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this post was submitted on 13 Oct 2023
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Voting for the lesser of two evils is still voting evil. It's allowed this country to continue to slip AS A WHOLE in the wrong direction.
Logically? It's actually not. Democrats are still not alt right facists even if this bill is based in stupidity.
A third party right now can't mathematically win, and the thing is with the current Republican party (which is basically our Nazi party) if you vote for a third party at this point, you are outright throwing your vote to the nazis.
So, yes- it shouldn't ideally work like this, but in reality, does. And not voting Democrat right now or voting third party means voting for Republicans, which is even riskier, and arguably, voting for an even greater evil given Republicans have our Supreme Court packed right now and we can't afford to lose it any elections from here forward.
I'd argue many democrats don't support progressive policies. I'd argue many of them are where they are from straight ticket voting. If dems could actually move the needle on policy impacting the general population noticeably, far right repubs wouldn't stand a chance. Instead you have a huge percentage of the population refusing to even participate in elections because they think it's a waste of time. Voting for any and every dem just cause they're a dem sends the message their current policies and performance has been acceptable.
You also have to ask yourself: why do we have a populace that might vote for a party that will do literally zero for them and will impose a dictatorship (Republicans) vs. a party that has actually passed some decent legislation despite barely having a majority (Democrats).
Democrats aren't perfectly progressive, it's true. It's annoying, but at least still keeping our democracy to gradually change things over time is the logical thing to do and not the emotional one, I guess is what I'm saying.
And we have gotten progressive Democrats in FYI. We just need to add more of them in state races.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/nov/09/democrats-progressive-candidates-races-wins-midterms-congress
Trump's presidency was incredibly damaging. The propaganda is incredibly damaging. It isn't going to be easy but it's gonna take some time.
For me, I’m considering not voting for certain Dems if they make it because they were willing to throw marginalized people under the bus. I get negotiating is negotiating, but with Biden leaving train workers out to dry, flip flopping on immigrant rights, quietly making life harder for trans athletes, and now with his support of Israel’s government and its treatment of Palestine… At some point I have to have my own boundaries about what I am willing to publicly support. I get not everyone has the same ethics as me, but I don’t know that many people who would actively go against their ethics intentionally.
Edited cause I accidentally skipped a word
As someone from Scandinavia, I've wondered for quite some time but been too scared to ask; How has Trump's presidency actually damaged anything? Did he actually do anything worse than the previous presidents, except being super blunt at speeches? (Honest question, sorry if I sound like a supporter of any political party <3 )
It’s a long list, but the long lasting bit was his incompetence and failure to fully staff the government made it impossible to function properly. Note, federal government workers are located nationwide, not just the capitol. Plus with the top secret docs he stole, some of which had information on the nuclear capabilities and defenses of one of “our” (US) allies, that’s a whole other mess.
As for the consequences, that’s still panning out. Lots of fraud cases, for example. Some think Hamas was able to attack, because it was Israel’s defenses that were in the leaked secret documents, but that has not been confirmed and is just gossip.
Denying the existence of the pandemic until it was already bad here led to way more people dying than what was unavoidable.
That’s not even touching on the amount of debt he accrued, foreign policy dealings, or general behavior.
No shame in asking. Half of Americans pay no attention to voting at all, and many here would ask the same if not so emotionally intense a subject.
Thanks for a well thought out answer! It clears things up for me :)
Happy to help 🙂
Let's put it this way: you have one vote against the worst popular evil by voting for the other evil. So your vote is still necessary to keep the worst one at bay.
If you don't vote or you use your vote for any other reason, one of the two big parties is still going to fill that seat. So your power in this situation is very limited.
If you don't want a Democrat in that office, vote Republican.
If you don't want a Republican in that seat, vote for the Democrat candidate.
Do anything else and one of the two above will take the post.
(Some local elections in the US have been improved from FPTP so you may have better options in those.)
Devil's advocate: if total number of votes drop enough, then maybe a third political party might step up enough because they see there is enough potential voters who aren't voting for D or R. Or maybe it will signal to more candidates like Bernie Sanders to run under existing parties instead of the run of the mill ones.
The closest we ever got was Ross Perot, who ran a huge third-party campaign and seemed to be talking sense at the time. He even had long-running infomercials about how he planned to set the Reagan-Bush economy back on track.
You can look up the elections of 1992 and 1996 and see how that worked out.
The problem now is that a Republican president along with a Republican congress would likely be able to neuter federal elections entirely, so that you would only get Republicans in federal office. Period. If they're feeling extra fashy they might imprison (and execute) Democratic politicians, and then criminalize left wing rhetoric the way they're trying to criminalize drag queens. Note that George W. Bush had an both the House and Senate on his side when he came into office, hence he went far-right distressingly fast, considering his compassionate conservative campaign image.
So your vote to slow down the rise of the white Christian nationalist movement and the authoritarian takeover (led currently by SCOTUS) is more important than trying to get a third party candidate into office. Especially since your third party guy even if he's a Jimmy Carter x 11 principled statesperson is not going to be able to get much done without cooperation from the other parties to get laws passed. And they are still beholden to corporate interests. So getting a single third party dude into office is still only a tiny step forward.
The US system is (and always was) as fucked as this sounds. Look up Professor Larry Lessig and his TED talks in which he discusses the degree of corruption of the federal government. Sadly, all the long term solutions are likely to be outpaced by the climate crisis unless the public finds a way to threaten the power and legitimacy of our officials.
Accelerationist begone