this post was submitted on 24 May 2024
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I voted for Gary Johnson because Hillary sounded awful in 2016 and I 1000x regret it. Fuck this system for making me choose between bad and worse, but yes obviously I have to choose bad over worse.
Don't make me defend the US voting system but that is not how it works. Primaries exist and that's where voters make the case for a specific person. The large, general, national elections are for forming coalitions and compromising. This is what we do to decide who gets power instead of physically fighting. There will never, ever be a time when a single candidate is the ideal choice for a majority of Americans. Compromise is a core tenant of democracy and by definition it means nobody gets everything they want.
And while we're on the topic, 99% of leftists understand this. Anyone telling you "voting doesn't matter" or that "both candidates are the same" is just trying to reverse the progress that's already been made.
Most of what you said is spot on but you originally quoted about choosing between bad and worse.
I get what you're saying about the primary system, but even that is broken. Incumbents are almost never primaried. Typically the party will not allow it. There also needs to be consideration of what primarying an incumbent could mean. It's unlikely any of the challengers would win and in the process they would burn through campaign money and highlight weaknesses in the winner's record and character that could be used by the opposing party.
We do have a primary, but it may not always give the best candidate. If argue only a portion of people who vote in a general even vote in the primary.
Unless your state votes for a progressive in the previous presidential primary, like New Hampshire did.
It doesn’t lead us to the same place but slower, at least not everywhere. One party has rolled back abortion protections, equal rights protections, bans books, and a host of other regressive policies. Democrats didn’t do that. Democrats might keep status quo, but the Republican agenda is literally to move us backwards to a worse place (though if they wanna move us back to when the highest marginal tax rate was 90% I could be onboard with that part at least).
Once Republicans move us backwards, where we wind up is the new status quo that Democrats keep.
That’s not true at all. Biden specifically has protected more public spaces and land, while Trump specifically attempted to lease / sell / make available more of it to corporate interests. Net neutrality is being restored after it was rolled back under Ajit Pai. We can be frustrated democrats don’t do enough, or aren’t further left, but to say they keep the status quo at the regressive place republicans want to take us is demonstrably wrong. So while maybe they won’t expand affordable care beyond where it currently is, they’ll at least keep it where it is and restore it if possible. If they won’t add new parks, they at least protect the ones we have and cancel corporate interest on existing ones. If they won’t raise the taxes heavily on the rich (which is where I think they’re most guilty of “status quo”), they at least won’t give them trillions in tax breaks like Trump did.
https://subscriber.politicopro.com/article/eenews/2024/01/30/biden-administration-oil-drilling-permits-outpace-trump-ee-00138376
I'll consider it an accomplishment when you can speak of it in the past tense.
I live near the Texas/Mexico border. Democrats just recently adopted what is essentially Republican policy regarding border security. Republicans did the predictable thing and moved to the right, and now Republicans' previous position is Democrats' reasonable moderate stance.
When Trump said that he wasn't going to support a nationwide abortion ban and instead let the states decide, Democrats said he was just pretending to be moderate on the issue. And suddenly the patchwork of abortion bans is the moderate position.
I can post articles as well.
https://apnews.com/article/biden-public-lands-conservation-leases-40b5f47203bbe92a1186a1a4e9e0ea5d
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_policy_of_the_Donald_Trump_administration#:~:text=The%20administration%20repealed%20the%20Clean,and%20proposed%20reversals%20of%20environmental
Note that repeals of policies means someone had to have passed it originally. Guess who passed net neutrality originally? Guess who passed the clean water rule? Guess who passed affordable care act? Oh, it seems democrats actually do move us left.
I also live in Texas, a state controlled by Republican interests for the past 20 years. Let’s look instead at locations where a state flipped blue. Just by one example, Michigan then passed a statewide constitutional amendment protecting abortion. You may be upset that we have to get statewide protections passed, but we only have to do that because Republican judges went against some 50 odd years of precedent to force it. So democrats are actually enshrining the very thing that Republicans took away.
Look, you can troll all day and pretend that Democrats are just as bad as republicans, but that’s absolutely wrong on so many issues, and frankly I’m going to exercise my right to vote for the party that will protect the things I want protected and move us further left.
Like logically, you should vote for the furthest left candidate that can actually win the election at every level. Anything less than that and you’re contributing to moving the country to the right. Reap what you sow and what not…
I love how the immediate assumption in response to criticism is that the critic must be voting third party, not voting, or voting for Trump.
That wasn’t my immediate assumption. That was a conclusion drawn after you repeatedly stated that democrats were moving right and basically did nothing good. Which is fine, and I probably shouldn’t have assumed how you would vote, though given the environment these days it wasn’t too audacious of an assumption.
By all means critique. But also please vote for the furthest left candidate that can win in every election you can vote in. Especially in Texas. This place needs so much damn help, and the Republican leadership definitely isn’t going to help (unless you’re ridiculously wealthy or own a large company). And get others to vote as well, because the only thing that will change Texas is to change the elected officials in charge.
Already do. Unfortunately, my party does shit like pull the funding from progressive candidates to make sure they can't win (Michelle Vallejo), so I only get to vote for centrists.
Absolutely. But if we can flip Texas from right and alt right to centrist then we may actually get progressive candidates in other areas (and frankly, if we flip Texas blue we will see a shift in policies from republicans to the left). And, perhaps by some miracle, we can get star or ranked choice voting, but that absolutely won’t happen while republicans are in control here.
Here’s to a better Texas (lifts shiner [but prefers one of the many smaller microbrews here])
We'll get as far as centrist and then the party will protect incumbents like Henry Cuellar. (Notice that they're not protecting Bowman because he's a progressive.)
If you ever find yourself in the Rio Grande Valley, I'd recommend the Padre Island Brewing Co.
Maybe, but it would be cool to find out, wouldn’t it? Can’t be worse than right now in Texas haha, so we might as well go blue.
And the Democrats are just watching that happen. Doing nothing to stop it. Now the Democrats are cheering the police on while they brutalize Pro Palestine protestors. The second they think they can jettison minority support they will. They've shown they're willing to support morally reprehensible actions. It's just circumstances that place them closer to minorities for now.
What would you like the Democrats to do?
They are not in control of the House (which is in control of the purse strings) and "have" a razor thin "majority" in Senate (minus DINOs and plus veep).
And they don't have SCOTUS. And Trump had a record number of lower court appointments (because McConnel slowed a huge chunk down in Obama's final year, not just Garland).
So, are you suggesting that Biden act unilaterally? Because that is fascism. That's what we're trying to avoid here.
The funny thing is, Republicans would. They have no respect for the law and order that they claim to hold near and dear.
And that's what the election is, really. Fascism, or status quo.
Biden isn't the only hope. He's just a part of the only hope. Dems must not only hold the executive but also gain seats in both house and Senate.
Because here's the other thing (that nobody is talking about), and that's the Biden v Trump is only a very small part. One third of Senate, and all of the house, are up for vote this year. It's quite possible for either party to end up with a significant majority in either or both houses.
I would much, much prefer the current democratic party to be in control of two branches, than the current Republican party being in charge of two. All three? Fuck.
Ahhh the paradox of liberalism. We can't do anything for fear they'll do something in return!
I want them to grow some balls. I want them to withhold funding for federal programs being misused. I want them to arrest police officers and school officials on civil rights charges that are already on the books. I don't care if SCOTUS walks in and undoes it all. Every time they do that they add more weight to the reform SCOTUS position. I want them to look at bad police departments and tell them they can't get free military equipment. I want to see the modern equivalent of the 101st escorting a black student to school.
This idea that we can't engage until we have everything lined up perfectly is just an excuse to do nothing and watch trans kids get killed. But it's okay, we voted for the blue guy!
There is action happening, and there is hope
And there are some pretty cool things happening under the surface
I see it as damage control while these grassroots attempts at major system changes take hold. We're holding off the assault while we wait for the calvary to come, but they are coming. We just have to not blow their chance.
Yeah but I'm mad Max and even though I make no effort to better anything now, if everything falls apart I'm going to all of a sudden have motivation and rise to the top, because this is my story and I'm the main character!
Or what you can do is what you're supposed to do: work from the ground up. Presidential vote is not the place to drastically change things. As long as we have fptp, the vote for president is always going to have to be a strategic "vote for the candidate that sucks less."
Face the facts, if everything falls apart you're not going to end up on top of you're on the bottom now. It's just going to be even more shitty for you, and you'll then end up in another shitty system.
The idea is to implement the change locally and work up. That takes time and effort tho. If you want the system to work better, vote strategically federally and then work locally to get the people you want elected.
so you said hmmm these two candidates are terrible who can i find that is even worse?
Kenneth Copeland
Hillary won the popular vote in 2016 by a nearly 3 million vote margin, I don't think you need to feel any regret over your one vote going to someone else you actually wanted to vote for.
Also, even if she'd lost the popular vote too, it ain't the voters fault that the DNC keeps deliberately sabotaging the good candidates in their primaries to give us turds.
I appreciate the sentiment but I think my regret is more tied to the fact that I very much fell for the white supremacist men’s rights activism and homophobic rhetoric of the time, and me voting for Gary Johnson over Hillary feels like a symptom of that fact as well, and I deeply regret falling for that bullshit.
Like it or not, Clinton destroyed sanders. The DNC definitely showed a bias for her, but by no stretch of the imagination was he sabotaged. This narrative is the same BS that trump supporters spew that the media was unfair to trump which is part of the reason he lost.
The reality is that sanders just doesn't (unfortunately) represent the average Democrat. People like Clinton and Biden do.
There's actual evidence of sabotage tho, such as Hillary getting early access to debate questions, Shadow company (not even kidding they actually fucking named themselves that, look it up) being run by DNC members being in charge of tabulating voting in some states, and more.
They were even taken to court for it and admitted to some wrong doing, but nothing could be done since apparently the DNC is a private entity and no laws are broken. Legally they can screw over any candidate they want.
That's kind of a circular logic though; the DNC alienates voters who don't like their blessed candidates. If they didn't do that, and more leftist candidates like Sanders were welcomed, then the "average Democrat" might look a bit different.
You know there are other offices than president right?
You want a further left president, you're going to need to show that a lot of people want a further left president, by having a lot of further left politicians in state and local offices.
You don't just jump right to the Whitehouse. The presidents politics are a reflection of the politics of the whole party, not the other way around. IDK if you watched the GOP primary debates in 2016, but it was very much an "everybody sucks here" kind of event. Each candidate might have been a little more reasonable on one of two smaller issues, but all in all they were much the same. The only thing different Trump had was charisma and campaign stamina.
No reason you can't vote for more progressive candidates for presidential primaries, but there's no sense in holding such a grudge when the party outlier loses. It's kinda obvious from the get-go that that's going to happen. And that's fine. There's nothing wrong with voting for a loser, and a popular loser can easily land a cabinet position where they could still have a very significant voice.
I've seen the Democratic Party put its thumb on the scale for centrists at the congressional level: Henry Cuellar. I've seen them pull the rug out from under progressives who manage to win the primary, also at the congressional level: Michelle Vallejo.
Progressives cannot do as you describe when the party shuts them out at the lower levels as well.