This is the most horrible way to convince people to vote with you. I, personally, would tell you to go fuck yourself if I weren’t already voting for Harris. Please stop that. You need to convince people why they should vote for your candidate by showing them the difference, not this “or else” bullshit. and if they are not convinced, you let it go. People are free with their damn votes.
Trump’s track record and intentions for his next term are crystal clear. They are clearly and demonstrably worse than harris’plans or Biden/harris’ previous term.
That info is widely available. To ignore it now, and claim to need “convincing” is madness at best, or bad faith at worst.
I already wasn’t going to vote for Trump, so threatening me with him doesn’t make me want to vote for Democrats, it makes me want both parties to lose.
No offense but taking it as “threatening” and not understanding that I’ve of them WILL win is comically short sighted.
Folks aren’t trying to find someone a date, they’re explaining the consequences of a FPTP election with limited possible outcomes.
Needing to be handled with kid gloves is privileged
Convincing people to vote isnt a goal. Liberals, specifically US liberals have this compulsion to fingerwag at anyone who doesnt listen to their self important wankery. Irregardless of the repeated lies, policy failures, lies, can kicking, goal post moving, lies, etc.
Every election is “This is the most important election of our lives” and “Now is not the time” and “When we win we can do [insert obvious thing that desperately needs to happen]”
People buy the lies, vote for their corporate appointed vanguard candidate. Then realize they were lied to. That “The Right Time” was never going to happen. They get jaded or just check completely out of politics after the Xth election of being lied to. And its always on those people to “Save Democracy” every election. The lies and shit policies are entirely blameless. Its always the fault of those who question.
I for instance according to liberals am an EVIL Trump voter. Even though I haven’t voted since 2016 and wont vote until dems make universal healthcare happen. That’s my singular demand currently. But its a hard line. A team of wild horses couldn’t drag me to the polls until that happens. Now I will never vote for republicans. They’re evil. Period. They’re a known quantity. They will only ever do the worst possible thing. List of options, they will 100% choose the one that harms the greatest number of people, their own included. I demand the Democrats be better, which makes me a heinous villain of the highest order.
I like your view on this. This is basically how I do and look at it, but this time I had to make an exception, because Trump is actually horrible and I can’t just sit it out even thought I hate the Democrats just as much as the Republicans. This time, I will have to fall for this fear mongering because, again, Trump is horrible and can’t be elected again. Next election when he fucks off, I’m sitting out until my demands are met.
“Or else” isn’t bullshit when it comes from the perspective of anyone who actually has something to lose if Trump wins.
Everyone who is on the fence or doesn’t feel like they need to vote are just speaking from positions of privilege because they don’t personally have as much on the line. I just find it hard to sympathize with that perspective.
But the same thing can be said for the people ignoring the faults of Kamala…
Especially when they’re just begging for an end of genocide, or fracking destroying their communities, or any other of multitude issues where Kamala and Trump have the same policies even though the majority of the Dem voting base disagrees with them.
It seems odd to act like the “high road” is the one where genocide is ok, when we could just have someone who was anti-genocide…
There’s fall less people willing to hold their noses to vote for genocide and fracking than the other way around. And very few people who are only voting for Kamala because her border, genocide, and fracking policies are the same as Trump’s.
The people that want that are still voting trump, if they told you that it would change your mind…
I hate to break it to you, but they lie about this shit all the time so even if they lose they win.
It’s actually sad that you would talk about privilege. That may apply to some people. What if for example your cousin is living in Palestine? What then? What privilege do you have? If you vote for Harris, you’re guaranteed more of the same.
The privilege that you have is that you don’t have family members dying from policies that Harris endorses. And I think Trump would be even worse, so there’s a practical argument that people should vote for Harris anyway, but that’s a tough sell if it’s your immediate family or your best friends who are in the literal crosshairs.
I’m just sorry to say, but the situation in Palestine is not up for vote right now. This election will not change that outcome, short of keeping the “finish the job” candidate out of office while maybe the more reasonable of the two can eventually decide to do the right thing.
If none of the “other stuff” that is actually up for vote matters to people, though, then those people aren’t allies and apparently don’t care if they end up living under a christofascist regime that won’t need elections anymore.
Everyone who is on the fence or doesn’t feel like they need to vote are just speaking from positions of privilege because they don’t personally have as much on the line. I just find it hard to sympathize with that perspective.
I agree with your first sentence, but honestly your second sentence doesn’t matter. No one has the right or ethical high ground to command or threaten another person to vote the way they want, regardless of whether they sympathize with that person’s position.
Actual Trump voters, many of whom are voting against their own best interests as well as yours and mine, have the right to make their uninformed/hateful/self-harming/selfish (pick one or more as applicable) vote, and so do folks whose vote we disagree with for other reasons.
We all think our reasons for voting the way we are (including abstaining) are valid, and at the level of the voting booth it seems to me that we have to respect everyone else’s as valid even when we don’t feel they are.
If we do not do so, I don’t see how that doesn’t lead to either:
a) commanding another to vote as you desire
or
b) thought policing people
I find either of those to be unacceptable for any purpose.
My perspective is that no one has the right to infringe on the rights of others, and to me any act that facilitates Trump entering the white house creates a greater infringement on human rights than any vote that facilitates Harris.
These are things that shouldn’t even need to be decided by an election, they should just be codified and not up for vote at all, but here we are.
Not an American, but yikes does this have “Vote with us… Or else!” vibes.
That’s not to say I support Trump, but I personally don’t think this is the way to convince fence-sitters at all.
And it’s crazy how normal Americans think this two party system is. It’s like no matter how bad you think your guy is, you have to vote for them because the other side is worse. They always talk about the Labour Party and the Tories as if they think they’re carbon copies of the Democrats and the Republicans and project all their issues into them. They don’t seem to realise there’s like five or six other parties that get a considerable number of votes and have representation in Parliament.
It is normal in FPTP voting systems. If you are going to vote in a national election in a FPTP system. Especially one with our electoral college system. But aren’t looking to explicitly throw your vote away. And you aren’t okay with open fascists winning. When things are this close. Yeah there really is no conscionable choice. Unless you happen to live in a state so safe your vote truly could never matter. Like california. Which even that would be unwise. And is especially at a place for anyone from there to tell people elsewhere how to vote. Since they don’t have the same privilege.
This is dishonest. You put all the onus of losing to trump on progressives and act powerless, when Kamala changing just one policy would guanatee progressive support in large numbers. We’re not buying it. She’s the one advocating a policy that has no place in a democratic party platform, and would be extreme and risky even for a far right republican platform.
It’s exactly the kind of thing that feels good to say, but doesn’t convince anyone at all. Which is why Republicans keep winning despite ideas that should be extremely unpopular. They tie themselves to emotions about masculinity and patriotism and paint the other side as a source of disgust and fear. While Democrats look at people who support or don’t seem eager to stop Trump and say angry things at them, which just makes them not want to help Demcorats.
The “I’m voting, are you?” argument featuring nutty alt-right Maga crazies is far better because it says “hey, you can help stop this nutjob.”
But it’s literally how it works in the USA with voting. It shouldn’t, but it DOES.
I mean, yeah? Have you looked around? The or else is getting pretty bad.
Also I want to keep adding it’s not just Trump, he’s just a pawn. This is Republicans, not Trump. If row did anything hopefully it opened up some eyes to realize they have been on message for a long damn time. Dems should take note.
The American neoliberal experiment started in 1992 when Bill Clinton was president…
The prior (edit: Dem, obviously) president was Jimmy Fuckin Carter…
How do you think the Overton Window has moved since Carter?
We can’t afford to keep going with a strategy that clearly hasn’t worked for 30+ years…
The really bad part is when you see how they react when people point out Kamala moving to the left would guarantee trump loses…
Moderates have been doing this since Bill Clinton 30+ years ago.
They always claim nothing else matters but beating Republicans, and use any excuse to move the party right. When voters complain the politician doesn’t match the party, we get the above.
They’d rather trump win then progressives, so they point a gun at everyone’s head and say it’s our fault if they have to pull the trigger.
Hell, in 08 with Obama they did pull the trigger. PUMA movement had them voting R instead of Obama. It’s just despite controlling the party, they are a statistically insignificant amount of voters.
A few months ago all these people called us trump supporters for making the (still true) statement that Kamala has a better chance than Biden, and they were all saying Kamala would be a terrible candidate and only Biden can win.
They’ll say anything in the moment with no regards to what just came out of their mouths.
Entirely agree. The people responsible for trump getting votes are the people voting for Trump.
Tactical voting is bullshit of the highest order and the undeniable sign of a fucked up political and voting system, not some sort of political astuteness.
If your voting system can’t allow people to express their true choice, you should throw it away. Yes, that means the majority of voting systems around the world are bad and need to be changed. Getting people to recognise that this is even an issue in the first place is a huge battle.
Only one party has implemented ranked choice while the other has fought against it. That would be a great first start.
That’s not quite the case. Ranked choice voting is resisted by whichever party has a comfortable majority in any given state where it is on the ballot. That’s why it failed when it was on the ballot in Massachusetts during the previous presidential election, because it is a reliably blue state and ranked choice voting would only serve to disrupt that status quo.
I still voted in favor of it, but that’s how it went down.
I’m not speaking from a place of facts, but I think the sentiment is if you don’t purposefully vote for someone within the two-party system that isn’t Trump, your vote will mathematically be a negative towards votes against Trump.
Not voting/third-party vote = one less vote against Trump/more possible votes for Trump
The “or else” is you will be remembered as the Trump supporter that you are. That’s not a threat.
This is the trolley problem. There are people on the track who will die if you don’t pull the lever. You stand and watch them die and declare, “I didn’t put the train on the track. It’s not my fault.”
Yes, I understand the sentiment. But the tone is off. Sounding like fascists or Marxist Leninist should be the last thing anyone should be aiming for.
More people should be aiming to be Marxists, don’t know why you’re trying to draw an equivalence between Marxists and fascists that doesn’t exist. You should read Blackshirts and Reds, Communists and fascists have served entirely different classes, the fascists served the bourgeoisie while the Marxists served the proletariat, and funded anti-colonial and anti-Imperialist movements the world over (including funding the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine).
Abstaining or voting 3rd party to “make Dems listen” doesn’t work. If anyone thinks they can play Mexican Standoff, you can’t because the Dems have an out: the center voter. Every time they lose, they go to the center to find voters.
And remember they need all 3 of presidency, house of representatives, and senate to pass pretty much anything. If they don’t have all 3 they will go to the center to find voters. Some people call this rachet effect, but really they’re looking for voters. Want them to stop ‘racheting’? Then give them consistent and overwhelming victories.
I’ve thought about that recently.
In Germany, the 2 historically biggest parties were SPD (used to be liberal-democrat) and CDU (conservative) and they often were the ones tugging it out while the smaller parties were filling in as coalition partners for one or the other.
Over time, the SPD splintered into several semi-big offshoot parties (Linke, for example) while the CDU stayed as a whole. As a result, CDU is now commonly a favorite for getting most votes in an election.
Is that consistent with politics across the globe? And if, why do liberal or center parties tend to split up more than conservatives?
Because conservatives gravitate towards authority, and progressives are looking to break the status quo.
So conservatives value order, authority, and it causes them to fall in line.
Progressives are looking to break that order, believing that things can be better than they are right now. That causes them to infight more often.
I commonly hear the left is a loose coalition of factions (which can split apart), while the right fall in line. I think there are fewer factions on the right, or the factions are not as far apart, so coming together is easier. They also unite in absolute hatred of the left, so will fall in line to slay that beast.
100% agreed regarding coalitions, unfortunately centrists dont seem to know they are in a coalition, or that the party even has a platform. They are so spooked by trump that they will do or say anything to win. Anything.
Centrists on this thread today accuse Progressives of being members of the far right as a ploy to hide the fact that they are the ones pushing far right policies themselves. The centrists are much closer to being republicans anymore than they are to adhering to the traditional democratic party platform. Real Democrats wouldnt risk the drinking water of the whole continent to enable more fracking to big oil company donations. They wouldnt be ok with more school shootings to pander to the NRA donations (especially when the NRA is heavily infiltrated by Russia). And they wouldnt sponsor and enable a far rightwing genocidal war in the middle east – pitting us against the entire rest of the world-- to draw foreign lobbying donations. But American progressives are somehow willing to swallow every bit of that traitorous behavior except one to get over the finish line together, whereas centrists are willing to change not a single damn thing to win, and proceed to whine and threaten.
Counterexample: The European Parliament. IMHO, it looks like 4 right-wing groups, 2 left-wing ones and 2 centrist ones. While the exact positioning could be argued over, the right wing is quite certainly more fragmented than the left is.
Dems need all 3 (presidency, house of reps, Senate) to do pretty much anything. They’ve had that for [drumroll please] 4 out of the last 24 years. Or 6 of the last 32 years. Or 6 of the last 44 fucking years.
They’ve had that for [drumroll please] 4 out of the last 24 years
It was significantly shorter than that when you consider Senate control to be 60, which is what’s needed to bypass the fillibuster.
Dems need all 3 (presidency, house of reps, Senate) to do pretty much anything.
Thats not how politics works buddy. If what you said were true neither the dems or republicans would have passed any bills in the history of the “republic”. Clearly theres also horse trading, and bribery/lobbying you are pretending dont exist in order to make this weak point.
This is an incorrect framing of the situation. You aren’t being asked for a Yes/No vote on Democrats. You are being asked if you prefer Democrats or Republicans. Or for this election, if you prefer Democracy or Fascism. If you vote “no preference”, that does not communicate “I prefer the Democrats, but want them to move further left”, either logically or politically.
There are lots of ways to communicate desired policy changes: letter-writing, primaries (including campaigning/funding for candidates), protests, marches, press, social-media, etc. Voting against your interest is not one of them.
You are being asked if you prefer Democrats or Republicans.
I understand why you’d say this. But you arent trying to understand why people are trying to pressure the dem leadership to be better.
The more elections the far right loses, the more the overton window shifts to the left.
Democrats move further right to get votes from the center but when they win it’ll go left trust me bro
I dont think thats true all the time. as we have seen with Biden, If a dem president is a centrist or far right for a dem, it shifts the entire party and the judiciary rightward. These things have monentum.
So I’d say its not simply the “D” that matters in overton shift. It also sets the topics in the political conversation, and either strengthens the party for the next election or leaves it in shattered and misaligned, like we are now about the unpopular far right wing genocide being pushed by a democratic US presidential administration.
I live in a red state, and the Democratic Party cannot even get enough warm bodies to ruin for every office here. The Libertarians do better with their candidates than the Democrats.
And remember they need all 3 of presidency, house of representatives, and senate to pass pretty much anything
The odds of Democrats keeping the Senate seem dismal. So it sounds like we’re giving the party license to do nothing for another two years
I like how you twist that to “party license”. If the people voters vote that way, that is the will of the people voters. Don’t like it? Vote. For Dems. (Though the GOP bear some responsibility being obstructionist pos.)
If the
peoplevoters vote that way, that is the will of thepeoplevoters.
Sorry 50M Californians, but 40k West Virginians decided to go a different way. Guess this means no civil rights for another two years.
so you think if we vote for them no matter what they do, they will start representing our wishes out of the goodness of their hearts, instead of Aipac’s who come to them with palletloads of cash? Thats… an interesting theory.
First, again, they go to the center when they lose. If they don’t lose, they don’t need to go to the center to find voters.
Second: They will do what people voters want. That is the whole point, voters. Right now the voters are voting for brutally slow progress. That’s what they get when they give Dems control of all 3 for only 4 years every 24 years. Want faster progress? Then be the voters that vote for faster progress by giving Dems consistent and overwhelming victories.
In addition to that, I really think Dems want left policy. They do it when they can despite it costing them elections. According to your logic they would never have done the ACA, or green energy, or EVs, or union empowerment (inb4), or student debt forgiveness, or Chips act, or Pact act, etc, etc. But they did, and it cost them.
And in their trips to the centre they keep seeming to forget that they keep shifting further and further right
Centrists are a curse here
They. Are. Looking. For. Voters.
If the people voters want more right, then that’s the will of the people voters. Thus the message: If you, as a leftist, want them to go left then you have to vote for Dems.
See you have this backwards, they are supposed to change and then they are rewarded with votes.
If you vote them in before they change, they have no reason to change.
They. Are. Looking. For. Voters.
Thats. Not. What.They. Are. Doing. At All. Progressive votes and the election win are right there for the taking. All the centrists need to do is stop shipping those weapons. Im not even demanding that Kamala stop pushing fracking and gun proliferation thats murdering our children. Progressives are bending over backwards to try to make this work and they are being offered exactly nothing except threats,condescenscion, far right policies, and hostage taking talk by the centrists.
This is exactly why we need ranked choice voting.
Winner takes all essentially demoralizes and alienates voters and drives people who agree with each other to fight because they’re trapped in a broken system.
So instead of fighting the system, it’s easier to just blame other people and alienate more of them against your cause, shooting yourself in the foot with ignorance. It’s kind of disgusting.
I’d settle for getting rid of the electoral college at this point. We could’ve had at least 4 years of Al Gore setting us on the right path to avoiding the worst of climate change yet here we are having to put up with a potentially third popular vote upset in recent history.
Ranked choice is more plausible than removing the EC. Ranked choice already exists in some places and the Dems have a proposal (but are lacking the votes) to implement it for Congress.
Removing the EC would require a constitutional amendment so 3/4 for the House and Senate and ratified by 3/4 of the states. Or maybe it’s 2/3 for some of those, but either way it needs bipartisan support and why would the GOP remove a system that got their guy elected twice this century?
There is some kind of interstate compact thing to get around it, but making a huge change to elections via sneaky shenanigans won’t go over well at a time when a lot of doubts about election integrity have been widely promoted. Wrongly promoted, but still, doing sneaky things about elections is a real no-go right now.
Why is it so common to blame the third party vote for democrats losing in 2016? It sounds like if the democrats would take an anti-war stance like the green party does, they would have won most of those votes too?
Seems more appropriate to expect the party to reflect the population rather than the other way around.
It’s the Schrodinger’s Tankies. Simultaneously so insignificant as a voting block that it’s a waste of time to appeal to them, and so influential that it’s exclusively their fault when the dems lose.
How would we get ranked choice passed using the current two party system though? I can’t imagine politicians voting to give up power in that way.
Maine has, and Alaska too. Although Alaska is trying to repeal it this election cycle.
Unrelated to the message - that’s a bad use of the meme, doesn’t fit at all.
