No, really, Republicans are getting weirder
The GOP needs to convince voters that Donald Trump and JD Vance are regular guys, and, manifestly, they are not.
It would be strange for Democrats to attack the Republican presidential ticket for being “weird” if it weren’t true. But those men are getting weirder by the day.
Former president Donald Trump’s running mate, Sen. JD Vance (Ohio), is off to a wobbly start. A Harris 2024 campaign email sent on Friday was headlined, “JD Vance Is a Creep (Who Wants to Ban Abortion Nationwide).” The statement continued, “JD Vance is weird. Voters know it – Vance is the most unpopular VP pick in decades.”
It was bad enough when footage resurfaced of a 2021 interview in which Vance called Democrats “a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and the choices that they’ve made.” Things got worse last week when Vance offered a non-apology, blaming “people” for “focusing so much on the sarcasm and not on the substance of what I actually said.”
Uh, okay, but that doesn’t help at all. The substance — which Vance said he stands by — is asserting that adults without children do not deserve an equal say in the nation’s affairs. Another unearthed clip of Vance showed him arguing that parents, when they vote, should be able to cast an extra ballot for each child in their family who is under voting age. He didn’t take that back, either, going only so far as to claim it was a “thought experiment” and not a firm policy position.
I don't like Vance, but, I kinda agree? Parents have a greater stake in our nations future, and that should be reflected in their voting power.
Of course I think this should be solved by lowering the voting age, since that prevents abusive or absent parents from having that power, while still giving it to parents trusted by their children. But Republicans don't want that.
A) Having children is by far more common than not having children. If sperm donors/receivers are so much more fundamentally concerned with the future how did they let the climate issue become a crisis? You all have been in the driver's seat and you fucked it up.
B) I have likely another ~40ish years left on this Earth. Towards the end of that time there's a good chance I'm going to be reliant on people your children's age for, at the very least, medical care and possibly other elder care depending on how my health turns out. That being the case, I'm quite invested in the next generation being well qualified to provide that, thanks.
C) Thinking that people will only care about how things turn out for future generations if they have children of their own to care about is telling on yourself pretty hard. Kind of the same energy as people who think everyone would rape and pillage if they didn't have a fear of God keeping them in check.
Factually incorrect. In 2022, about 40.26 percent of all family households in the United States had their own children under age 18 living in the household. To be clear, when I say "children", I mean by age too, I'm not concerned about giving 80 yr-olds with 50yr-old children more voting power.
talking like this just tells me you're unserious about this conversation. I have no further desire to engage with you
Your assertion was that, "Parents have a greater stake in our nations future". Do people suddenly stop caring about the future when their children move out? Perhaps you don't think parents of adult children should have extra votes but you suggested that they care more about the future and the totality of people who have children is still greater than those who do not, putting that class in the driver's seat.
More like your stances are weak and unsupportable and you want an easy exit.
My stances are perfectly supportable, but I have no desire to debate with immature people on the internet
Ah yes, the classic defense of someone who is dead wrong but is too weak to admit it.
Sure thing.
Your stance is pathetically weak. There is no justification for altering constitutional rights to give a subset of people political advantage who btw already get billions of dollars in tax incentives every year. You already get paid to have children but that's not enough, you want even more: outsized political power.
In order for your stance to be correct, not only do we have to have it in our nature to care more about the future, if we have kids, as well as that, what they think is good for the future, is.
Show proof of these things, and then your argument hold water. Until then this all just what seems like it should be true to you.
So once your kids are 18 you don't get to vote anymore? What about grandkids? Do they count? It seems like step children don't since Harris has some of them. Would those kids still count toward the other parent even if that parent is a dead beat? What about adopted kids?
None of these concerns matter with my proposed solution, which is to lower the voting age.
Which is entirely unrelated to giving parents more of a vote than adults without kids.
You can say the youth should get more of a say and we should lower the voting age if you want; but that's not what Vance is saying.
It is pretty heavily related because parents have influence over their children
This "problem" solves itself when you think ahead to the fact that children will have the ability to vote for themselves when they become adults. The simple act of raising a child to voting age ensures that you have increased your family's voting power, if that is your concern.
You know who else has a quantitatively bigger stake in the future of the country? Those with more money and property.
If you normalize by capita, families with children have less votes/capita.
If you nominalize by capita, people with children have less of lots of things. Fewer cars, less property, less income, lower alcohol consumption.
The first three (which can basically be lumped into "less wealth") we already try to equalize through tax breaks, parental leave etc. But also we accept it to some degree because we don't want child labor. The last one we want to reduce. I'm not sure what your point is
Kindly explain how a parent has a greater stake in our nation's future. A tangible stake - not some metaphysical "blood ties" or "descendants" stake that they have no tangible relationship with. Make sure that your explanation also doesn't accidentally give slaveholders additional rights for the extra "property" they have.
People care about their children more than random strangers. Often more than anyone else. Their children will likely outlive them. Thus the future affects the children more. If something affects someone you deeply care about, you're more likely to care about it. This isn't some revelation.
I care about my nieces and nephews. The meth heads that shat me out cared so much that one ghosted and the other one beat me up to the day I was adopted away.
Who has a greater stake here? Me, a childless uncle who wants nothing but the brightest possible future for kids that I'm involved with, or the meth heads who died after ghosting and abusing me?
I'm not sure why you think your one example is representative of the general population.
Edit: also lowering the voting is perfectly compatible with your situation. If you really hate your parents, I doubt you'd take their advice in voting
The 600,000 kids that are abused every year wonder why you think it's only one example? You think that those kids will be allowed to vote for who they want? They'll be bullied and terrified into voting how their parents want or just not allowed. I'm not sure why you think I'm the only example unless you're willfully ignorant or arguing in bad faith.
Go vote in school board elections. No one goes so your vote counts for more than one and arguably that has way more effect on your kids than any other race.
Look I'm sorry about your experience, but you are still in a minority. There's over 70 million children in the US. The vast majority of parents do not abuse their children and so even if in some cases lowering the voting age doesn't result in that vote being helpful, the net effect is still better for children. Why should all the children be denied agency just because some have bad parents? What about children with no parents, or those who left home?
Wait, I was just one story. Now I'm a minority. And if I bring you more info you'll shoo that away as well.
I'm for lowering the voting age if we can also let them have real autonomy the way we get by law at age 18. Until then they just end up voting for who they're told or bullied into because the way most of them will get to voting locations is by their adults. Give them REAL civics classes, not the whitewashed bullshit they currently sell to kids in rural areas (ask me how I know), so that they can make informed decisions. Maybe also a way that they can get to polling places without their parents knowledge. I'm sure there's a ton of shit I'm forgetting because I'm angry as fuck that you reduced me to a single story instead of 600,000 stories and tell me I have less of a stake in the future. I have the exact same stake for the next 40 years that someone who likes to give a woman a creampie.
If we're only talking about lowering the voting age there are a lot of steps we should take in that direction. But your original stance was to give parents greater voting power. It's right there in your first comment in this thread. Lowering the voting age doesn't give parents more voting power unless they're the ones deciding shit.
I bet if you backed off that insane, idiotic statement you'd have more people willing to listen. Until you remove it and apologize for it I'm going to assume you're for meth-addled fuckwads getting an extra vote because they learned how to fuck without protection. Because that's what the couch fucker's stance is and you don't disagree with it. You said so yourself.
I'm sorry, I didn't mean to make it a personal attack on you. I was not expecting such on overwhelming negative response.
I'm not gonna change my original comment now. Lowering the voting age is, practically speaking, a way to give parents voting power. You cannot escape that in any human society I'm aware of. I suppose I could have worded it better, but this is reminding me too much of reddit, where if what you say sounds wrong people will pile on you and vice versa, and I came to lemmy to get away from that shit.
Online, the words you use are all we have to judge your intentions. We don't know you. I bet we agree on a bunch of shit. I bet if I knew you I'd happily share a drink or something with you. But I don't.
All I have to go by is that you stated you don't disagree with the couch fucker and brushed off 600,000 stories by saying mine is the only one, then backed up and said it's fine because it's the minority. No mitigation plan. Hell, in an ideal world I'd say immediately lower it to 15 because parents would let the kids follow their conscience and someone that isn't Andrew Tate would be teaching them actual history and current events without bias.
Yeah, it sucks that you have to watch the way you say things. Unless you want to stop by the house one day and have a drink or let me feed you, then we can bond over some shit and I'll know your intentions. Then we can kick it without worrying about the exact words we use.
It's easy to lose sight of the fact that we're talking to real people sometimes. In my head I know you're not just saying "fuck them kids, they should have just been born to better parents!" It's just hard to see that shit without taking it personally sometimes because all you have to judge my intentions is my words as well.
As a living person who intends to continue living for at least the next 4 years, I strongly disagree about who has a "greater stake" in the nations future... especially when we take into account that the party (formerly) of "family values" keeps fucking over the future for the present, so maybe it's all just a smokescreen to push whatever policies they want by pretending they're just thinking of the children...
The republican party doesn't follow any of its values, so you can't judge the values by the party's behavior.
Plus lowering the voting age would take away power from republicans, since young people skew left, that's why republicans don't want it, despite claiming to care about their children
This is remarkably similar to the "you need god to be moral, so atheists are all immoral" BS (and is coming from the kinds of people who claim the same). No, a person does not need to have kids to give a fuck about the future of other people, just basic respect and compassion for their fellow humans. "I only care about things that affect me directly" is Republican thinking.
giving a fuck =/= giving more fucks. It's basic human psychology here, not some great moral play
There are a LOT of people that don't give a fuck about anyone else who have kids, so your idea of "basic human psychology" is deeply flawed.
ok? I don't see what that has to with my point or your original point. People do all sorts of things. What matters is the averages. Are you seriously saying parents on average care less about kids than people without kids?
Why? As you said, people do all sorts of things. Some people with no kids care about kids a lot, and some with kids don't. Using averages as an excuse to give some people more representation than others (which is what the guy you're agreeing with proposed and is related to his Kamala "no kids" attack) is a terrible idea.
Well ok then, all kids should have a vote! If you're considered legally alive, you can vote! Since it really doesn't matter on average, that babies and toddlers are pretty bad at voting properly right? Full equality!
If you're not already a registered Republican, you should become one. You're just their type.
Why the fuck should you have more votes than me cause you put your cock in a vagina and let something slide out of it? Explain to me in great detail how that somehow gives you more value than me? Or how that somehow negates my ability to care about others and the future. Fucking idiot.
Because, you absolute dunce, humans are hardwired to care more about the HUMAN that slid out the vagina than some rando. Care MORE, not at all. It's not about your ABILITY to care, it's about what what actually fucking happens in reality.
Also the way you talk about having children is not really helping your claim that you care about them.
Doesn't the existence of abusive parents throw a wrench in that logic?
It's a moot point anyway because who decides how much more a parents vote is worth? You can't have a real democracy when who gets to vote is decided by who gets to vote. Whoever has the voting power today will vote to tip the scales of democracy in their favor tomorrow, ad infinitum until we're back to only white male landowners voting. What you're arguing for is essentially a whole new dimension of gerrymandering.
You. Didn’t. Answer. Any. Of. My. Questions. Lmdao.
The people I know who had kids tend to show less concern for future generations than those I know who didn't. It doesn't make any sense but it's true
Do they pay more taxes?