I have problems with people who abstained. The hard thing is, how do you change voter behavior?
Democracy is being dismantled as we speak. Agency by agency, loyalist by loyalist, executive order by executive order. And instead of building community, helping each other and organizing with those around you, I see people, who supposedly care about democracy, about human rights, about those they accuse; and what are they doing? They are blaming people who are powerless and desparing. Thereby further dividing the populace and making the takeover easier for the fascists in power. Be careful: You are telling on yourselves and your values. And we can see you.
They are blaming people who are powerless and desparing.
you reap what you sow, these are the same people that were proclaiming EXACTLY what you’re proclaiming now, just a few months before the election, 6 months prior, a year prior, two years prior. We’ve been saying this the entire time, nobody listened, nobody has started listening, and nobody will continue to listen, what are we to do if not watch the world burn?
Liberals have decided people opposing genocide are the problem rather than politicians willing to lose to even more fascist politicians, rather than accept less genocide.
“liberals” have decided that people who make their only personality trait being opposed to one specific event of genocide are quite annoying and probably not very productive to be around. Especially in the off chance that the one thing they care about turns out to be wrong. (this is the problem with issues voters, and this is why nobody likes them)
This is exactly what I am talking about. Do you care about democracy or not? Do you care about human rights or not? Do you care about Palestinians (Americans), African Americans, Latino Americans or all the others that are being blamed or not?
If you do, you don’t just play the blame game, sit back and ‘watch the world burn’ as you’ve put it. As long as you’re divided, you’re powerless.
Instead of blaming, you unite. Instead of antagonizing, you organize. Instead of resignation, you fight.
Hey look! The liberals are still blaming the left! What compromises were you doing in order to win the leftists votes btw? Maybe that is the question you should ask yourself.
Or maybe the Gaza detractors should have considered cause and effect. Or listened when Trump outright said what he’d do.
The question is specifically about people who refused to support Harris because of Gaza. Since Trump is so far objectively worse than Harris, seems pretty reasonable to wonder if any of them changed their minds now, even if it is too late.
When will you understand that leftists are tired of voting for the lesser evil? Lesser evil is still evil. You may not be aware of it, but the situation was already disastrous for many people. Now is your turn too because you ignored those people suffering for so long.
Regarding Gaza you’re an idiot. The situation is the same with Biden or Trump. Biden did nothing against Israel, and he would have done nothing more.
Trump is the doom of the USA. The whole world will be destabilised because of it. And all of this is because the Democrats didn’t care to even try to give anything to the left, considering their vote for granted.
The failure is the Democrats one only. The sooner you realize it, the sooner you’ll fix it. Or you’ll side with the fascists like liberals so often do.
No fucking shit, I’m tired of it, too. But grown ups deal with the choices in front of them instead of throwing a tantrum and trying to take their toys and go home. If the thing you really care about is Gaza and Palestinians, you have to deal with the immediate issue, which is that four years of active encouragement from Trump is going to do a fuckload of damage that can’t just be undone, even if your protest does encourage some change from Democrats. Now, Democrats don’t seem to have learned a fucking thing, and Trump is trying to make american soldiers active participants. I understand why you’re upset and why you want change, but the tactics you’re using are actively making things worse. And then, when your protest vote ushers in “the doom of the USA”, who do you blame? The people you refused to vote for because somehow, the greater evil was preferable to the lesser evil.
I am not using any tactic. Democrats are. AND YOU NEED TO STOP PRETENDING LEFTISTS VOTED FOR Trump!
Democrats gave a no win scenario to the leftists in order to try to catch some republicans. They thought leftists would vote for them only to save the country from fascism.
But what did the Democrats do to save the country from fascism? Absolutely nothing. In fact, Democrats went into supporting fascism!
There is no lesser evil, only two brand of evil that lead to exactly the same thing. That’s not accelerationism, the only accelerationists are the Democrats here.
Democrats had the power. Democrats were in charge. And they failed miserably. Yet you liberals are still blaming the left because you’re fucking children who can’t take responsibility for you failures.
BTW I’m not a US citizen. But don’t worry, liberals of the western world are absolutely all the same, exactly like you. Ruining the world, bringing fascism into it, and blaming the left for all their failures while they cooperate with the fascist.
Okay I’m getting sick of the whole “the dems failed us” bullshit.
WE failed. WE let this happen. WE had the choice between an obvious dictator or continued democracy.
You can shift the blame all you want but at the end of the day it was an obvious choice. You can come up with any other excuse you want. If you didn’t vote for Harris you are to blame. Period. End of fucking story.
Edit: The dems should’ve been able to run a wet paper bag against Trump and win. The fuck is wrong with people to not see that?
the dems failed us
the dems should have been able to run a wet paper bag and win
sounds like identical statements to me
Not really considering it was the voters who willingly voted for Trump just to spite Harris.
It’s literally cutting off your nose to spite your face.
it was the voters who willingly voted for Trump just to spite Harris
it wasn’t. if every spite vote for Trump had been reallocated to Harris, the election wouldn’t shift by even more than one ~electoral college vote~ swing state.
- yes those individuals behaved stupidly.
- no, they are not a valid excuse for the democratic party to have abandoned the needs of the country.
if every spite vote for Trump had been reallocated to Harris, the election wouldn’t shift by even one electoral college vote.
Just making shit up I guess… Or do you have access to some dataset nobody else has?
i’m making this claim based on the uncommited movement numbers.
i also corrected a slight over statement as i forgot about the case of michigan. thank you for your input.
I will never look down on someone who voted or refused to vote because of thier conscience. Obviously for this specific question, that excludes people claiming to care about gaza, but still voting for trump. There was no illusion that trump was going to do anything positive for gaza.
I will never look down on someone who voted or refused to vote because of thier conscience.
You should. They only bring about worse situations at best. Pretending to be moral when what you’re doing is the opposite is pure hypocrisy.
Remember, the most constructive thing you can do is get mad at other, equally powerless people like yourself! This is how political change happens.
Remember! People aren’t powerless! Voting is a power! Not voting is not how political change happens
It really does baffle me that some people think a lack of an effort will bring about change.
Removing your support from a party you previously supported is an effort to bring about change. Evidenced by the democrats trying to figure out how to get people to vote for them again.
I bet you think divorce is a bad thing too.
How are you enjoying the divorce so far? Got what you wanted out of it?
It wasnt a personal reference. The point I’m making is that it tends to be overwhelmingly bad relationships end in divorce, as they should. It would be awful if people were forced to stay in bad situations like that.
The democrats have a horrible relationship with their party members, and so many chose divorce, rightly so.
Well the DNC is now forced to either pull their collective head out their ass or destroy themselves in spite. We’ll see how it goes.
Divorce isn’t something from nothing, so I’m not too sure what that false equivalency is supposed to do for you.
You cannot expect action from inaction.
I wrote the comment below on a thread that got locked while I was writing. TL;DR: Any bonehead who thinks that every single voter is politically-engaged and fully-informed, and that 6 MILLION of them all made a rational, reasoned decision to sit out the election is dumber than they look.
Oh, well, 18 months, what a slog! /s
Look, I’ve spent close to 30 years now detailing that this fucking insane “lesser evil” slide-to-the-right thing that Democrats were doing was going to end in evil. (That is, fascism.) Either the Democrats themselves would become what we feared, or the greater evil would happen to win.
Guess what? I was fucking wrong. I admit it now. I didn’t guess that BOTH would happen simultaneously. It was bad enough more than 20 years ago when my Senator was the only vote against the PATRIOT ACT. It got worse when Obama decided to abolish due process and the rule of law. But by 2024, Democrats were straight up aiding and abetting the biggest war crime of all. Jesus jumpin’ Christ on a pogo stick, how did we get to a place where that is the lesser evil?
Y’all couldn’t vote for Nader in 1996, because “he can’t win.” Well, guess what, bucko, we had to change course somehow. He, or a spiritual successor, had to win, or we’d get… well, look around. It was clear even back then. We had to at least try something different, other than the lesser evil every time.
As they say, the best time to change was then, and the second-best time is now. But, no, Kamala Harris couldn’t change her mind on genocide to win. No, sir! We have standards of evil to maintain, you see. Meanwhile, the billionaires weren’t going away. The wealth inequality wasn’t shrinking. Late-stage capitalism wasn’t on track to make the serfs’ lives better. The climate crisis would still loom. Charismatic fools like Rogan et al. are still young. So the choice in 2024 was fascism now, or fascism later. 2032, most likely, when the partisan pendulum would predictably swing the other way. 2028, possibly.
Is it any wonder that many voters felt overwhelmed, hopeless, defeated, and declined to participate, through the fabulous power of denial? Politics is depressing, the system is big, my vote is inconsequential… Y’know, denial, that power that we’ve all honed through a lifetime of practice—knowing the horrors of industrial meat production and still ordering a burger, knowing the role of CO2 in the climate disaster while waiting in the car at the drive-thru window for it, knowing the causes of cardiovascular disease and still eating it?
Knowing that someday, eventually, we have to fix our political system now that radicals have found its cheat codes, but still browbeating those disengaged voters that they are the ones responsible for this calamity. Yeah. Denial.
The same denial as 30 years ago. This election has been a long time coming. A year and a half? Get outta here.
Truth
People do not understand the significance of BRICS at all and BRICS currency. There is a concerted, sophisticated effort to get as many precious metals, gold, and oil claimed by BRICS countries as fast as possible before the BRICS currency comes out (backed by those same materials).
Look at a list of the countries with the most gold (that they admit to having). The ones that aren’t BRICS include Canada and US for example. Look in Africa - the countries with precious minerals are the ones being fought over. Even Ukraine is being fought over partially due to minerals.
Putin owns Trump. https://lemmy.world/comment/13431373
And Trump even helped out China when he withdrew from the UN Special Counsel - now China is the president. Trump is also helping out China’s claims to the South China Sea by renaming the Gulf of Mexico and trying to lay claims to it.
Hamas imo kidnapped those people due to KGB or other encouragement, then Israel/Netanyahu refused to rescue them and used them as proxy hostages gainst Biden to secute money because they had a deal with Trump and Putin. See Reagan and the Iran hostages that won him the elections - same thing. Otherwise the ceasefire in May 24 would have been agreed to (because Netanyahu thought Trump was going to lose and got cold feet, and maybe in a better timeline he did). I doubt Israel realizes that Iran, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and all the other Islamic BRICS countries are going to backstab them for that space which is pretty sacred to them.
Russia needs the US to become Nazis because that’s what they justified the Ukraine War on and that’s what they will use to invade us and Canada and Greenland for our resources. They need us to have a civil war and to be dying and poor etc before they invade.
Trump will also be starting massive drug trafficking and human trafficking organizations. He also expanded the death penalty.
Full BlueAnon territory here. Incredible the mental gymnastics y’all will go through to reaffirm your loyalty to the state and hatred of the state’s enemies, even when it’s blatantly acting against you.
It can’t be that the world is a complex place filled with many different factions each pursuing different interests. No, everyone is either with us or against us, and everyone who’s against us is secretly controlled by Putin. Trump? Putin puppet. Hamas? Putin puppet. Me, and anyone else who challenges your ideas? Putin puppet, I’m sure. The world is no more complex than a Saturday morning cartoon with one big bad pulling all the strings. There’s no need to ever study anything, let along actually try to see things from other perspectives (the very idea borders on treason!).
Let’s assume that your conspiracy theory is correct. Why then, is Putin’s puppet Trump committed to fighting Putin’s puppet Hamas? It’s a blatant contradiction, but it doesn’t matter, because it’s not about making any sense. It’s nowhere close to being a serious analysis.
Every country in the world has it’s own culture and history and narratives and internal factions and motivations, but all of that has to be mashed down into good guys and bad guys within the scope of modern American politics. You would do far better to step back from the news and read an actual book.
You give them something real to vote for. Give them a reason to turn out. And there’s a reliable way to do that. Hard policy. Universal Healthcare. Free education. Raising wages. Stuff that actually improves people’s living conditions in their daily lives.
Because believe it or not, The World’s Most Powerful Military and genocide do not excite any democrats that aren’t members of the DNC Services Corp.
Everyone is so focused on the genocide angle, but governments left and right throughout the world who were in power during the post COVID inflation spike got the boot. Most economist with froth at the mouth about “deflationary spirals” wherein people who have been waiting 15 years to buy a new pair of pants will wait a couple more years to buy it when prices start going down and thus cause an economic downturn. However, the general public believed that “getting inflation under control” meant going back to the original prices, something the (independent of Biden) federal reserve would never let happen because deflation = bad. Once the inflation spike occurred, Biden could have had 0% inflation from Nov 2022 to the election, and people still would have voted him out due to prices being too high.
They also failed to make a compelling case about what caused this and how they planned to fix it - in part, because they weren’t willing to blame the rich, or take risks in general. Of course, inflation increased globally but as a politician you can’t just roll out a chart and say “see, it’s not actually that bad, other countries have it worse.” Even if it’s true, it doesn’t acknowledge people’s concerns or convince them you’re going to fight on their behalf. Just as Harris refused to distinguish herself from Biden’s Gaza policy, she also failed to distinguish herself from his economic policy, when asked what she’d do differently, she had no answer.
This is probably, even more than Gaza, why she lost. Because she was representing a declining status quo. It’s just human nature to roll the dice to try to turn things around rather than accepting slow decline, which is why we can’t allow fascism to be the only alternative to the status quo.
If Kamala had gone up there and given it some Bernie-style fire about how the rich had been price gouging on gas and groceries and she was gonna take the fight to 'em, she probably could’ve won. And it’s not like that narrative isn’t true. Forget technical jargon and go out there like:
“When you’re paying $10 for a dozen eggs, that money doesn’t go to the people stocking the shelves, it doesn’t go to the store manager, it doesn’t go to the government, it goes straight to the top, to billionaires just like Donald Trump! The Biden admin did the best we could, without stepping on any toes, but when I’m in charge, the gloves are coming off! We will take the fight to billionaires like Trump and I promise you, we will get those prices down! They can afford it, we can’t!”
Instead it was like:
“Um, actually, sweaty, if you look at this graph you’ll see that the stock market is actually doing great and Joe Biden did a terrific job, complaining about grocery prices is really all in your head and honestly kinda problematic.”
But they probably get more money from their donors by doing it this way and losing.
Honestly? What is the actual difference?
Harris would stand by and allow a genocide while Trump cheers on a genocide? And you think Harris deserved my vote because she wouldn’t be so gauche while being complicit in genocide?
You’re welcome to that opinion, I guess, but spare me the smugness.
My honest question: Why are liberals so caught up about how Leftists voted instead of any issue that might have changed the outcome? Why aren’t there daily posts about Biden waiting until July to drop out? Democrats are more obsessed with blaming the left for their failures than winning against the right.
Honestly? What is the actual difference?
Well, as of now, at least tens of thousands of dead Palestinians and their families. You people claim to care about Palestinians, and yet you say shit like this.
You mean the 40k that were killed under Biden or are you claiming that Harris would be different?
What has Trump actually done differently? There has been no policy change.
No policy change? He’s attempting to get the US out of the UN, he’s trying to sanction the ICC, he’s trying to roll back the hold that Biden put on delivery of 2000lb bombs, and that’s just what I could find on a quick 5 minute search. No policy change? Get the fuck outta here man
He’s attempting… He’s trying… He’s trying…
So…no change, got it.
He’s issued executive orders for all of those things I listed you disingenuous walnut
he’s trying to sanction the ICC
“We’ve made our position clear on the ICC. We don’t recognize their jurisdiction.” - Joe Biden
i think we would learn a lot, as a society, if we got together and did a study on the IQ of the collective voter, not necessarily the average voter, but the collective one.
How smart are we as a voting base. I feel like there’s probably some useful knowledge there.
IQ is a flawed measurement, and its racial and cultural bias would skew the results of your study in one specific direction.
yeah no shit.
I mean, based on how often I see idiots on the internet trying to use it as the be all, end all measurements of a person’s worth, I thought it was worth mentioning.
I find it funny how everyone blames everyone except for the Republicans who voted for Trump.
They would rather continue cheering on genocide and racism even more than under Biden, as the deserved retribution for not giving uncritical loyalty to the Party, rather than saying the Democrats should have prioritized winning elections over full support of genocide.
They can’t answer since they were bots
🤖 I LOVE [america] SO MUCH I MUST VOTE FOR THE [blue] CANIDATE NO MATTER WHAT I AM TOLD
Hope you like the consequences of [not voting blue for virtue signalling]
I voted blue. I am just willing to not idolize the candidates I vote for.
My original comment was against people who incited to abstain or to vote third party tho. Yeah I agree with never idolizing a politician
have gotten multiple answers. opinion debunked. get real.
Weird how you got downvoted for the simple truth. 🧐
they were all bots /half joke
At some point I think it’s projection, downvoting everyone they disagree with and then blame “tankies” when bad takes get called out
There are a lot of people who decided to fully support a genocide and lost. So all they have left is their support for genocide. They’re not going to be able to use principled opinions anymore.
The spot won’t come out.
I just don’t understand people railing at the non voters and the people who voted for Trump. It seems as backward as a rocket scientist raging at drag and wind breaking their rocket. “How dare the wind do this! Don’t they know this will progress humanity!?!”
It’s your job to build a rocket that can withstand the air at those speeds. The air is always a problem you have to deal with, and no, you can’t shame the air into doing what you want.
Genuinely the democratic campaign seemed more like they were pushing a trolley problem than a future. So why is everyone so shocked it failed?
Bad analogy dude. The wind isn’t sentient. You cannot speak to the wind and convince it to change direction.
The air and the drag are entities without a brain.
excellent analogy.
airflow and friction can be manipulated and corrected. Trump knows this and has been doing it for 8 years.
sure, wind drag is an infuriating factor, i get pissed off at it sometimes, but it will never take the majority of the blame from me compared to the people forcing us all into the damn rocket.
I think you’re getting your roles all mixed up with your analogy. The anger you reference is at fellow voters. It isn’t the average voter’s job to build a better rocket. And the wind is not alterable but voter decisions are. The anger is at the decision makers who chose the rocket that was less capable of dealing with the harsh wind or chose to not pick a rocket at all, knowing that would result in the lesser rocket being picked.
You compare voting to the laws of physics. They’re not even remotely similar. Politics is choice.
A more apt comparison would be a little kid crying that he wants a chocolate ice cream, his mum says he should order that, then to be funny/petulant/assertive he orders strawberry - and gets mad at his mum when the server gives him strawberry. “It was your job to make me choose what I wanted!”, he wails.
Edit: my phone can’t spell ‘comparison’
Your comparison is worse.
The options weren’t chocolate and vanilla. They were getting kicked down a steep hill or kicked off a cliff, and you seem flabbergasted that some people chose to flip the bird instead of groveling and thanking the democrats for only kicking them down a steep hill.
Especially when in the next 4 years their options are gonna be slightly steeper hill or another cliff.
The options weren’t chocolate and vanilla. They were getting kicked down a steep hill or kicked off a cliff, and you seem flabbergasted that some people chose to flip the bird instead of groveling and thanking the democrats for only kicking them down a steep hill.
See, what you’re doing is pretending that there was a third option of walking away and flipping the bird, when in reality that was never a choice.
Bingo
Instead of choosing to die off the cliff, they should have chosen the steep hill and then climbed back up to kick ass for having been kicked down a hill.
Apparently they’d rather choose the obviously far inferior of two options (even in their own analogy) and then complain about how bad it is, because at least they didn’t have to grovel?
Pointless to engage further I think.
Yeah, I don’t think their analogy suggests what they think it suggests.
They tell us the two options right there, and then immediately say they chose a nonexistent third option of walking away… Very apt comparison, just not in the way that they think.
Reminded me of when the Republicans overrode Obama’s veto of that one 9/11 bill, and then complained that it was his fault and he didn’t warn them hard enough.
Considering this group you’re pointing out wasn’t big enough to make Harris win maybe Democrats should focus inward on their own failures instead of playing stupid ass finger pointing games with people left of them. Y’all lost despite your stance on genocide, not because of it unfortunately.
I absolutely agree. It is horrific to see people going through the most dehumanizing of treatment by the Democratic party getting screamed down by white moderate liberals for not falling in line exactly as the Zionist machine wants them to.
More like “we fed you the result of your own actions and now you don’t like the way it tastes cuz you got worse than Harris”
No matter what else happens the fact will never change that you could have picked Harris and actually saved Gaza. But instead you pretended game theory wasn’t real and let it be destroyed by trump.
you could have picked Harris and actually saved Gaza.
Nope. This analysis is unrealistic. I would accept “Harris would have been tougher on Netanyahu,” but under Biden, an estimate of over 200,000 Gazans have died, and Harris showed no signs of diverging from his policy. NO outcome “saves” Gaza.
Well, I agree that NO outcome in the US election could save Gaza.
Probably for different reasons than you, though.
In any case you will find a lot more abstainers on lemmy.ml or hexbear, if your goal is to actually reach a significant number of them
Probably for different reasons than you, though.
which? sorry i can’t read minds and i wasn’t picking up your subtext :P
Many stayed home, how can you quantity their reasoning? They’re absent, but what you can say is for those that are capable of voting, didn’t care much they trump could win.
how can you quantity their reasoning?
How can you? and do you think chastising is gonna be the magic solution to fix it?
I didn’t you silly goose.
And I’d call it less “chastisement” and more identifying my enemy: those comfortable with trump
how can you quantity their reasoning?
Well instead of pretending it’s unknowable we can look at the demographics of who voted for Biden in 2020 but refused to vote for Harris.
It was Boomers, genX, and older Millennials. Who were white men/women and hispanic men. Most likely stayed home because these groups have well known deeply rooted misogyny.
Young people, gaza protesters, didn’t vote, the same as young people vote every election.
I mean, the endorsement of war criminals didn’t help.
Correlation/causation.
Without hard stats you can’t define their reasoning. You can only determine what they are accepting of by not participating.
That said, I certainly won’t argue against that group being quite misogynic
You’re allowed to go look at the Democrat voter demographics in 2020 and 2024.
Democrats had less votes total then 2020, and the largest groups that stayed home proportionally compared to last election were white men/women and hispanic men. And misogyny/machismo culture are the only thing in common between those groups that has relevancy, because Kamala had the exact same policies that Biden did as a white man and they had no problem coming out to vote for him.
That’s the most accurate explanation i have been able to come up with after combing through the data last year.
The protesters were almost all younger than 30s, and that group voted almost the exact same as the last like 15 elections. They barely vote at all. It just doesn’t add up at all for that to be it.
I get it. But that’s not conclusive.
If you’re doing a test and asking people to take vanilla or chocolate ice cream, or none, you cannot know the preference of the none’s.
You can guess, based on looking at their past dessert choices, but you cannot know.
Edit if you extended the experiment to say everyone will be served, and if you don’t pick you get vanilla, the most you can possibly say about the none’s is that they aren’t offended by having vanilla picked for them. (Assume everyone will eat the food. It’s the only possible food before starvation or something)
Nothing will ever be conclusive without being omniscient.
You are the one who decides if you keep moving the bar or stick to accepting what we can know instead of using speculation to justify hating your neighbors.
deleted by creator
I would love to have a conversation with someone who actually abstained. At least on Lemmy, the level of snark seems to drown out whatever actually was going on in their heads and I don’t see a lot of constructiveness in that pattern.
I mean I did not abstain, I voted PSL, however I would have abstained if PSL was not available in my state. I get its not the same thing, however half the time it is construed as the same, if you would like to talk about it.
Edit: I should mention for clarity, I was going to vote that day anyway because of a state constitutional amendment that I wanted to oppose, however I was going to abstain from POTUS elections if PSL was not on the ballot.
I know a few people who probably abstained. One was massively uninformed by talking points of misinformation and thought Harris was the devil. The other hated trump but were true republicans from way back, they would never vote for a dem.
Yeah I really tried to engage with some of them before the election, and it was impossible to break through the snark and the disingenuous/naive arguments they were spouting. I would also love to have an earnest conversation with someone who withheld their vote, but based on how how they explained themselves at the time, I’d doubt there’s a ton of critical thinking going on. Which kind of makes sense at least for Palestinian Americans whose families are being slaughtered. For them the raw emotions are justified, and I can’t fault them for not voting, even if it was ultimately against their interest. But they’re the only group I’ll give a pass.
I didn’t abstain, but I might as well have for all the good voting did.
Voting is a collective exercise. Because you voted, and you didn’t get the outcome, doesn’t mean your vote didn’t matter.
Don’t let that feeling stop you from doing everything required to make sure your vote is cast (and counted), especially moving forward.
Better yet: vote with the expectation of defeat so you’re pleasantly surprised instead of constantly disappointed
Because you voted, and you didn’t get the outcome, doesn’t mean your vote didn’t matter.
You misunderstand. It’s not that my candidate lost, it’s that I live in a solid blue state that has zero impact on the outcome of U.S. elections.
Don’t let that feeling stop you from doing everything required to make sure your vote is cast (and counted), especially moving forward.
I’ll continue to vote, but I gave up on the idea that electoralism is part of the solution when the DNC shut Bernie out of the primary in 2016 then won a legal case that sanctified their right to do so.
Does voting for De La Cruz count as abstaining, for the purposes of the conversation you’d like to have?
I mean it’s not abstaining, but I would love to chat about it. What was your mindset or train of reasoning going into that decision?
Though I’m typically not a fan of deontological ethics, living in a deep red state, I afforded myself the opportunity to remain principled in a stand against genocide. If I lived in a swing state, however, I may have given more weight to a consequentialist perspective and made a different decision, though I would’ve hated myself for it.
I could say a lot more, but I wanna let you take this conversation where you want it to go, so that’s the core of my mindset behind that decision
I do respect your engagement with the realities of living in a deep red state. To me, that is cool and respectable.
Say you lived in Michigan or something. Assuming everything else was more or less the same, what information or circumstances would have swayed your decision to vote Harris versus third party?
Game theory says none of this bs posturing matters or is relevant at all.
How do your candidates get to 270? If they can’t then you literally helped trump.
Your turn.
Not your conversation; start elsewhere or don’t engage.
I’ve been trying to answer this all day, and struggling to do so. I think it’s because I use living in a deep red state to excuse my decision so that people aren’t allowed to be as mad at me. But I’d also like to think that I’m principled enough to have made the same decision in a swing state, even though that’s not the answer that people want to hear.
My hope was that by outspokenly refusing to vote for Harris unless she pledged to withhold weapons from Israel, if enough people did so, she might actually adopt that stance to earn our vote. Proceeding to then vote for her anyway, despite consistently implying she wouldn’t do anything different than Biden, would have felt… idk the right word- hypocritical?
I get shat on for putting principles above practicality but, if everyone did that, we might live in a much better world. Though I’ve heard pragmatists say the exact opposite about idealists.
Voting at all is already an activity that is incongruent with my values, as it legitimizes a system that I believe in dismantling.
I guess to answer your question, I probably would’ve voted for Harris if she pledged to withhold weapons from Israel, or, if in a swing state, if I happened to be temporarily convinced of the utilitarian perspective, but it would probably have to be within like an hour of voting, and be disgusted with myself after
It sounds like you had similar hopes with me and other Harris voters. It does stand to fact that you did do something more significant than a big number of 2020 blue voters by actually showing up to the booth. It also sounds like the emotional or symbolic nature of your vote has a higher value for you than for some people.
I do apologize that my questioning was causing some distress or time loss. With that in mind feel free to ignore my follow-up query:
- Was 2024 the first time you voted 3rd party or protested the D-R binary?
- At what point in time did you decide you were going to protest/third party vote (and if there was a “trigger moment,” that would be enlightening)?
- How long has Gaza/apartheid Israel been in, say, your top three concerns when voting (decades, years, months…)?
You won’t get much more sense out of them than you’ll get from a Trumper.
With all respect, I said I want a conversation with them now that there has been an increase in harm, not people like you making predetermined analysis of their mindset. Thank you.
I’m not in any way trying to prevent you from having a conversation, I’m just predicting the outcome.
