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While I did vote blue conservative (for the last time), they were not worthy of that vote because they did not represent me. That's how representative democracy works. What you advocate for is not representative democracy, it is a hostage situation and should be treated like the crisis that that entails.
Why are you okay with people being underrepresented at the voting booth? Are you actively working to replace First Past the Post voting in your state? People should have the freedom to vote for the candidates they believe are best, while still ensuring their votes count against those they don’t want in office.
It's not as though democrats are just now learning of the mathematical flaws of FPTP. Every election I've seen the same bullshit excuses to take people's inalienable right to vote how they want. Democrats in blue states made a choice to leave a huge portion of the population unrepresented, all for safe states and easy elections.
We don’t need to wait for a miracle from Congress, we can pass election reform one state at a time. Should we have more elections, we must remove the democratic monopoly on this fight against the republicans. Don't worry, blue conservative, you will be free to vote for your preference under a more representative electoral system. Because who would want to deny someone the right to vote for the person they feel is best? You apparently.
Alaska has already abolished FPTP voting. After Ranked Choice Voting kept Sarah Palin out of office, Alaskan Republicans tried to pass a referendum to revert to FPTP, but the people voted to keep Ranked Choice. Why would you want to use the same voting system that Republicans favor? Do you support democracy, or do you get off on forcing people unrepresented in government to vote for your preference?
Videos on alternative voting systems
First Past The Post voting (What most states use now)
Videos on alternative electoral systems we can try out.
I swallowed my misgivings and voted Democrat, just like I've done at each election since I turned 18, but handwaving away valid criticisms is not how you get people to side with you. Pressure needs to be put on the democrats to be better, too.
I'm 100% for valid criticisms—I don't even consider myself a Democrat and I have no compunctions about criticizing them when I think they are wrong. But I'm pretty sure that meme is directed at those who withheld their vote.
It would be in theory, but mostly it's just spread around as how any protest against Israel cost the democrats the US election (despite how it was considered widely unpopular to support Israel's genocide by most democrats).
The problem is that those people (leftist prostest not-voters) most likely wouldn't have changed the results.
No, I agree. There weren't enough single-issue Gaza voters to have changed the outcome. It's still an idiotic position to have taken.
Shielding the Democrats from the pressure to adopt more popular positions lost this election.
No, they were never going to do that. They've already said that they learned their lesson, and in 2026, they're gonna double down on the losing strategy that they've been running since Clinton was in office and run on building the wall on the Mexican border and deporting immigrants to court the moderate Republican vote that doesn't exist and never would vote for them even if it did.
By the Presidential election, it's already years too late to force them to actually do good things. Protest votes and withholding your vote have done nothing to stop the slide that led to Harris campaigning with Liz Cheney in tow in the 16 years that I've been voting. If you want change, it's only going to come by threatening the position of the people in charge of the party and replacing the old guard with people like AOC. Whoever gets elected President does neither of those things. Unless Krasnov declares the Democratic Party a terrorist organization and has them all arrested as political prisoners. But then we won't have to worry about voting ever again, just like he promised.
A few things.
Firstly, we can dismiss the notion that the candidate can't be moved. The citation for that is Biden in 2020, who effectively campaigned during the primary as a moderate Republican, and until the southern states which we're never going to go blue anyways weighed in, was getting his ass handed to him. The Sunday before Super Tuesday, the rat-fuckening, Oblivious Warren. All that old history.
And then something remarkable happened. Biden opened the doors to the tent and invited the progressive wing of the party in. He handed the Bernie-crats the platform and said "have at it hoss". And it worked. Instead of disenfranchising the activist base, he embraced them, or at least, extended an olive branch by giving them the platform, without which he assuredly would have lost.
So: Candidates can be moved.
Second:
By the Presidential election, it’s already years too late to force them to actually do good things. Protest votes and withholding your vote have done nothing to stop the slide that led to Harris campaigning with Liz Cheney in tow in the 16 years that I’ve been voting.
Again. And I'm singling you out because you responded and well, here we are. This is an obtuse, bordering on bad faith interpretation of the argument being made. You aren't arguing with me. You are arguing with the millions of voters who stayed home for Kamala but showed up for Biden. And you moralizing about an objectively misguided application of strategic voting didn't/ doesn't/ won't/ change their votes. When your "strategic voting" strategy results in losing you the election, explain to me how and why its strategic?
You don't/ can't move millions of voters to a new position. Or at least it hasn't been shown to be possible (2016, 2024). Asking voters to "vote against" instead of "voting for" doesn't work and we now have so many receipts, that they will write text books on the matter. What can be done, is that the candidate can be moved. Its also been shown through an evidentiary process to work.
To summarize, candidates can be moved. Biden moved and won an election because of it. When you moralize about your own, demonstrated-to-be-wrong conception of strategic voting, you aren't arguing with me, you are arguing with the literally millions of people left on the table by the Democrats. A strategy that when examined before hand will clearly lose, the insistence of then implementing it becomes a "burn the world down" moralization to wash your own hands: Democratic voters who reliably show up, but did not, because the DNC got a hall pass from those making the exact arguments you are making here. They did not need to respond to criticism because this argument you are making shielded them. And it cost us all, practically everything.
Further evidence that the democrats can be moved if we don't let them maintain the delusion they can win while trying to be republicans: The entire party told Biden to drop out when it was clear he had no path to victory.
Sadly Kamala was allowed to believe she could win while embracing the same policies and messaging that killed the Biden campaign. Instead of screaming at the party to campaign on overwhelmingly popular left policy necessary to win the election and use every power at the democrat's disposal to accomplish it, blue MAGA told anyone pointing out that we're headed back towards the waterfall to shut up and paddle harder.
Are you actually trying to argue Biden would have won? Extra large oof.
If this is what you got from reading that, maybe have another at-bat.
Not voting for them has never once, in the history of history, gotten them to change. It actually causes them to pull further right.
Yeah, they probably think, well the right is doing so well so that's probably what the country wants. We need to move further right!
Yep. Every time they've pulled farther right and lost, they've blamed the leftists for it for being too extremist in their policy demands or claiming that their issues aren't as important, like in the case with Millennials and housing costs, student debt, climate change, etc. Despite trying to make some headway on those issues, they've always refused to campaign on them.
Exactly.
No one is hand waving away anything by asking people to vote
Pressure needs to be put on the democrats to be better, too.
They're already 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000x better than Republicans. So someone would have to be pretty goddamn stupid not to vote for them when the options are them or Republicans.
The majority of the fault isn't on Democrats. It's on goddamn stupid braindead asshole American voters for being goddamn stupid braindead assholes.
They're already 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000x better than Republicans. So
how can this be quantified?
Nobody pushing genocide is worthy of votes or support.
It was incumbent on Dems to EARN votes, and they failed spectacularly. You’re wrong to try blaming voters for failings of our corrupt politicians.
Virtue signaling doesn't wash blood off your hands sweetie
Will you still be saying that when Trump puts a resort in Gaza?
Trump has made it crystal clear: He plans for the complete and total ethnuc cleansing of Gaza. All Palestinians will be killed or removed
That's what Arab and Palestinian Americans chose when they voted for Trump
I'm not American so nobody got my vote, but seems to me like the issue is with the swathes of people choosing facism rather than progressives who chose not to vote.
Choosing how to act in a world like ours is tricky, anyone following a sense of right and wrong (even if I disagree with their judgement) instead of fear, hate, greed or whatever gets a gold star in my book.
Inaction is still a choice, though. I totally understand the sentiment behind that choice and even agree that we shouldn't be forced to choose genocide, but the alternative that we got is a man who not only wants the same genocide, but wants to accelerate it, put American boots on the ground to assist in it, and then turn the bloodied ground into resorts while also wanting to worsen life across the globe. So, by refusing to act, they didn't oppose that man getting into power. They cared so much about genocide that, ironically, they enabled making that genocide worse by not acting against that possibility.
The biggest issue, though, is with the people who couldn't be bothered enough to vote. Some, what, 40% of Americans never vote? Of course, there's plenty there who can't due to things like gerrymandering, but there's a huge swathe of white suburbanites who simply prefer the status quo to actually improving things.
by refusing to act, they didn't oppose that man getting into power.
you can refuse to vote for a Democrat and still oppose the man getting into power.
But thanks to the two party system, what effect does it have? And I'm specifically talking about the voting day of the presidential election here, not primaries or other elections. Because that's where those efforts will have the most impact. Not that the Dems deigned to give us even the illusion of a primary this election (or in 2016, truthfully), but so many of these people seem to shake their fist once every 4 years and then go to sleep like cicadas awaiting the next presidential election.
I don't blame people for hating the weak candidates that the Dems consistently push forward to maintain the old guards' leadership positions, but I do blame them for looking at the alternative and saying "I'm okay with the possibility of that man winning if I don't vote or vote third party." The chance of a Trump victory and all that it entailed was a line in the sand that they were willing to cross.
As a trans woman, I blame them for saying, "Your life is not worth biting the bullet for."
As a trans woman, I blame them for saying, “Your life is not worth biting the bullet for.”
I don't believe voting for Democrats is an effective way to save anyone's life.
The chance of a Trump victory and all that it entailed was a line in the sand that they were willing to cross.
that chance was thrust upon all of us. accepting reality doesn't make him acceptable.
Yet refusing to accept the reality of mathematics that showed that, in a FPTP system, not voting for a viable candidate opposing a fascist only helps the fascist is acceptable? Nah. The blood is on the hands of both dems and non-voters. Non-voters/protest voters don't give a fuck about trans people, as shown by their actions.
Non-voters/protest voters don’t give a fuck about trans people
prove it
Knowingly putting others lives at risk by refusing to do what is literally the least one can do, that is, voting in a strategic manner to prevent literal fascists who have repeatedly taken action against LGBTQ+ and made statements in support of committing genocide against them, POC, and people who are neurodivergent and/or impacted by mental illness is not what an ally does. It is an action that demonstrates that the non-voter/protest voter does not find vulnerable peoples' lives important enough to warrant the effort needed to climb down off of their pedestal of egotistical moral superiority to do meaningfully lend support to their fellow human beings' right to exist.
some of the people who refused to vote for Democrats are queer.
And the Log Cabin Republicans exist. And the Association of German National Jews existed. Thinking that one is special enough to not be subjected to the oppression that others will face just shows that they are ignorant of history in addition to the betrayal.
refusing to accept the reality of mathematics
support your claim
Suppose there are 10 people eligible to vote.
3 of them are known to support a fascist and will vote, no matter what. They have religious figures reminding them and pressuring them to vote for the fascist and watch propaganda daily that maintains their outrage and support.
1 of them is a big supporter of the neolibs and will vote for them no matter what.
1 of them is a pragmatic leftist who grudgingly will vote for the neolibs because there is no other viable choice.
1 of them is undecided either because they don't think fascism is that bad, or think it won't impact them, or don't consider how it could impact people who are not as privileged as them, etc.
The other 4 are:
-
2 who are too filled with apathy to care about voting
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1 who the fascists keep setting up artificial barriers for in order to prevent political engagement
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1 who is thoroughly indoctrinated in the cult of anti-electoralism
That's 6/10 eligible voting (in line with the proportion of eligible voters that voted in 2024).
Further, historical data shows that when fewer people vote, the fascists win because of their dedication to their cause and authority figures coaxing them to do so. This data is readily available in terms that are easy to comprehend, even for those without technical or scientific education.
So, the breakdown is:
Fascism: 3
Neolibs: 2 or 3
Coin toss on whether the fascists win, because, of those deigning to engage in the electoral system, one of them is not convinced that opposing fascism is really that big of a deal.
What about third parties? They don't matter in this but because it is first-past-the-post and only a majority of participating voters is required.
But, the majority of polled people support left-of-center policies! Why are we forced to vote for neolibs?! Doesn't matter. 4 out of 10 eligible voters are going to vote in support of right-of-center ideologies. If more eligible voters voted, that wouldn't be an issue and the voice of the majority would be heard. But, between apathy, voter suppression, and the anti-electoralist/accelerationist cult, 40% are not voting. And that's still "good" compared to the last half-century.
So, there you go. Barely even scratching statistics and simple to digest as to why voters who refused to do their duty to oppose fascism share the responsibility with the neolibs.
-
looking at the alternative and saying “I’m okay with the possibility of that man winning if I don’t vote or vote third party.”
whether I vote for Dems or no, I'm not ok with republican candidates.
Your comment's downvotes = how many profoundly stupid people who STILL haven't learned from their mistake there are out there.
Refusal to hold themselves accountable for their own actions/inactions is a trait they share with mainline MAGA.
I can't be accountable for other people's votes.
At the time I read your comment.
I feel a lot of people do a lot to justify stupid behaviour. "Saving is too hard" or "exercise is too hard". There's legit reasons to not be able to save, or exercise or being able to vote 🤨.
However there's a lot of bullshit that people were spouting. It's either a coordinated campaign or just dumb shit. What annoys me is everyone piling on Joe and then they did what people wanted and swapped to Kamala and they're still upset that the Dems "don't listen". Whatever, they're all full of it.
I fucking hate the Democrats but you have to be completely psycho to justify not-voting for them.
To be clear, I'm Canadian and I'm directly impacted by this now. So fuck all of those people.
Ahh. This bullshit trope from the class of people basically responsible for Trump winning the 2024 election.
Sorry, did you just blame the people who didn’t vote for Trump for being responsible for Trump being president? Interesting mental gymnastics there…
There are no mental gymnastics, and unless you've been absent in the debate since it began in 2023, it's been one conversation regarding the direction of the Democratic party, with effectively two camps.
The first camp, effectively taking the party line and acting as cheerleaders of the DNC, have taken a "No critisism of the Democratic Party is acceptable; voters need to move to the positions of the DNC" approach.
The second camp took a "The DNC needs to be better and acknowledge it's shortcomings, and make changes when necessary. The DNC needs to align itself with DNC voters and the party base."
The first camp, for the first 8 months of 2024, insisted we had to run Joe Biden. That there were no other possibilities, options, or potential outcomes. They defended the approach the DNC took to the primary process, which was by any measure, the least democratic primary they party had ever held.
The second camp raged at the preposterous farce which was the DNC primary. They pointed out that Bidens poll numbers were so bad he basically had no chance of winning. That by insisting on this losing strategy we were losing critical time.
Bans were made, here, regarding this debate. And the first camp was wrong. There was another way possible.
After the candidates were swapped the first camp further insured that people just needed to move to where the DNC was, after taking effectively a pro genocide, Republican lite campaign philosophy as an outcome of the convention.
The second camp pointed out that this would lose the DNC the election, that we needed our focus to be on moving the candidate to a more popular, more electable position.
The first camp won the argument and lost us all the war, because their fundamental belief in what is being argued and whom they are arguing with is wrong. The first camp is responsible for the millions of votes difference between Kamala and Biden, because they insisted on this losing strategy.
If false dichotomy was a person you'd be it
if you want to keep losing elections, keep at it.
I'm sure the first camp exists, but you should not imply that everyone who voted Democrat and wanted people to vote Democrat was that. I did that, and I encourage everyone to criticize their horrible decisions and actions, of which there are depressingly many.
I'd love it if we pressured them to not be quite as horrible, but at the same time I did not want the Republican party to win control because I knew they'd be worse for people in almost every way. And now, as a trans person, I have to worry about what I won't be allowed to do anymore, or how they'll try to make my life worse just for existing. Sending a signal or whatever you think Democrats losing does does not justify the new shit minorities will face now.
Sending a signal or whatever you think Democrats losing does does not justify the new shit minorities will face now.
I just want to point out, that you are making this about me as the rhetorician, when I haven't even weighed in with my position. Its not me you are arguing with when it comes to the application of strategy; its the millions of voters for whom them sacrificing their ideals to get a milquetoast Democrat, pro-genoicde, draconian border policy, democrat into office doesn't work.
This is about a basic understanding of how the table is set, and no amount of willing the environment one finds themselves in changes that. Its like '16 Hillary supporters whining about winning the popular vote. The people who were out their using the argument of "strategic voting" to shield the candidates deeply unpopular positions among democratic voters did real significant harm this election cycle. If your strategy doesn't or can't result in a specific outcome, can we really call it strategic?
My point is that the chiding of voters for not doing the job of the candidate is a way of morally washing ones hands of a strategy that genuinely hurt the candidates ability to get elected.
Yeah, I've given some thought to what I'll do in the next election cycle, and I just don't know. I can wish that people would think like me, but I've seen enough evidence from several elections that that's not gonna happen.
That makes me feel a bit hopeless, that we're doomed to the worst politicians winning and ratcheting the US further right, and that I will not be safe to live here for a long time. I know there's organizations I can get involved with, but I really struggle to commit time to anything, and I just feel isolated from everyone (yay social atomization). I think my best bet is giving up the fight and just leaving the country.
Makes sense; sow further division in the groups who don’t like Trump so there’s less opposition to him.
That division is much, much older. The beltway is full of people who benefit from corporations or come from wealthy families and are materially aligned against the working class, and their ideology reflects this. These people as a group stand to lose more from the democrats moving to the left and hurting the bourgeoisie than winning than staying in the middle and losing.
This is a common dynamic historically; liberals in power need the people to maintain power, but their interests aren't aligned with the people, so they pass policies that marginalize their own base of support, and so the conservatives take power and then do counterrevolution.
It's a very popular sentiment on Reddit and Lemmy, in my experience, to blame non voters as much as or even more than Trump voters.
That’s because the people who voted for Trump wanted Trump to win. The people who stayed at home who might not have wanted Trump to win assisted his win by not voting.
But you don't know who non voters would have voted for. A study of non voters in 2020 showed a near even split, so it's nothing but pointless speculation to blame people who didn't vote. And I say this as someone who actually supports compulsory voting. I just find it much more productive, and accurate, to lay blame on those who we do know, for sure, actually voted for this result.
Wait, this seems silly. You are in effect saying that it's wrong to blame those who stayed home because some of them would have voted for trump? Like, we'd still blame those people too had they actually voted trumo.
The blame isn't just because you voted for trump it is because you didn't try to stop him, which applies both to those who voted for him and those who didn't vote.
Those who blame the nonvoters for Trump winning are implying that had they voted, Trump would have lost. We cannot know that and I do not find it productive. Again, I actually am in favour of compulsory voting, so urging people to vote is a good thing that I'm very much for. But I'm not going to blame those who didn't vote for Trump for Trump winning.
Are you an llm? Most humans, instead of restating what they've already said, actually read the comment to which they are replying.
I did and replied in kind. No need to resort to insults. If you're not interested in continuing the conversation you don't have to reply. But it will probably just be in circles anyway, so good day.
In what way was your response meaningfully different from your original comment?
If we look at how people tend to lean the independents have a slight left lean t’s typically 55/45%.
Which is a fantastic way to get people to care more about politics </s>
Maybe getting rid of social security, freedom of speech, and the national parks will do the job.
did you just blame the people who didn’t vote for Trump for being responsible for Trump being president
That's what this meme does.
Imagine thinking 5 people on the internet caused Trump to win.
zuck, Elon, bezos.... those three are on the internet. got 2 more?
Why are we still talking about this? It's over, and we can't undo the results.