Why is it always ‘voters need to lower their standards’, and never ‘candidates need to be decent human beings’?
Because we have an unjust voting system, and petulantly refusing to vote can and will get people killed, and rights stripped from millions.
Why do you only frame the issue in terms of the voters’ responsibilities, and never in terms of the candidate’s responsibilities?
Why aren’t the politicians the ones who need to make hard choices? Why can’t they get wedged on the issues for once?
Because that’s not the reality or the America that we live in. Every time a truly leftist candidate tries to run, they get slapped down by the majority of the DNC’s voting base.
This is a center-right, Pro-Capitalist country with a center-right, pro-capitalist population. You don’t have to like it, I certainly don’t, but that’s the reality.
Without ranked choice voting, there is no way in hell an actual leftist will ever appear anywhere on a presidential ballot.
So hold your nose, put on your big boy pants, and vote for the lesser of two evils with the rest of us, because if you don’t the fucking Nazis will win again.
Because the candidates do have those responsibilities, but have shirked them. Ideally, we’d want a better voting system, that didn’t mathematically garuntee that only two viable parties emerge, so that when the politicians refuse to use their power as they should, people who will may be chosen instead, but we don’t have that, and changing that is a long and difficult process that only gets harder if the more authoritarian types get power anyway. If you’re in a lifeboat with holes, and there are two people that have rigged things so that one of them is going to be in charge, and one wants to stop bailing out water and the other wants to scoop it back into the boat, then even though those two aren’t following their responsibilities, it doesn’t mean you should stop bailing the water out, because it has to get done by somebody or you drown. And if you have a say in which of the two is in charge, the guy that just wants to sit there uselessly is still the option you must pick, because at least they aren’t trying to undo the progress you’re making. Ideally you’d want to figure out how to undo the rigged system too, but you have to deal with the water first, lest you all drown fighting over who’s in charge.
Because voting has very limited choice and a winner takes all mechanism. Ob-fucking-viously the candidates should be better, but not voting won’t make that change. Trump elected will just make this worse.
Voting is harm reduction.
If you want to make things better and promote your own idealised society, get involved, donate to causes you consider to be up to your standards. But even then getting involved and convincing future candidates will be much harder if Trump is elected than if it’s Harris.
Because when you let perfect become the enemy of good, you end up with neither.
It’s literally named the Nirvana Fallacy and yet people double down on it like it’s the best decision they’ve ever made.
Who is the best alternative to Harris right now? Do I think she’s perfect? No. Do I think she’s the best alternative to Trump? Yes. We don’t have a super progressive candidate that stands a chance of winning in this race, we picked Biden in the primary, he stepped back and now we have Harris. The system sucks, but that’s what we have until voters put candidates in place to change the system.
That’s not the question.
The question should be what choice does Harris have, except to stop Israel?
If (as I strongly agree) trump is the worst human on the planet who will cause irreparable damage to :gestures wildly: fucking everything, then why doesn’t his opponent have the responsibility to do whatever the hell it takes, within the law to keep him out of power?
Especially as in this instance his opponent is currently sworn to be responsible for the ongoing welfare of the nation.
Imagine being so fucking intent on enabling genocide half a planet away that you’d rather let your own country fall into the hands of Camacho Harkonnen rather than attract progressive voters.
I’m under the impression there are more votes to lose by not appearing to stick with Israel than there are votes to lose by not attempting to intervene. At least, that’s what the party appears to have assessed.
Because voters choose their own behavior but not the candidates’ positions.
This really can’t be the first time you’ve heard of changing the things you can and accepting things you can’t change.
