Yeah, but sometimes that really is enough
Not enough for voters who are undecided about whether to vote or not.
Democrats win when turnout is high. It's not enough to be better than the opponent, to win they must beat apathy.
The two current candidates are so far apart the people who claim to be undecided are ignorant or stupid, willingly or otherwise. I'd understand riding the fence between Biden and Bernie, even if I've made my choice between them, but between Trump and Biden?
That's the kind of person who is undecided if they want to drive to work or walk down the middle of i-95
Well I hope that goes the right way for you over there.
What’s your position?
“Not a fascist dictator that openly wants to kill democracy.”
Honestly, no. In Turkey the opposition used that strategy since 2002 and lost every single vote, except the last local elections where they finally decided to do things a little differently (+ the financial crisis). If your only selling point is "not being the other guy" then your whole election campaign is basically an advertising for the other guy.
The entire premise is BS because Biden has a list of accomplishments from infrastructure to debt forgiveness, progressive drug guidance, progress in gender/race equality, departments like the ftc and irs being competently run again with actual resources, to judge appointments. Hmm I wonder to who's benefit it is to ignore all that and label him "not Trump"?
Stop thinking that you vote "for" someone in a FPTP system. You don't. You vote against the guy you don't like.
It sucks, and I hate it, but don't delude yourself into thinking otherwise. We're playing a badly-designed game with a shitty controller and we're only allowed to press a button once a year at best.
Think Twitch Plays Pokemon, but with a lot more trolls and no moderation. There will be a constant stream of people voting to do something stupid and destructive, so you spend all of your time voting against them.
Oh, and their votes count for more, so they can win even if there's fewer of them. All we can ever hope to do is try to stop them and hope they don't fuck everything up and give themselves even more power before the next time we're allowed to pick a move.
Yay America. Greatest democracy in the world right there.
Both Democrats and Republicans have a vested interest in keeping the system as it is. They won't change it unless citizens make them change it.
Honestly I'm kind of losing hope that it's even possible at this point.
Positive change in the American system usually comes from the bottom up. If you're interested in fixing the system, the first step is to switch your local elections to Approval Voting, probably through a referendum. There's a whole bunch of reasons, and lots of second and third steps, but that's the first one.
It is impossible. Most people don't see a problem with this. Especially the trolls who have more power than they should.
The only time things have even marginally changed in the US there's been violence. Civil rights, suffrage, the labor movement, ending slavery: All of them required thugs cracking skulls before they could happen.
So unless we have about 10% of the population willing to put themselves in harm's way we're stuck like this.
"Well, that's not a very enticing platform! Who is your opponent?"
"Donald Trump."
"You have my vote."
I think it's interesting folks take this as talking about Biden.
Biden has a platform, Biden and the Democrats have accomplishments ... what does Trump and the last decade of Republican congressional dominance have?
"DEMOCRATS ARE DESTROYING THIS COUNTRY!!" "HEALTHCARE IS A MESS!! I'VE GOT A BRILLIANT PLAN I DIDN'T PASS OR EVEN PROPOSE IN CONGRESS LAST TIME. WE'RE GOING TO GET IT DONE THIS TIME. IT WILL BE SO MUCH BETTER THAN WHAT THE DEMOCRATS CAME UP WITH. NO I'M NOT SHARING IT NOW, YOU MUST BE SURPRISED." "I MADE MY RICH FRIENDS MONEY!!"
They have Project 2025 and it's horrifying.
Well, when you make your name into a brand, then mark your followers with the same, and your brand is a plague on the world... yeah, that kinda is enough. I'd vote for an off-cut of shit-smeared shag carpet if it meant I could rest easy knowing that the next wave of vomit being spewed on Twitter wasn't directed at some of the most vulnerable and under represented peoples on the planet. And if you are wondering if I'm purposefully being ambiguous about to whom I refer, let me sate your curiosity and call former President Trump the cunt he is. Trump is a cunt.
Pretty fucking relevant in this thread it seems.
You know the US does this too, right?
But unironically also vote for Biden. I wish there was more acknowledgement that there has to be some way to pressure a candidate to earn votes, being much less bad isn't going to get the 50k low info swing voters that decide the election
When the opponent is Trump, isn’t that exactly the right thing to do?
FYI: Most of those braindead “am I not allowed to criticize Biden???” comments and posts on social media are a concerted effort by right-wingers from /pol and other such sewers, trying to get people to not vote against Trump. Don’t fall for it. These aren’t “lefties” or “tankies”. Just downvote, report, and ignore.
This year, that is exactly enough for me to vote for “not his opponent.”
I mean... I usually agree with the sentiment the comic is trying to convey, but OTOH the "My Opponent" in this case is Trump.
In a system where all the non-winning votes are lost in a step and not counted at the end, like the USA form of weak democracy, this becomes a valid tactic.
It's not only the presidential vote that's like this, but ALL fucking votes. It's astonishing how weak the US system is.
And still some see the US constitution as this pinnacle of democracy when it's vastly outdated by now
Even the founding fathers anticipated a lot of reforms and for the whole thing to become obsolete quite soon but yet here we are with people worshipping them as this infallible being and weighting their words on a scale as if it's impossible for them to be wrong
So to be honest the #1 reason I'm voting Biden by far is that he's not Trump. But if you want another reason, how about that he finally stuck it to TurboTax and created a free federal tax filing system?
Biden has done a LOT more than just fucking up turbo tax's should-be criminal racket.
First US president to join the union workers ON THE PICKET LINE In many ways we have handled this world-wide inflation shit better than any other in the G7 nations Unemployment numbers are at record lows, .01 lower than any other time in the past 10 years at one point in january and april of last year and since then has only risen around 0.3-4 points
I could go on and on, but instead, others have already done so for me:
https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2024-opinion-biden-accomplishment-data/
https://www.whitehouse.gov/oneyear/
I CAN'T FUCKING BELIEVE how fucking often I hear this goddamn BULLSHIT about how Biden is simply "not trump" and hasn't done much, like holy fucking Christ.
If ANYTHING, Biden should be over-commended given that he accomplished all of this with THE MOST CHAOTIC AND DO-NOTHING congress EVER.
I’m hearing this a lot lately too. Not from the Biden campaign, mind you. Just as a straw man in memes and comments in spaces like this.
No you aren't. You're being told that this is all that's happening, but you aren't going to look for yourself.
Add a smarmy attitude and this is an exact representation of Pierre Polievre, opposition leader in Canada and likely to become the next PM
20+ years in politics (has never had another job outside of politics) and has only 1 bill under this name to show for (it was a bill to make voting harder)... and in over 2 years as opposition leader, he has yet to utter a single concrete idea other than "I'm not Trudeau"
Depending on the opponent that's all I need to hear.
We are seeing this in full effect from the opposition party in Canada. They don't have a platform or anything except they aren't Justin Trudeau. That's all they have but it's working as in Canada we vote out governments of power, and not into power.
The current government has been in office for 8 years now and much like Biden is at fault for so many things in the world, our guy is too. At times I lose the thread on which one is a fault though... But yes I'm assured he's to blame for everything wrong in their lives...
It would be nice to one time not having to vote for the lesser of two evils.
lazy to find a link to the south park clip:
"Everyone, I would be a terrible president, vote for Hillary, she has experience"
~ "My opponent is a liar and cannot be trusted"
And this is how that fucker won.
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