Voting is changing the Oil to keep the engine running
Voting is changing the Oil to keep the engine running
While Education and Organizing is building the parts for a new engine the rest of the year.
But people did vote for Hillary, IIRC, she won the popular vote by like 3 million votes.
So it wasnt a lack of voting that gave trump the presidency and repealed abortion rights. It was the mecanisms and institutions that are part of your electoral process and that only seem to exist in order to dilute your democracy (e. voting districts, electoral college) that gave trump the win.
Perhaps people would be more willing to vote if their voices were actually heard.
Similarly, if the DNC hadn't absolutely SCREWED my boy Bernie, we also wouldn't be in this complete shit-hole.
If Hilary hadn't been a pile of shit doing private speaking engagements for billionaires that were so hush hush that they set up massive white noise generating speaker systems, people would have voted for her.
if Hilary had set a fucking foot in some of the states she lost, people would have voted for her.
if Hilary didnt make stupid fucking comments, people would have voted for her.
Maybe if you stopped blaming voters, and blamed the shitty fucking candidates, someone less awful would have run, and won.
Well no. Hillary was a center-right candidate. If she wanted votes from progressives or left-wing voters, she knew exactly what to do. But she threw those votes away, relying on rhetoric like this post. We all saw it happening, and she did it anyway. What if she had pushed for universal health care, or unions, or campaign finance reform, or gun laws, or against wars? It would have been an exciting election.
I voted for the greater good in 2016 - in the Democratic primaries.
I voted for the lesser evil in the general election, then took a long hot shower.
Things would have certainly worked out better with a Hillary victory instead of the Trumpster fire we got.
This does not excuse the horseshit shenanigans that were going on within the DNC.
Copying and pasting my own comment from another thread:
If you want leftists to vote for dems, despite dems pissing on leftists at every possible chance and yelling at leftists to fall in line, I'll show you how.
-
Point out that voting will never, ever, ever move the democrat party to the left. You cannot vote the party harder to the left.
-
Point out that Republicans are going to remain fascists.
-
Point out that voting third party is a spoiler vote and will result in fascists winning.
-
Point out that the actual way to move to the left is to unionize and organize at the grassroots level, to apply bottom-up pressure on the top.
The answer is not to pretend that Biden is anything other than a Neoliberal Capitalist. Leftists will correctly point out that Biden is still a lukewarm neoliberal maintaining the status quo, and feel further alienated by being told they should love him anyways. That just encourages voter apathy.
Additionally, this meme is wrong. Leftists voted, it was the centrists and moderates that didn't. Hillary wasn't appealing in any way, so only the people who really cared voted. Hillary still won the popular vote, she just lost the electoral college, and Trump succeeded in riling up the fascist base. Do not blame Leftists for not falling in line for an extremely unlikable candidate, they did regardless. Blame Hillary for doing jack-shit to energize the base.
-
if Leftists had voted for Hillary in 2016 abortion would still be legal.
So, this really isn't true in any meaningful way. People like to make a big deal out of the 12% of Bernie voters who went for Trump, but the majority of them identified as conservatives or centrists, while only 18% identified as liberal or left-leaning. Likewise, a lack of turnout doesn't seem to be the issue; black voter turnout dropped, but not by an unexpected margin, and young voters (who tend to be more left-leaning) had very strong turnout. Finally, you could try to blame leftists who voted third-party, but analysis shows that even if every single Jill Stien voter had gone to Clinton, she still would have needed to win over 50% of Gary Johnson's voters (who were obviously unlikely to consider themselves leftists).
You might be able to get the numbers to work if you say that if every leftist who stayed home OR voted third-party OR went to Trump voted for Clinton she'd have won, but that's incredibly hard to prove and probably relies on some specious assumptions (for example, that every Green Party voter was a disgruntled Democrat). At that point, you're pulling so many different groups together under a single banner that it's basically meaningless. You might as well say if women had voted for Hillary abortion would be legal.
If the democratic party had put forth the best candidate, more people would have come out and voted. Maybe instead of pushing for voting for the less bad candidate, you put advocate voting for someone you actually like? The problem isn't left leaning people not voting for hillary. The problem is the systemic issues in the US voting system which only really allows a 2 party system and which can completely disregard the will of the populace by instead going through the electoral college system.
Hillary Clinton is better at motivating conservatives to vote against her than she is at motivating anyone else to vote for her.
I voted for her despite my distaste for her, after primarying for and making calls for Sanders against her. I cast my ballot like I was attending a funeral. But I did it. Out of least worst, water pumps on the Titanic time buying harm reduction. Polling place was a ghost town.
What was your excuse?
Better yet, you hate her so much, where were you during the primary? There was a significantly better option.
Leftists were absolutely not the problem unless Hilary lost most states. Independents, people in the middle, are usually the ones that are the important voters to win over. The rest of the info is correct. Don't shoot yourself in the foot that 1 important day, because the candidate isn't perfect.
🙄
This is SUCH a pointless thing to harp on. Take it up with the Republicans instead of the miniscule fraction of a percentage of leftist who didn't vote. Finger pointing at people who agree with you produces nothing.
I have seen some bad takes, but this one makes me want to power vomit.
"If Poliece voted for Hillary in 2016..."
Hillary Clinton is/was not obliged to anyones vote and should have run a better campaign to attract leftest by doing bare minimun actions like supporting trans people or election/education reform. She also could have chosen a different candidate for running mate rather then the complete personality void that she ended up with as a sop to some imaginary "moderate conservitive" that was simpathetic to humanity over their net worth.
But she didnt. I wish she ran a better campaign as well, we may have been better off with her in office in 2016, but the issues that trump brought into focus in our society were not caused by him. They have been here the whole time.
maybe instead of demanding the votes of the left you should earn them. Of course, this only really applies in systems where 2 parties dominate while other parties aren't really a credible option for most people, like the US, which in itself is a systemic flaw that should be addressed if you want a healthy democracy.
You don't get to blame people for not voting your candidate because "it was less bad than the other", if your whole point is being less bad than the other, rather than actually being good, then you're already losing and you should start looking at how to fix this issue before it gets worse. When turnout is lower than usual, like in 2016 in the US but also other elections like Italy in 2022, it means that democracy isn't healthy and there's a systemic problem which is leading to voters getting disillusioned, disengaged and disenfranchised from politics, which is extremely bad and should signal to you that "There's an issue! We need to fix it!" not that "Voters are so lazy/dumb/scum for not getting off their couch and voting [for me]".
Finally, I'd like to reiterate that if you keep asking leftists to vote for you at every election (to beat the other bad guys), yet every time you move further away from the left and/or disappoint leftists, eventually leftists will stop believing your bullshit and not vote you anymore, and you deserve that.
"whine ineffectually about it the rest of the time, but throw your unquestioning support behind our shitfuckery when we need it, no matter how bad we get"
How many more of these stinking, double-downer sideshows will we have to go through before we can get ourselves straight enough to put together some kind of national election that will give me and the at least 20 million people I tend to agree with a chance to vote FOR something, instead of always being faced with that old familiar choice between the lesser of two evils?
Hunter S. Thompson, 1972.
50 years.
Finn here. You guys can't let Trump win. Gaza will be even more fucked than now. Ukraine will be fucked, which will lead to all of Europe being fucked. Your own country will also be more fucked than now. I hate Biden too, but Trump will be a total nightmare.
I get the sentiment, but I don't owe anyone a vote. Voting for the lesser of two evils is one thing when it's someone useless like Obama, but the "good" option is balls deep in a genocide and destabilizing the world in his allegiance to another country. Not voting for the senile genocide guy is the least I can do.
I'll be the first to say it sucks. Despite busting the railway unions his NLRB was doing good shit. It really really sucks.
Counter point: If centrists had forced RBG to retire OR had they codified Roe into law in 2008 when Obama held the WH and the Democrats had the House and Senate... abortion would still be legal coast to coast.
I've held my disgusting leftist nose to "vote for the lesser of two evil" for two decades now. Shaming voters for having serious qualms with the Democratic Party's inaction on important issues isn't a good look for... the Democratic Party.
This is a fine attitude when you have to choose between eating the shit sandwich and the shards of glass. It's not so good during the primary, when you're deciding whether the first option will be a shit sandwich.
This is also not a good thing when it's weaponized to make sure that no genuinely progressive candidate can be realistic.
If Democrats had ever done anything to fight fascism instead of just enabling it literally for generations, we wouldn't need to defend abortion.
Edit: also, of course a liberal uses a car analogy. How much more accurate could you get than to relate the democratic party to a thing most Americans are forced to use against their will, that kills their children and destroys their future... With an incredibly racist history and only slightly less racist present.
Lol screw off. Hilary was as indecisive as Biden on pop issues, only benefit she would have brought would have been the SCOTUS appointment and it still would have been given to some corporate shill judges who happen to be very slightly "progressive" just like the current bum chief justice who deleted like half of citizen's rights for no reason.
This is also the same person who was very publicly exposed along with the DNC proving that primary voting is a complete scam in the USA.
Most leftists did vote for Hillary, even after Bernie got screwed over. She lost because none of the centrists voted at all and republicans voted slightly more.
Vote local, vote often, and try to help people be able to do the same. We'll get better candidates if and when we start voting them into smaller positions first. Republicans are generally more likely to vote locally, and this allows them to gerrymander the voting districts and control stuff from the local level up. Change your town and state officials to be more progressive, and they'll support more progressive policies and politicians at higher levels of government.
It’s Bernie’s fault!
Oh, they did vote for her. So much so that everyone thought she won until the final count.
But she decided to call everyone not voting for her a terrible human being by default and they voted to spite her.
The lesson to take away is pretty obvious.
Electoral College ensures my vote for president doesn't matter.
When corporate lobbyists completely control the only two viable parties, then voting is rearranging the deck chairs on the titanic.
Voting is changing the Oil to keep the engine running
Unfortunately, its the Torment Engine from the Sci Fi classic novel "Don't Build The Torment Engine", and its slowly crawling across the country sucking people up into its maw and eviscerating them.
But hey, someone's got to change the oil on this thing, and it keeps you from being on the business end (most of the time). Better keep our national Roko's Basilisk running smoothly, lest it turn its gaze upon thee.
If only the Democrats with Obama encoded abortion rights like everyone screamed at them to do when they had full control of everything.
But it was too good a carrot to make people scared for the Repooblicans and force them to vote Democrat.
Also Genocide Joe wanted to get rid of abortion rights in the past. He's probably glad it's gone even though he's acting like he's sad about it:
"I do not view abortion as a choice and a right. I think it's always a tragedy, and I think that it should be rare and safe, and I think we should be focusing on how to limit the number of abortions. And there ought to be able to have a common ground and consensus as to do that," Biden, who was a Democratic senator for Delaware at the time, said in the video.
Seeing as the biggest problem facing the world right now is that there are too many internal combustion engines, you should probably come up with a better metaphor.
I did vote for Hillary and it did nothing. Move on honey.
Abortion is still legal in the United States? Several states have enacted state laws restricting it.
What a loser post. I've voted for the lesser evil before and Duterte won anyway. Then I voted on principle and Marcos won anyway. Votes for Leody de Guzman did not have a spoiler effect on the lesser evil candidate Leni Robredo.
They did...
You can't have a woman for president, after a person of color or the assholes will think you're too woke.
But the radio is on the wrong station!! I can’t participate to keep the motor running unless changing the station is top priority.
if Democrats had voted for Jill Stein, she would have won. the margin of victory was less than the votes stolen by Democrats splitting the left.
that's not what harm reduction is.
i live in indiana. my vote for the presidency literally does not matter
3rd party 2024 and end the MIC's illusion of choice
I would rather have a candidate everyone knows is bad than continue to slip into a worse and worse state
Tell your handlers that for this farce to continue you must concede us a win occasionally. Practice what you preach. Incremental progress. Min wage increase here, universal healthcare there.
As it stands now all you fuckers do is lie. Lie and wag your fingers at people who know how the system works better than you do.
Thats the compromise. We accept your lukewarm, limpwristed, milquetoast bullshit in exchange for incremental progress. But you've offered no progress. When challenged even slightly you sprint for votes from the right which only leads to you losing elections and further alienating those to the left of fucking Reagan.
Those Republicans you're courting despise you and will never support you in meaningful numbers. They're comfortable and only care about 2 things. Property Values and Taxes.
