no return. The left keeps making claims that actually no, it’s about making people exicted and hopeful and stuff, which sounds great… except look at the other guy. It’s not exciting and hopeful here, it’s welcome to the rise of fascism, either you keep stomping them down every single time or it’s the last time you get the chance. That’s forever now, until the GOP solves their actual fascist problem. Somehow, this seems to be the centrist democrats’ fault every time an election comes around, but not while the online left is in between bouts of blaming them for the rise of fascism.
So I say again, I am begging people on the left to rise up in between elections and deploy absolutely ruthless pressure to get structural reform that will lock fascists out of institutions. Once campaigning for major elections starts, though, you rally behind the leader, whoever it may be, and keep facists out with whatever tools are available.
And if you don’t do that, then it’s your fault as much as everybody else that is creating the scenario where fascists rule the country. Again. It’s insane that we haven’t learned this lesson yet.
In fairness, Joe Biden barely scraped through electorally. We’re talking a handful of thousands of votes in key states.
He destroyed on the popular vote, but sadly that’s not how our system works.
“Don’t compare me to the Almighty; compare me to the alternative.”
Biden is practically saying, “What are you going to do? Vote for the other guy?”
For fuck’s sake, this is how you lose. Time’s tickin’, people.
Edit: Biden will not lose the popular vote, but he can easily lose the Electoral College. Demand more of him while there is still time.
I really think they need to run a primary against him just so that people can feel like he is at least the right decision to make even if it feels weak cause this aggressive “It’s someone else’s fault and I won’t do anything about it unless I get exactly what I want!” Attitude is absolutely gonna make him lose the vote even if it pisses everyone off to hear.
