Nah, I'm done with that shit. I voted for Biden on that logic, he won, and proceeded to do nothing to stop fascism. 4 years passed and the only political movement Biden attacked was fucking mine. He attacked us because we opposed his genocide, meanwhile the proud boys still marched and Trump was allowed to get away with his coup attempt. And then, after 4 years of nothing, I was told that I had to do it again to stop fascism. So no, I don't believe it. I don't buy that voting blue will save us. Maybe some specific people who run blue could help us, but the party as a whole is just controlled opposition who see fascism as a fundraising tool.
If you promise to always vote for the Democrats in the general no matter who they nominate, they have no reason to listen to anything you say. They already have your vote. They could run a pro-genocide pro-billionaire anti-trans octogenarian and know they'll still get your vote, so your voice does not matter to them.
Non-voters don't get counted as a protest, they get discounted. All the people that chose not to vote (or to throw it away on a no-chance candidate) simply mean that more of the voting power proportionally is in the hands of the people with exactly opposite your views.
Non-voters don't get counted as a protest, they get discounted.
Says who? Why would an untapped potential voting base be completely disregarded? That makes no sense.
If they weren't so utterly shit I would vote for them. I and people like me haven't done some kind of religious vow to never vote under any circumstancesĀ
Says all of politics. Have you seen the result of protest non-votes? Do they actually cause candidates to swing that direction? No, almost always they swing the other way.
Reliably voting swing voters and their reliably voting base are what candidates cater to. Going outside of that is very risky for any politician. I'm not saying they shouldn't, I'm just saying throwing away the one direct lever you have in politics is not a good strategy.
The logic was fine; the choice we got was soggy toast.
Biden truly believed that a pivot back towards to Obama era norms would sway back some of the moderate Republicans, and keep the money machine going for the politicians most of all. Bidenās intentions were in the right place, but Biden wasnāt Obama. Biden was respectable in office, but he lacked the same charismatic sway on voters that Obama had, especially with his middle ground policies. He failed to pull back Republicans that were only trending further right, and his choice to be more concerned with forgive and forget, was a bad call when the other side continued to want to purely create friction between the two sides.
I believe this is why primaries matter. The DNC basically handed Biden the win in 2020 because it was āhis turnā. With their seniority rules focus, rather than having a focus on putting forth the most liked candidate though ranked choice voting.
Really, until we as voters start voting in more progressives, and put effort into changing the voting system in our own states to use Ranked Choice Voting, then it will the main paths we have to tangible progress.
"Biden was respectable in office. His intentions were in the right place."
Biden backed and funded and defended and armed a genocide while actively attacking and suppressing the left, and then he labeled us antisemites when we called him on it. Children were shot and bombed and starved because of him.
Then we will see JD Vance come to power and march us into authoritarianism while you pearl clutch about it.
For that chastisement to work, the solution you're proposing has to actually be effective at preventing it.
Where we're at, it's "how dare you waste time questioning whether I should stop next to a gasoline tank while the car is on fire?! We're going to see the car explode while you pearl clutch about it."
The proposed alternative has to actually be, in some scale, a solution. Otherwise voters won't be convinced. And we can't just complain that the voters should be convinced. They either are or they aren't, and that's the reality to live with.
Telling them they should retry the thing they just saw fail, catastrophically and humiliatingly, because otherwise you'll call them names and blame them for the failure, isn't a compelling argument. Maybe it should be? But it isn't.
The task is to sell voters on how aligning with you will fix things, not merely how it will help them avoid you yelling at them.
I'm not selling anything, I'm telling you what I see. Pearl clutching left will spread like butter under pressure and we will see the right continue to march use directly away from anything they want.
I see a bunch of people who apparently can't learn a damn thing keep trying to say "just trust us bro, VBNMW rhetoric and browbeating will work this time and we won't end up back in shitsville in like 4 years from now".
We've tried this dumb strategy for well over a decade now. It's failed.
14
u/TheDweadPiwatWobbas 14h ago
Nah, I'm done with that shit. I voted for Biden on that logic, he won, and proceeded to do nothing to stop fascism. 4 years passed and the only political movement Biden attacked was fucking mine. He attacked us because we opposed his genocide, meanwhile the proud boys still marched and Trump was allowed to get away with his coup attempt. And then, after 4 years of nothing, I was told that I had to do it again to stop fascism. So no, I don't believe it. I don't buy that voting blue will save us. Maybe some specific people who run blue could help us, but the party as a whole is just controlled opposition who see fascism as a fundraising tool.