rule
FAQ
Q: why not organize and stop treating the bus as a legitimate entity? why aren’t you working to stop the bus?
A: do both. cut the fuel line. break windows. put oatmeal in the gas tank. but maybe your efforts don’t succeed this election cycle. and if so don’t fucking throw away your vote if it can help your neighbors fucking survive. “harm reduction” is not a political strategy for action. it is a last minute, end of the line decision to save lives, after all other resources have been exhausted.
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The most convincing argument I've heard for voting third party instead of for Genocide Joe is that liberals were more politically engaged and had more of an activist mentality under Trump.
Also, I've given consideration to the idea that "vote blue no matter who" types would likely vote for a more leftist Democrat than the ones currently being offered. In a long term strategy, if leftists refuse to vote for Democratic candidates who are too far right, then the Democrats would have to either try to appeal to the Trump demographic (which they do unfortunately do), or appeal to the leftist demographic until they get the leftist votes back.
just to clarify, do you subscribe to that first argument? it’s kind of a crazy one lol
like Americans who subscribe to pacifist beliefs were a lot more mobilized during the Vietnam War. that doesn’t especially mean the Vietnam War was good for world peace. 🤨
Biden is doing all the things that liberals would protest Trump for.
Bullshit.
This whole article is about how he's doing the bare minimum, not meeting his promises, and refusing to use his presidential powers to do things like declare a federal climate emergency
You said it yourself. They have two choices and they’re currently doing the worse one. What makes you think they’ll change their mind along the way?
If the Democrats go full Trump eventually they would lose the moderate liberals and a third party could step in. I don't see that as the likelier option.
Something like 10-20% of voters in the primary did protest votes. It's a huge chunk of people.
And it's also people they currently see as their base, the Democrats are trying to appeal to the conservatives because they believe (correctly) that they can do just about anything and people will continue to vote for them.
A third party will never realistically step in as long as FPTP is in place. Democrats could absolutely go full Trump and get votes because the Republicans somehow managed to go even more off the deep end.
As I see it, the only way out is to keep voting Democrats and try readjusting the Overton Window, so that eventually if Republicans keep losing they’ll be the ones forced to appeal more to leftwing voters. And at that point, when their opponent isn’t a cartoonish ghoul, Democrats will actually have to try as well.
If they keep moving right, eventually they WILL lose Democrats. I don't really imagine mainstream Democrats suddenly changing their views on abortion, for example. So there will have to be a party that caters towards that HUGE demographic, whether it's the Dems or another party that fills in.
I don't see how affirming the actions of the current administration does anything but to entrench Dems in their belief that they can get away with anything and liberals would still vote them in. It just emboldens them to be more conservative.
I’m assuming the average leftwing person is pro-free healthcare. Neither Biden nor Trump are. Did Jill Stein get a huge amount of voters for being the only candidate to support it in 2016? She barely got 1%.
That’s not how it works. It’s just going to shift the Overton Window even more.
It's not 2016 anymore. Check out the primary results, 10-20% of people did not vote for Biden as part of a deliberate movement.
Yes, because voting someone else in the primary doesn’t have the risk of electing a literal dictator.
I’d actually say 20% is quite low for a situation like that, it means 80% of democrats actually like Biden and that’s baffling to me. Compare that to 2020 when he got 51% in primaries and he actually gained consensus.
The Republican voters are still very much obsessed with Trump. We deserve a candidate that people actually want to support.
Yes, we do. But voting third party and potentially handing over a second term to Trump isn’t going to achieve that. It’s just going to bring on 4 years of hell for minorities and encourage Democrats to appeal to Trump voters even more (especially now that, hopefully, Trump won’t be able to be elected a third time).
Right, so you're willing to throw Palestinians under the bus. The strategic action I am talking about is refusing to vote for candidates who will fund the genocide.
Minorities are going through hell under Biden! He is not an ally. I don't see how Democrats would try to appeal to Trump voters if they can demonstrably see that a HUGE chunk of voters need a more left candidate. A vote for Biden is a vote for no change whatsoever. It gives Biden and the Democratic party no incentive to change.
Again, Palestinians will suffer in any case. A third party miraculously getting 20% of the voters will mean either of the genocide-supporting candidates still gets elected, and that means 4 more years of genocide will happen anyway.
And again, minorities are going through hell because of Trump-elected officials. The hope is that two consecutive Democrat terms will make the situation better, while if Trump wins that basically assures the next 4 years will be even worse than now, and that the following 4 will still have Trump-elected officials making it hard for whoever gets elected to get anything done.
It doesn’t matter how huge the chunk of voters that need a more left-leaning candidate is as long as the ones voting Republican are bigger. It’ll always make more sense to appeal to the latter.