As the title states I am confused on this matter. The way I see it, the USA has a two party system and in the next few weeks they’re either going to have Trump or Harris as president, come inauguration day. With this in mind doesn’t it make sense to vote for the person least likely to escalate the situation even more.
Giving your vote to an independent or worse not voting at all, just gives more of a chance for Trump to win the election and then who knows what crazy stuff he will allow, or encourage, Israel to get away with.
I really don’t get the logic. As sure nobody wants to vote for a party allowing these heinous crimes to be committed, but given you’re getting one of them shouldn’t you be voting for the one that will be the least horrible of the two.
Please don’t come at me with pro-Israeli rhetoric as this isn’t the post for that, I’m asking about why people would make such choices and I’m not up for debate on the Middle East, on this post, you can DM me for that.
Edit: Bedtime here now so will respond to incoming comments in the morning, love starting the day with an inbox full 😊.
Edit 2: This blew up, it’s a little overwhelming right now but I do intent on replying to everybody that took the time to comment. Just need to get in the right headspace.
Remember that in online spaces (and IRL in reality), there are astro-turf/sock puppet accounts that will make claims to sway public opinions.
There are, but not on Lemmy, because Lemmy is still much too small to bother with.
Funny, good one
Are you a Lemmy sock puppetry expert? Because I am.
Which Lemmy admins are saying there are astro-turf/sock puppet accounts? Because I haven’t heard any.
There is the occasional spammer or corpo shill, who is quickly dealt with, and that’s about it.
Are you a Lemmy sock puppetry expert? Because I am.
Oh wow, a real sock puppetry expert! That’s so amazing, can I have your autograph to show to my children?
Buddy, I admin lemmy.ml. I do know a thing or two about the Lemmyverse.
Oh, that certainly explains your answers.
Go ask admins of other instances then.
Spoken like someone that has never been an admin of anything.
There are ways to observe sock puppets solely from metadata that the admins have access to without even looking at the content of the posts.
The admins are literally one of the few groups that can actually, quantitatively, state that there are few sock puppets.
Yeah like all of these people out here telling me to vote for genociders. There’s no way that real humans would think so little of Palestinian lives, right?
Right?
And who, of those who aren’t mathematically precluded by the flawed system we are currently stuck with from having a chance at winning, can you vote for that isn’t about to help Isreal with their genocide? Trump is even more favorable towards that policy than Biden is, and while Harris isn’t Biden, it seems hard to imagine she’d be much worse than current administration on that issue. One of the reasons to vote for Harris is because, despite all her administration would likely do there, having her in office would almost certainly result in fewer Palestinian deaths than Trump would.
Suppose you have two buttons. If you press one, it kills someone. If you press the second, it kills two people. If you don’t press the first button, someone else is eagerly waiting who will press the second. Whoever has placed the buttons here, has enough power that neither the buttons nor the other person are within your personal ability to harm at the moment, and you have neither the time nor the popularity to amass enough people to change this before the other guy pushes the “kill two people” button. Your only options are to press one or press neither and allow the second be pressed. If your answer to this scenario is “I press neither button, because pressing the first kills someone, don’t you care about people’s lives!?”, then you are not choosing morality, you are choosing selfishness, because you care more about the notion that your hands will be clean than about the net life saved if you press the button that kills fewer people. In fact, the blood is as much on your hands by inaction if you decide to reject your choice, as it would be had you killed the additional victim yourself.
You know how you can trick a stupid fucking child into doing what you want by presenting them a false choice of two alternatives you’re happy with? “Do you want to go to bed now or after one more show?”
So what are the other choices?
Just because you can’t stop something doesn’t mean you have to participate in it. But if you wanted to do something about it: these weapons come from this country and they have to get there in trucks traveling on roads to ports that load them on ships. And it’s not like there’s not a value to making genocide come with electoral consequences…
But if you wanted to do something about it: these weapons come from this country and they have to get there in trucks traveling on roads to ports that load them on ships.
We are discussing voting, though. That’s a bit tangential, because you can vote or not vote and still commit acts of… resistance…
And it’s not like there’s not a value to making genocide come with electoral consequences…
If you otherwise would have voted Dem against the Republicans, who are as bad or worse when it comes to the specific issue you’re punishing the Dems for, you are hurting one group committing genocide by helping one who commits and wants to commit even more genocide.
All under the mistaken belief that by refusing to vote for the group you would otherwise vote for, you will get them to move Left. But if the Dems lose to the VERY right wing party, if the voting shows that Americans favor more right-leaning policies, they would move to gain the votes of the people who actually voted.
The reality is, refusing to vote is still a choice. As long as you are an adult who can legally vote in the US election, you are partly responsible for the results of the election. You don’t get to wash your hands of it. Choosing to abstain because you don’t want to partipate out of moral self-righteousness is saying your soapbox is more important than the lives affected by your choices, from the Palestinians to the Ukrainians, immigrants to LGBTQ. Nobody is more important than your ability to say “I didn’t vote for a party that commit genocide.”
All under the mistaken belief that by refusing to vote for the group you would otherwise vote for, you will get them to move Left.
Don’t project your dumb shit on me
The reality is, refusing to vote is still a choice.
wooooooooow no shiiiiiiiiiit
You mean I’m exercising agency right now? You don’t saaaaaaaayyyyyyy.
Choosing to abstain because you don’t want to partipate out of moral self-righteousness
Scratch a liberal and a fascist bleeds. “Virtue signalling” you say?
You’re a nazi. You’re giving material support to the perpetrators of a genocide. You’re trash. Diminishing basic morality as a vice just like any other fucking 8chan fascist. Trash.
Smirking fucking nazi invoking “the lives affected by your choices” and “washing your hands” like the worst crime in history isn’t hanging behind you as you say that shit.
You’re fucking trash.
Not voting is a choice. You can’t not participate in politics.
You can chose not to vote for a party actively committing the literal worst crime in the world.
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The difference is that there are real, material differences between the actions the candidates take. It’s not a fair choice, but it isn’t false either, and choosing not to go along won’t give you a better outcome
The difference is that there are real, material differences between the actions the candidates take.
NO THERE FUCKING AREN’T. And if you believe that, you completely went to brunch when Trump left office and don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about.
I can say the same about you. Putting “no there aren’t” in all caps and adding profanity and personal insults doesn’t make it more true, but it does make people remember that a block button exists for the kind of person that uses things as disgusting as a genocide as an opportunity to troll. I do not think that anyone who both has paid any attention to the past 8 years and is arguing in good faith can possibly support that conclusion.
You’re literally simping FOR THE WORST CRIME IT IS POSSIBLE TO COMMIT!
It’s not a card.
It’s obvious you would use the same style arguments as a Democrat in the 1880s.
Deeply maddening watching people who materially support genocide complaining about people “playing the genocide card”
And you think there’s a difference between you and the fascist party?
Trump is even more favorable towards that policy than Biden is, and while Harris isn’t Biden, it seems hard to imagine she’d be much worse than current administration on that issue.
What liberal brain rot is this?
Biden is fully engaging with his policy of genociding Palestinians. Harris has said that she will carry on with the policy with absolutely no change.
The fucking dissonance you people walk around with is astounding!
And before you come out with the usual other shit floating around your vacuous head, no, I’m not advocating voting for the shitty pants trust fund rapist.
You people cannot seem to grasp that what is being done in the Levant will be done to you. The DOD had just updated it’s rules so they can use lethal force against you.
It’s coming and you’ll are too fucking partisan to realise that you’re turkeys all voting for Christmas!
And who, of those who aren’t mathematically precluded by the flawed system we are currently stuck with from having a chance at winning, can you vote for that isn’t about to help Isreal with their genocide?
When you are offered two candidates and both support genocide, including one being an active part of the current one, you can say, “no, never again means never again” and work against both rather than pretending you now have to support genocide.
Trump is even more favorable towards that policy than Biden is, and while Harris isn’t Biden, it seems hard to imagine she’d be much worse than current administration on that issue.
You should believe your lying eyes and see that Biden has gotten your consent for genocide, with Harris helping. The genocide has only ramped up as the election draws close.
There is not worse that can be done. It is full, unequivocal support for basically anything Israel wants for genocide including the weapons and supplies on which they depend to carry out this genocide. If anything, Dems are more effective at this kind of thing, as they secure European support and offer better stipulations to the Israelis around when to escalate and when to play it a little cooler.
Though your electoral logic is seld-defeating anyways. Your consent for the lesser evil keeps you politically anemic and unable to have solidarity with those who need it. You make yourself subservient.
One of the reasons to vote for Harris is because, despite all her administration would likely do there, having her in office would almost certainly result in fewer Palestinian deaths than Trump would.
This is a fantasy.
Suppose you have two buttons.
I am not interested in childish metaphors.
If you reject the lesser evil, and all options possible to you are evil, then you by inaction support the greater evil, which, by definition, makes you evil. “Working against both”, when evil is inherit in all means by which you might do that work, is a fantasy you tell yourself to justify sabotaging efforts to limit the damage by practicing and encouraging what effective amounts to surrendering one of the few levers of power that you have any limited ability to pull.
I already addressed your lesser evilism logic. If you want to continue this conversation you will need to respond to what I say and not dither and repeat yourself.
I am repeating myself because the notion that the least evil option available is the best one, that the lesser evil if you will is preferable to the more evil one, is axiomatic, that is, it’s a basis one takes when constructing a moral framework, not a consequence of one that can be reasoned through. If you do not agree with someone’s moral axioms, then there is simply nothing to debate, you and they are simply operating under mutually incompatible definitions for what is and is not the right thing to do. Restating that in a slightly different way is a way of testing if the axioms we are operating under are truly different, in which case further argument is pointless, or if we merely misunderstood eachother the first time around.
I await your response to what I said. I’m not interesting in watching you masturbate.
Your problem is one of timeframes.
You might, though I personally don’t think so, be right on a single election time frame.
They’re definitely right on a timescale spanning multiple elections.
Right now, you are forced to vote for someone committing genocide because people kept choosing the lesser evil in previous general elections, and the party cheats in the primaries.
The situation you’re in, right now, disproves your argument.
“You are responsible because you can’t swallow your pride. How incredibly selfish of you.”
you guys need to be a bit subtle in the gaslighting effort. where was all this anger for her supporting innocent kids being burned alive. go shout at her rallies to stop being a genocidal two faced hack. else you all are trolls trivialising an ongoing genocide and enabling future ones.
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The effort to limit damage in the real world like advocating for a genocider?
Also, please do your best to act in good faith and not make things up about people.
The elected leaders of Palestine don’t care about Palestinian lives, I’m not sure why you’d be surprised that others don’t.
The comprador government of the West Bank is just that, compradors. You should care about the people who live under a comprador government, yes.
The government of Gaza is led by those taking direct militant action against their genocidal settler colonial invaders. They fight and die alongside their people.
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I never said I didn’t care. In fact I care very much.
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Hamas is a terrorist organization. Lets not pretend that they’re some force of good.
I never said I didn’t care. In fact I care very much.
From Merriam Webster: “one” example: “you never know what will happen”
Hamas is a terrorist organization. Lets not pretend that they’re some force of good.
Hamas is a Palestinian resistance organization against apartheid settlers that routinely use and used extensive terrorism. While the Zionist entity bombs residential blocks, schools, and refugee camps, the axis of resistance, which includes Hamas, focus on military targets and building if leverage for their own liberation.
The term “terrorist” is used selectively and in a racist way. When the Western Imperialists like a resistance organization they call them freedom fighters. When they dislike them, they get called terrorists. The ANC, including Mandela, were similarly labelled terrorists in their own fight against apartheid. Similarly, the Americans supported apartheid in South Africa and its mainstream political adherents gladly adopted their white supremacist framing.
In conclusion, there are two terrorist groups fighting, and the civilians of both groups are suffering for it.
Sorry you’re afraid to engage with what I said. You’ll get the courage of your convictions someday. Might want to stop sharing your onions until then, sport.
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Pray tell, which elected leaders?
They elected Hamas. Granted it was in 2005. I suppose I should have said the dictator leaders.
They’re both not elected anymore and a resistance organization. They were elected on a platform of not-exclusively-peaceful resistance (peaceful resistance inside Palestine and especially inside Gaza was render impossible by Israel by 2006-2007, so their resistance activities are now exclusively violent). Resistance activities are supported by the population of Gaza, even if many don’t support Hamas specifically. If your point is that October 7th implies they don’t care about Gazan lives, that’s patently false. If that’s not what you meant, then explain what you mean by “they don’t care about Gazan lives”.
If both of them support genocide, but one also supports banning abortion, the ethical choice is to vote for the one that won’t ban abortion.
If you’d rather wait until a candidate arrives that agrees with you on every issue, that’s fine, but you’ll probably never vote, and in the meantime, by not voting, supporting whichever candidate you like less.
While there’s no honor in the presidency, there is honor in doing what you can to reduce harm, and if you can’t reduce harm to the Palestinians, at least you can reduce harm to American women and girls.
Never again means never again for anyone.
Trying to lesser evil genocide makes you complicit.
Repeat after me: “I am against genocide and will not vote for genociders”.
So you hate women and don’t want them to have bodily autonomy? You see how that sounds? It’s the same logic as your argument.
In what way is that the same logic as my argument? I am not voting for misogynists.
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Good point. Although, I would question whether Lemmy is such a place as we really don’t have the numbers to warrant the effort, imo.
We get drug spam and stock spam, no reason to expect that political spam is any less likely.
Lemmy has a huge amount of hardcore lefty’s. If you can get them to not vote, and especially if you can get them to tell their friends not to vote, that is a big win.
Astroturfing/sockpuppeting is dirty cheap to do, so no reason not to try.
You do see some users here that will post continously on about a certain topic repeatedly, with no other opinions. They might be legit, but I have my suspicions.
“Hardcore lefties” have a very different understanding of the value of their vote, which is to say, it means very little.
Have you deigned to ask them questions?
It is not currently such a place. I’ve yet to hear a Lemmy admin say otherwise.
Edit to add: Russiagate conspiracy theorists want it to be true so they can simply dismiss voices that contradict their beliefs.
I’ve seen cryptospam, drugspam, generic adspam on here. Why would a political astroturfspam be a conspiracy theory?
It does exist. It just doesn’t currently exist here, and Russian/Chinese/Iranian bots 1) hardly exist at all and 2) so far have had virtually no effect.
The reason people are seeing
$evil_countrybots everywhere is because our own government and our own corporate media tell us they are everywhere, not because they are everywhere. The propaganda is coming from inside the house. They’ve spent the last seven years and who knows how much money trying to convince us of. They’re trying to manufacture our consent to censorship.They tell us what opinions are
$evil_dictatortalking points so we know what opinions to dismiss out of hand, and to see the people & organizations that express those opinions as malevolent foreign agents, so we never listen to them again. They’re training us to do some of the censoring for them.The first step is to understand the media and propaganda.
I linked upthread about this specific propaganda campaign, but since people don’t click links, I’ll copypasta myself.
- IT Pro: Cambridge Analytica models were exaggerated and ineffective, [UK Information Commissioner’s Office] claims
- Wall Street Journal: Mueller Doesn’t Find Trump Campaign Conspired With Russia
- Jacobin: Democrats and Mainstream Media Were the Real Kremlin Assets
- Washington Post: FEC fines DNC, Clinton for violating rules in funding Steele dossier
- Washington Post: Russian trolls on Twitter had little influence on 2016 voters
- Jacobin: It Turns Out Hillary Clinton, Not Russian Bots, Lost the 2016 Election
- Matt Taibbi: Move Over, Jayson Blair: Meet Hamilton 68, the New King of Media Fraud The Twitter Files reveal that one of the most common news sources of the Trump era was a scam, making ordinary American political conversations look like Russian spywork
- Jacobin: Why the Twitter Files Are in Fact a Big Deal On the Left, there’s been a temptation to dismiss the revelations about Twitter’s internal censorship system that have emerged from the so-called Twitter Files project. But that would be a mistake: the news is important and the details are alarming.
- MSNBC Repeats Hamilton 68 Lies 279 Times in 11 Minutes
- Jeff Gerth at Columbia Journalism Review on Russiagate: Editor’s Note | Part one | Part two | Part three | Part four
- Matt Taibbi: WMD, Part II: CIA “Cooked The Intelligence” To Hide That Russia Favored Clinton, Not Trump In 2016
- Chris Hedges: Why Russiagate Won’t Go Away
I disagree - it feels like Lemmy is seeing the same kind of shills that 4chan saw in the last several elections. These bad actors are trying to sway dems to vote third party or not vote at all “in protest” across many small and large online spaces.
Are the shills in the room with us right now?
Yes, in fact I see one now.
Interesting. What am I shilling for? What are my real opinions? What are the fake ones I’m presenting?
Your real opinions are the ones I like, and your fake opinions are the ones I don’t. It’s not rocket surgery.
Obviously a huge genocide isn’t enough for you - you clearly want Every Palestinian to be killed or imprisoned when Trump is elected. And not just the ones in Gaza, if I were a Palestinian in the US, I’d be terrified of that madman winning, and I’d do everything I could to support Harris like my life depended on it (because it very well might)
More generally you are trying to convince us that the genocide is the only important issue in the world, and that it’s somehow worth not supporting someone who is in all ways (not just all other) the far better of the two electable candidates.
It’s literally the worst crime in the world.
Davidgro out here trying to minimize the literal worst crime in the world for political reasons.
Obviously a huge genocide isn’t enough for you - you clearly want Every Palestinian to be killed or imprisoned when Trump is elected.
Please do your best to act in good faith and not lie about me.
And not just the ones in Gaza, if I were a Palestinian in the US, I’d be terrified of that madman winning, and I’d do everything I could to support Harris like my life depended on it (because it very well might)
No, that is what you, a non-Palestinian, believe you get to decide for Palestinians, people who have lost half or more of their family in the last year. The Palestinian diaspira, generally speaking, rejects Biden and Harris.
However, you have not answered my questions.
More generally you are trying to convince us that the genocide is the only important issue in the world, and that it’s somehow worth not supporting someone who is in all ways (not just all other) the far better of the two electable candidates.
Now you are downplaying the magnitude of genocide. Never again means never again for anyone, not just when it is politically convenient for you.
Welp, looks like you didn’t answer my questions. Maybe next time, right?
takes no effort with modern technology
Fucking brain broken if you think the bots are on the side opposite entrenched power
yeah, mostly CIA and Israeli bots/paid posters. all of reddit is astroturfed. All social media is controlled by the feds as well. Look into the twitter leaks to see how they do it. Mintpressnews also has great articles about feds in censorship positions in all these social media companies ranging from Facebook to TikTok (100% CIA controlled btw).
Is there any evidence of these CIA/Israeli bots / paid posters?
If somebody makes a pro-Israel post, maybe they just genuinely support Israel (I wouldn’t say that’s my view currently - I think both Israel and Hamas are wrong because both have killed civilians).
Edit: your downvotes aren’t evidence.
Who has killed more civilians?
By multiple orders of magnitude?
This is like “Man, I don’t like the sun and light bulbs, they’re both so bright.”
Ideally I don’t think any civilian deaths should happen, so they’re both wrong. I’m not going to say Hamas is somehow better because they killed fewer people. To me that seems like saying “oh you didn’t kill too many people, that’s fine then”. Which would be completely wrong in my view.
They also don’t have systemized rape and torture camps paid for with your taxes.
By any quantitative value system, Hamas commits less evil than the state of Israel
Comparing them is as useful as comparing the relative brightness between the sun and a lightbulb. The two sides are not comparable. One is committing genocide. Trying to gloss over that fact is propaganda trying to cover up the fact that we’re paying for the weapons doing the killing.
Yeah I’m not into the whole “let’s excuse Hamas” thing. In my view killing civilians is bad, which is why I think both Hamas and the Israeli government are bad. Neither should kill civilians at all - not 1, not 100, not 1,000, etc.
Good job responding to something I didn’t say to try and discredit what I did.
Don’t think that goes unnoticed.
I’m not excusing Hamas. The fact that you read what I did says that you are either responding in bad faith, didn’t read my response very carefully, or are stupid. I’ll go with the middle one to be generous.
I don’t excuse Hamas. I don’t control Hamas, and much more importantly, I don’t pay for the weapons that Hamas use.
I pay, or rather my country pays, for the weapons that Israel uses to bomb apartment building, schools, and hospitals.
Hamas has killed somewhere between 1000-2000 civilians in this conflict, and that is being generous because we know that a large number of causalities were from Israel enacting the Hannibal directive and intentionally killing their own to keep them from being made prisoners (If Israel gets to grab 11,400 West Bank civilians without trial or due process and call them prisoners, then Hamas gets to do the same). Furthermore, if we count anyone who was in the IDF or the IDF’s military reserves as active military, then the number of civilians goes WAAAAY down. Remember that the IDF considers the trashmen, police, and hospital administrators as active combatants with Hamas affiliation. So, once again, if that is the standard that Israel is setting then it applies to all parties, including Israelis.
Israel, by all best estimates, has killed somewhere between 100,000-200,000 civilians. That is between 5% - 10% of the ENTIRE POPULATION OF GAZA. In all honesty, the number is probably higher.
That is completely ignoring the systemized rape and torture camps that Israel has set up, and the Israeli media discovered. Also, something that there is no evidence that Hamas has set up.
Acting like those two numbers are equivalent, or pointing out that Israel is quantitatively a minimum of 2 orders of magnitude worse, or that the two sides are the same is either stupidity, or evil. Take your pick.
None of this is justifying Hamas. It is pointing out how much more fantastically, cartoonishly fucking evil the Israeli government is.
You should ask yourself why you view the above as justifying Hamas. You might discover something.
You say “so many” but I have yet to see any evidence that these accounts aren’t all controlled by the same guy in Moscow.
Absolutely. This “you’re just a poser lefty if you actually vote for Kamala” stuff is such a psyop. I really really hope people aren’t buying it.
Idealists we all may be, we obviously need to deal with the most immediate danger first, and I hope it’s plenty clear that handing Angry Orange Baby more votes isn’t helping anyone!
I’ve never met any IRL. Same as how I’ve never met any Burnie to Trump voters IRL.
I know several people in real life who liked Bernie but voted for Trump. Here in a deep red state.
Do you think they would have voted Burnie over Trump, or did they just dislike Hillary?
I don’t know if they would have. They say they would have. But I think a lot of it is trying to reduce their association with this fucking psychopath narcissist.
4 years ago, Democrats said the border wall was stupid and bad. They said that Republicans were racist for claiming all Mexicans were drug dealers and criminals. Today, Harris is saying she’s gonna build the border wall, be tough on migrants, and has basically adopted Trump’s policies on immigration.
There is no indication that the Democrats will not be just as bad as the Republicans on Israel in 4 years.
To address your second point “not voting for Harris is a vote for Trump”; why isn’t the opposite true? “Not voting for Trump is a vote for Harris”, follows the same logic, so refusing to vote or voting independent should be net neutral, no?
This election should be a slam dunk victory for Harris. The data shows that adopting leftist progressive policies is popular. Biden dropping out resulted in $4 million in small donor fundraising. Picking Walz resulted in another $2 million. People got really excited when it looked like the Democratic party was making leftist progressive movement.
Since then, the Dems have been aggressively moving towards the center. More lethal military, inciting panic about the border, ignoring Palestine. This has resulted in an extremely tight race as people are no longer excited to vote for Harris.
I want Harris to win. Moving leftward politically will attract more voters. Taking a firm stance on stopping the Israeli government’s genocide is a leftist progressive policy. The bag is right there, she just needs to grab it.
The opposite of „not voting for Harris is a vote for Trump“ isn’t true because of the electoral college, which heavily skews towards rural states with not many voters, which are often conservative.
You need roughly 4 Californian votes to match 1 Wyoming vote. That’s why Republicans seldom win the popular vote and still manage to win elections.
So if left leaning people don’t vote (or vote third party), the negative effect for Harris is amplified in comparison to conservatives.
Well, in that case, the Democrats should adopt policies that attract more left leaning voters. Saying stuff like, “I will prosecute migrants” doesn’t make any sense because if that is an important topic to a voter, why wouldn’t they just vote Trump who has promised that and more?
If the problem is, “not enough left leaning votes”, the solution seems like, “attract more left leaning votes”. People in this country love progressive leftist policies like universal healthcare or not funding genocides, no matter their party affiliation. People have not responded well to neo-liberal/conservative policies like means testing school lunches or increasingly stringent border laws.
And yet, the Democratic party continually adopts neo-liberal/conservative policies. It feels like voting Democrat is just, “voting Republican but slower”. The Democratic party has accepted the Republican framing about an imaginary migrant crisis, and that was with a much more firm stance against racism only 4 years ago. Yeah, they would possibly be better on Israel’s genocide than Republicans, but all the actions protesting the genocide have been met with vitriol from the current administration. It seems far more likely that the Democrats would just do the same thing as Republicans, just less loudly.
The Democratic party cannot expect to win simply because, “orange man bad”. They have not shown they will not continue to adopt Republican ideas and policies. If they want people to vote for them, they should do things to attract those voters. They should stop doing things that pushes away voters.
It’s not as easy as you make it out to be.
The Democrats have to try to achieve the impossible: trying to retain left-leaning voters while getting enough centrists/swing votes to overcome the systematic disadvantage the electoral college poses for them.
In a de facto two party system that puts them between a rock and a hard place.
But what does that mean for you as a (I assume) left leaning voter?
It’s actually quite simple: vote for the least bad option.
By not voting for Harris you may successfully show the democrats your discontent for their policies. But you pay for that by helping a possible fascist into power (remember: we already found out that not voting, helps republican candidates in most cases), who will be far worse on most policies you care about.
It really doesn’t feel like the Democrats are the least bad option when they keep adopting Republican policies. Sure, they don’t want to kill trans people or conduct mass deportations now, but it sure feels like 4 years down the line I’m gonna be asked to vote Democrat even though Harris or whoever is trying to increase police budgets to “fight rising crime” or something ridiculous.
I keep having to vote for “the least bad option” while the Democratic party only ever courts neo-liberal/conservative voters. It really seems like my options are Fascist Now Party or Fascist Later Party. If the Democrats don’t listen when I vote and don’t listen when I abstain, why should I vote?
I feel like it is not a winning campaign strategy to say, “vote for Democrats because the Republicans are far worse”. Progressive left policies are popular amongst centrist and swing voters, so it isn’t like the Democrats will lose centrists by adopting progressive policies. Everybody likes expanding healthcare. Nobody likes genocide. So if adopting progressive policies attracts voters from all across the spectrum, why are the Democrats only focusing on stuff like, “build the wall” or “stay silent about genocide”?
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Based on how liberals have accepted genocide as necessary at this point, the “fascism later” option seems more likely to make people comfortable with fascism, rather than buying us time to resist.
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The electoral college ensures the vote in California has nothing to do with the one in Wyoming.
You still haven’t provided any proof that the net result of third party or not voting favors republicans though. It could just as easily still be neutral, or favor democrats.
It’s not rocket science. The person I responded to said they want Harris to win. Thus they are a potential Harris voter. When they don’t vote, Harris loses a potential vote, not Trump.
Depending on where they live, this gets amplified by the systemic disadvantage of left-leaning states in the electoral college.
If someone says they want kamala to win but doesnt vote for her, maybe you shouldnt trust what they say.
To address your second point “not voting for Harris is a vote for Trump”; why isn’t the opposite true? “Not voting for Trump is a vote for Harris”, follows the same logic, so refusing to vote or voting independent should be net neutral, no?
You’re missing some context - “not voting [instead of] for Harris is a vote for Trump”. If the dilemma is between not voting and voting Harris, choosing not to vote subtracts a vote from Harris.
Of course Harris got a boost in donations after she became the candidate - she appealed the the people who thought Biden was too conservative. That doesn’t mean conservative democrats are an insignificant demographic, they simply already donated earlier. The move towards the center is meant to not drive them away into not voting [instead of voting for Harris]. Obviously there will be some progressives and some conservatives who will decide to not vote [instead of voting for Harris], the goal is to move to the point where these margins from both sides will be minimal.
There are far more people that don’t vote than there are conservative democrats. In fact, non-voters are the biggest chunk of population in this country. Instead of courting the center conservative voters, wouldn’t it make more sense to target non-voters with policies that have been proven to be widely popular?
People like progressive left-leaning policies. Streamlining the citizenship process for immigrants is popular. Fighting price gouging is popular. Not supporting genocide is popular. It seems like getting the couch potatoes excited to vote would have more beneficial results than trying to attract conservative democrats with unpopular neo-liberal conservative policies.
You simply cannot count votes you never had.
Classic progressive defeatist mantra: you’re not left enough so fuck you. Bring on the fascist.
The anti-genocide people have drawn a line in the sand and decided to stick to that principle. I think it is pretty reasonable to have lines you do not cross with genocide being a pretty understandable one. These people have decided, “if you use our tax dollars for genocide, we will not vote for you”.
You are asking them to, “ignore the genocide stuff and focus on the good stuff”, but unlike Biden, these people have red lines they will not cross.
If you don’t want fascists to come into power, then the Democrats should stop doing fascism-lite. I think it is reasonable for people not to support fascism-lite. They should indeed move further left away from the fascism they are barreling towards.
Stupid take. Genocide light is better than genocide on steroids. Netanyahu wants Trump to win so he can go in and show you what real genocide looks like.
Do you even hear yourself?
100%. And you are either a Russian/Chinese troll or worse, an idiot that think a dictator wannabe is better than a moderate.
Democrats making obviously winning plays? You cannot be serious.
They are intentionally bad at politics. Their greatest skills are snatching defeat from the jaws of victory and shitting and falling back in it. Wanna see how for yourself? Dig into the DNC. They’re not a political entity, they’re a corp. And they work for the interests of corps. If what they do occasionally isnt absolute shit its almost entirely incidental.
Thanks for the elaborated comment! Don’t mind the negativity around the replies, some ppl are so simple they will hate until you literally say ‘Harris good, Trump bad’.
I’ve recently seen a nice description of that - “peasant mindset”.
People who are not ready and willing to peacefully discuss reality with literally anyone, and most of all marginal and weird viewpoints, like sovcits and antivaxxers, because those are more interesting, - have that “peasant mindset”.
(I’ve found something like that in my head too this morning, so sharing the thought.)
Aggression is a sign of fear, and fear is something we feel when we are not ready to change our mind if we get some good arguments, or when we get bad, insufficient arguments, but are pressed to change our mind anyway.
Why can we not be ready for that, feel powerless before that possibility of deciding to think differently 5 minutes from now?
Because there’s something that we follow like a peasant follows their master. It’s the assumed identity, the family, the group, the party, the state, the nation. Such a decision, and a decision to discuss reality preceding that, is an act of defiance toward those. It’s a conflict, and we as humans sometimes try to avoid conflicts. It’s like discussing orders. Only there’s not a single soul above us who is entitled to order us how we vote or how we think.
Every decision worth making is destructive, everything new comes in the place of something old and something that could be, there’s nothing to fear.
Changing one’s mind by a conscious decision after careful consideration is a sign of having personal dignity. Not changing one’s mind in the same situation is too a sign of having personal dignity.
Keeping your head down and trying to eat anyone not in line is not.
(too long again)
Some people are single-issue voters who don’t care if one side is slightly better, even if still terrible, than the other on that issue. They will gleefully sacrifice everything for taking a moral stand against the slightly less worse party on this one single issue and then claim some sort of high moral ground and how they need to destroy the system via a revolution.
Of course, revolutions involve hard choices, in fact even harder than choosing who to vote in this election, and they also take more effort than getting off your ass and vote, so this revolution will probably never happen but that’s a tiny detail.
The real winners of course are Trump, his MAGA republicans (who, alongside ruzzian bot farms, promote the narrative that both sides equally bad on Israel so don’t vote Kamala) and Netanyahu as a proxy. I mean after all a president who moved the embassy to Jerusalem and actively encourages settlers is better for Israel than one who has surprisingly been less supportive even if still sending weapons and not really doing anything concrete to punish Israel, I mean Netanyahu has multiple times clearly stated he wants Trump specifically because it would make it easier to genocide Palestinians. Not to mention obviously all the other issues pike LGBTQI+ rights, women rights, not losing your right to vote, minority rights, Ukraine, climate change, etc etc those are all very important issues but a good size of these people never really gave a shit about them, in fact a sizeable portion probably doesn’t even give a shit about Palestine, they’d have happily sided with Israel if the US sided with Palestine, and just want an excuse to look morally superior or to promote a supposed revolution to gain power.
Exactly! Only single issue “Orange man bad” voters are morally good!
Trump’s hypothetical genocide is way worse than Harris’ real life genocide!
Moral superiority belongs to supporters of Genocide Harris who promised to build the Mexican border wall!
Because I live in one of the many many states were my vote doesn’t matter at all.
What’s the point of casting a worthless vote in favor of genocide?
People here act like we live in some kind of actual democracy lol.
The USA has several legally binding treaties etc promising military cooperation with Israel. Harris isn’t allowed to break them legally. Any change to this would have to be passed by the house and senate. So it genuinely doesn’t matter what Harris or anyone else wants.
Yeah usa is also not supposed to ship weapons to war criminals. Guess which principle wins out though?
https://www.propublica.org/article/gaza-palestine-israel-blocked-humanitarian-aid-blinken
Under federal laws, the US Department of State has a policy prohibiting weapons transfers when it’s likely they will be used to commit genocide, crimes against humanity, grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions, or other violations of international humanitarian or human rights laws.
In February 2024, Veterans for Peace sent an open letter to the State Department and Secretary of State Antony Blinken, invoking these laws and policies, urging the termination of provision of military weapons and munitions to Israel.
The definition of genocide is actually extremely strict. Carpet bombing entire cities doesn’t actually count. It has to be a concerted effort to eradicate a people group or culture. Because the IDF has a stated objective of “getting rid of Hamas” and not “murdering all Palestinians” it’s impossible to prove the intent of their actions. If they were, for example stealing Palestinian babies and adopting them out to Israeli parents, ore forcing Palestinians to get Israeli passports, or forcing them to convert to Judaism at gunpoint, or sending people to reeducation camps, that would be a clear case of genocide. But extremely high civilian casualties genuinely doesn’t count no matter how brutal it is.
The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum:
The acts that constitute genocide fall into five categories:
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Killing members of the group
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Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group
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Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction, in whole or in part
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Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group
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Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group
A short list of official allegations of Israel’s genocide against Palestinians (Google):
South Africa’s genocide case against Israel
The International Court of Justice (ICJ) has ordered Israel to prevent the destruction of evidence and ensure the preservation of evidence related to allegations of genocide against Palestinians in Gaza.
Israel’s use of the “Hannibal Directive”
Israel has been accused of using its “Hannibal Directive” policy, which allows for the killing of Israeli soldiers and civilians to prevent them from being taken alive as prisoners of war. This policy has been criticized as a form of genocide.
UN reports
UN experts have reported “grave violations” committed by Israeli forces against Palestinians in Gaza, including “genocidal incitement” and the use of “powerful weaponry with inherently indiscriminate impacts.” They have also cited evidence of Israel’s intent to “destroy the Palestinian people under occupation.”
Special Rapporteur’s findings
The UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, Francesca Albanese, has found “reasonable grounds” to believe that Israel is committing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza. She cited evidence of Israel’s intent to destroy the Palestinian group, including causing serious bodily or mental harm, imposing conditions of life calculated to bring about physical destruction, and preventing births within the group.
Amnesty International’s research
Amnesty International has gathered evidence of unlawful Israeli attacks in Gaza, resulting in mass civilian casualties. The organization has criticized Israel’s failure to distinguish between military objectives and civilian objects, leading to indiscriminate attacks that are war crimes.
Other reports and allegations
Various independent reports and allegations have been made about Israel’s treatment of Palestinians, including forced transfers, torture, and the destruction of infrastructure. Some have characterized Israel’s actions as genocide, while others have criticized the use of the term without sufficient evidence.
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USAID already reported Israel is using hunger as a weapon. Which very much qualifies.
It qualifies as a war crime but not as genocide. But again their involvement is largely preventing aid shipments from entering Gaza. They are, legally speaking allowed to close any port of entry or exit from their country. There are people starving in Russia and Norway has closed the border. Is Norway committing a war crime? Also if that’s the case then why are people not jumping on Egypt? There’s a border crossing to Egypt as well. Is Egypt committing genocide?
Just to be clear, I don’t support either side in this conflict. And I do think the IDF are probably committing war crimes. But I don’t think that it can be proven especially seeing as the official government statistics coming out of gaza are provided by a group that is internationally recognised as a terrorist organisation.
No. They are absolutely not allowed to stop food and aid into the combat zone they created. They are absolutely not allowed to prevent Egypt from sending aid in. They are absolutely not allowed to conduct a naval blockade.
Russia is food secure and has trade access all along Central and East Asia. Norway’s closure is in no way the same thing.
When the professional aid distribution people who work for the United States Agency for International Development tell you it’s happening, then it’s happening.
It qualifies as a war crime but not as genocide.
Okay… if its a war crime and not a genocide, that still qualifies as a way to stop sending weapons.
They are, legally speaking allowed to close any port of entry or exit from their country.
Huh wonder if maybe Palestine should be legally recognized as a country to prevent this? Oh well, nothing we can do, since the politicians in power don’t want to do that.
But I don’t think that it can be proven especially seeing as the official government statistics coming out of gaza are provided by a group that is internationally recognised as a terrorist organisation.
Every organization operating out of Gaza would get called a terrorist organization by Isreal. It is almost as if America is being intentionally obtuse to allow Isreal to carry out a genocide.
Ding! Ding! Here is the correct answer.
I’m beginning to think that liberals and lefties have no clue how government works and they want a strongman/dictator as much as the magahat idiots. They just want one that aligns with their beliefs instead.
The POTUS is NOT all powerful and can make what ever decisions they want. Controlling the house and senate is far more important than whoever is living in the White House. The House and Senate writes the laws and checks to pay for everything. AND they ratify the treaties making them formally binding.
If you want to stop the genocide, elect the people in the house and senate that will effect the actions needed to make it happen.
Waiting several election cycles to end a genocide is insane and there is no world in which that is the moral, ethical, or logical path forward. Hope this helps!
But it IS the process to get it done. I never said it was ideal. If you don’t like the process, then vote for those that WILL change the process. But that takes time. Until then, we ARE stuck with the laws we currently have in place. That is the reality of the situation. I hope this helps you understand representative democracy vs a dictatorship.
Okay, nobody I can vote for will change the process. Now what?
Also dictatorships, monarchies, etc. pretty universally have some form of petition process as well, so not actually a difference…
Yes, dictatorships and monarchies sometimes have a petition process, but they tend only to pay lip service. Not because they care, they will do as they please becaue they have the power-- hence a dictatorship. See: North Korea or a few countries in the middle east. Imagine trying to petition the Afghani government as a gay or worse, a trans person.
Governments of any kind are large and ponderous beasts. They cannot change direction as easily as you would like. And like it or not, there are rules and processes that must be followed to make changes. And those things are in place to provide continuity in government and protections to the populace at large. Imagine how much more damage trump could have done without those processes and rules. Imagine what he could do if he wins again after the last SCOTUS ruling.
Like it or not, Biden is bound by a lawful treaty ratified and codified by congress a long time ago. He cannot undo that treaty on a whim. Only congress can do that at this point. Make your changes there. And representatives and senators are local elections and not national. Best of all, YOU could be the change you want. Don’t expect someone else to do it for you.
DPRK trivia- the dprk has universal suffrage and secret ballot. The highest authority in the country is the Supreme people’s assembly with 687 representatives.
US trivia: the US prohibits itself from arming governments credibly accused of significant humanitarian crimes, but then turns the other eye when it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge significant humanitarian crimes.
Like during the genocide in Palestine, where Biden keeps shipping weapons and Blinken has been told to or chosen to keep his eyes closed and his ears stuffed with cotton while his subordinates keep bringing reports of Israeli crimes.
Yes, dictatorships and monarchies sometimes have a petition process, but they tend only to pay lip service. Not because they care, they will do as they please becaue they have the power-- hence a dictatorship.
You’re so close to getting it…
You know you can communicate with your current senator and representative right? Representative is literally their name, they represent you, if enough people apply pressure to the point they think their job is at risk, they will often magically have a “change of heart”.
they represent you
Are you 8 years old?
I’ve actually worked in politics, the amount of people that find it easier to give up because the system is deeply flawed instead of actually doing the hard work of change is astounding. If you want things to change, you have to make your voice heard on something more than lemmy. Representatives nearly all want to keep their jobs. If you show them your motivated enough to contact them, it shows them it’s important enough to you to sway your future vote. I’ve talked to many representatives in my life, at least on the left they generally see their job as representing constituent interests. If enough pressure is applied, they will often change their vote/introduce legislation, etc.
But they are not on lemmy getting the political temperature from keyboard warriors with more snark than braincells.
The thing that keeps their job more than voters is donors. Hope this helps!
They aren’t mutually exclusive and both involve the same thing. The only reason money matters is because it is used to sway voters, people showing they are not swayed by the propaganda invalidates the money.
In my situation, I’m in a solid blue state so I’m voting for a third party to push the country to the left.
If only USA had ranked choice voting, then everyone could do that.
they put a lot of thought into our system; the electoral college was intentional and it’s doing it’s job very well.
it’s meant as a firewall to guard against poor people from getting sufficient political representation. our ruling class uses it today to keep this country conservative.
This kinda makes sense, I guess that means not a swing state (I’m not American).
Do you have to be in a heavy blue state to do this without fear that if enough people do this it will swing red?
Yes, exactly. If you live in a solid blue or red state, your vote is a drop in the bucket, so it won’t matter if you vote third party. But in swing states like Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania… in 2016, the number of votes won by Jill Stein was slightly greater than the difference between Trump/Clinton. Ouch! Was it worth it? Did it move the country left?
the strategy definitely wasn’t worth it, but we’re doing it again anyways.
The country did move left under Trump and has moved right under Biden. While your logic on Stein’s influence is flawed, if your goal was to shift the population left you’re basically making an argument for voting for Trump in swing states.
While it sometimes feels like this, it’s because the vocal minorities on the side not associated with the current president are always the loudest political figures.
No, it is because liberals were agitated under Trump and were told to care about women, black people, abortion rights, etc, and mobilize to spaces where they could be recruited for political education. Under Biden, they feel a sense of normalcy and have returned to supporting the equally violent status quo.
Yeah it’s a strategy that would work in any heavy red or blue state, because there’s an absolute zero percent chance the dems lose my state.
Do you understand how voting works?
Do you not understand how the Electoral College works?
Yes and your vote does absolutely nothing in “pushing” the country left. Who taught you that? Please do better research as the future of your country depends on it.
Sometimes being principled in your vote is a good first step towards doing something politically meaningful. Many liberals are chained to the idea that their vote is their political being. And then they go vote for genociders!
That first step of pulling at their chains can lead to further political education.
I would say you have to be the stupidest person on earth to vote 3rd party but I know that Magidiots exist.
You do nothing but enable genocide by voting 3rd party. A Democrat loss in November GUARANTEES the genocide continues. The Republican Party is the party of Israel and they would bend over backwards to give them whatever is necessary to bring back Jesus Christ
I would say you have to be the stupidest person on earth to vote 3rd party but I know that Magidiots exist.
Yep just big dum-dums that won’t support your genocider candidate. If only they were smart like you and supported 98% Hitler!
You do nothing but enable genocide by voting 3rd party. A Democrat loss in November GUARANTEES the genocide continues.
You know Dems are doing the genocide, right? And at the point where they have the most to fear from supporting it, they aren’t even pandering.
You’re the baddies, bud.
The Republican Party is the party of Israel and they would bend over backwards to give them whatever is necessary to bring back Jesus Christ
The Democratic Party is also the party of Israel.
It’s impressive that you’re calling people names while writing polemic that obviously applies to “your team”.
I am not a Democrat. At this point I’m closer to Independent because both parties have gone off the rails over that last decade. However I understand the importance of this election and I understand how our system works. Voting 3rd party does nothing but pull votes from Democrats. It happens EVERY election. I’m sorry to burst your bubble but voting third party doesn’t give you the moral high ground. It just makes you an idiot because not only will your candidate not be elected but more often than not you enable Republicans to win elections based on how our voting system works.
No, go ahead and explain it to me!
@rocci CGP Grey already did.
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLej2SlXPEd37YwwEY7mm0WyZ8cfB1TxXa
STV! I’m in!
@rocci I want this as a poll format option in the Fediverse.
They were joking. Also CGP grey didnt cover things like how fptp is influenced by there being multiple branches of government, having the electoral college in the mix, etc.
While it’s a great video its overly simplistic to apply to america. While i believe fptp has to go. You absolutely can vote third party safely without risking trump if the conditions are right and they often are in the us there are few battle ground states where it’s higher risk
@jatone Every video and every model will be overly simplistic when applied to any reality. Every abstraction is a leaky abstraction.
Wow i never knew! Thanks! 🤯
The vote should be for someone who can get enough electoral college votes to win in the first place, and from there the one who is more likely to listen to public pressure, as well as the same for any congressional seats on the ballot. And probably not vote for the one who is threatening to send the military after those who disagree with them.
Which as a non-American seems to be Harris, right?
For a vote, yes. I can’t even imagine what Trump would do with the situation given another chance. Some may say the same thing as the US has always done, which is one of the problems that will need to be addressed regardless of who wins, but Trump also likes dictators, so support would probably be bumped up even more for Netanyahu.
Yes, Harris is the only realistic option. Anyone voting for Trump is a Nazi in the most literal sense of the word.
If the people voting for Trump in the most literal sense of the word then they wouldn’t support Israel.
They aren’t supporting Israel because they care about the Israeli or Jewish people. They’re supporting Israel because they love blowing up brown people, with an unhealthy dollop of trying to bring about the apocalypse
The vote should be for someone who can get enough electoral college votes to win in the first place
I like how Americans casually mention we’re not a democracy and everyone’s just okay with that.
Hardly okay with it. Some Americans don’t even know how things work to begin with, so ignorance is worse than knowing things are broken but what we have at the moment. Just because I acknowledge that’s the current election system doesn’t mean I don’t think we could do a lot better. That is its own topic with a lot of hills to climb, but some states have started.
And it’s a representative democracy with various flaws, one being not the proper number of constituents per representative, and far too much influence from other places that override the public’s opinions. Another separate debate.
Supporting someone currently committing genocide is an explicitly pro genocide stance.
I pray that you and your family are someday accorded the same mercy as you have for Gazans.
Having a hard line of support for genocide should not be a high bar to clear. Look at yourself in the mirtor and say, “I vote for genociders”.
See, the difference between me and you is that I care about the people who are still alive, not just the ones who are dead. I’m not okay with letting millions of innocent people die just so I don’t have to “support genocide”. I’m sure your conscience is more important than their lives though.
You explicitly support the continued genocide of Palestinians.
You are a white supremacist.
deleted by creator
See, the difference between me and you is that I care about the people who are still alive, not just the ones who are dead.
It takes a very special relationship with the truth to read what I said and think, “wow that person only cares about dead people”.
Are you high?
You are, in fact, completely okay with letting millions of innocent people die. I’m sorry you’re in denial.
Who’s inaction? I’m taking action as are millions. Voting for their genocide is not an action that saves lives.
You are explicitly pro genocide.
You cannot make me support genocide.
That is what you are doing now.
Just because it sucks, doesn’t mean it isn’t true. The simple fact of the matter is that the statements “The Democrats are supporting a genocidal regime in Israel.” and “If Trump becomes president Netanyahu will destroy Rafah and expand the violence into the West Bank.” are not mutually exclusive statements. Taking a simple quick action to prevent one does not stop me from fighting the other. In fact, doing nothing to stop the worse case is supporting genocide. There will be more genocide if we all do nothing, and I have never seen any leftist actually suggest taking any action here on Lemmy. It’s never about doing anything. It’s always about what not to do. If that’s all you’ve got, then you’ve already failed.
The US needs to fix their voting system before they can start voting third party. It’s probably even more difficult with Trump
You’re more likely to get a socialist revolution than democrats and Republicans getting rid of FPTP at a significant enough level to matter.
That’d be cool
The US needs to vote third party in order to fix the voting system.
It’s too rigged
Or is that something we keep telling people who are voting third party?
Nah, doesn’t seem like that
Funny though how I see it pulled out so often in response.
Yeah could be a common misconception or a misdirection
Maybe, but third party presidential, when there is no legislators is never going to happen, never going to be elected, and never get any bills passed. Aiming for the white house as the first stop is just silly.
Obama dropped an average of 60 bombs every day on the middle east and north africa during his presidency.
The US isn’t a democracy, and it’s elections are nothing but theatre. I recommend asking about this on lemmygrad or hexbear also.
it’s the famous Dessalines of github US atrocities fame :D :D
US Elections are decided when they do redistricting and manipulate the voting districts to ensure the results they want and isn’t a real democracy. The US is run by oligarchs who run their enterprise corporations and the power is concentrated there, not in the government.
Though true, doesn’t answer the asked question in any way. You still get to choose between shitty and fucking horrific AND shitty. So why abstain?
Because they don’t understand that voting is just one part of the democratic process.
Both candidates will support Israel, so for pro palestine voters it’s a “Would you like to vote for the Shitty Party, or Less Shitty Party” situation, where not voting from these parties is shunned upon because it will help Shitty Party win.
It’s not just shunned, it’s literally throwing your vote away. Voting laws in the US, including the electoral college, mean that it is literally impossible for a third party to win the presidential election. We need ranked choice or other alternative voting methods, and the EC needs to go away.
It’s only worthless if it’s third party, sadly.
I love getting downvotes for just understanding the law.
The vote is worthless outside of swing states. May as well vote your conscience when fptp and Electoral College enshrine disenfranchisement.
I’m going to tell you a secret.
The people who say this, the leftists that threaten to withhold their votes, tend to vote strategically anyways. But threatening to withhold votes is one way to apply pressure to politicians to do things like, say, stop promoting a fucking genocide. And then liberals lose their minds for some reason and make it totally irrelevant. And then we have a genocide that lasts for 75 years and starts world war 3.
