NightGauntsJohn Fetterman says he'll 'never understand' progressives who refuse to support Joe Biden
The Pennsylvania Democrat recalled his time serving as a Hillary Clinton surrogate in 2016, even after he supported Bernie Sanders in the primary.
I don’t like Joe Biden, but this isn’t a presidential approval poll, it’s an election, and he’s clearly better than any of the alternatives. And when it comes down to it, he’s been better than I expected. We could have just had an exclusively centrist presidency, and while there’s been plenty of centrism, he has been persuadable to progressive action.
And frankly even if you can’t bring yourself to express support Biden for some reason, it should be pretty easy to want anyone who willingly associates with Republicans to lose and lose badly, because they’re way beyond stealth-mode fascism now. Even the most jaded “they’re all neolibs” voter from earlier elections can’t possibly ignore that the Republicans are just fash now. There’s a real danger if they win that cities end up with federally tasked jackboots kidnapping protesters like Portland.
Nope. Voting for Cornel West. I think Marianne Williamson is also a significantly better candidate.
So you like Trump for 2024, then? Noted.
Perfect summary of how fucked the two party system and partisan identity in the US is. “Oh you don’t want to get behind a party that supports the Palestinian genocide? Trump lover!” You basically have a moderate rainbow capitalist center right party, and a fashy culture war right party, they have the same donors and corrupt capital directing their policies though. The vote is like picking the aesthetic you want to see things degrade under.
It helps to think of it in pragmatic terms of what your vote does, versus whether or not you fully support X or Y. It is undeniable that given the stupid electoral system we were born into, that voting third party effectively supports whichever mainstream candidate you don’t want to win.
All the rest of the time, whether in primaries or public forums like this, you argue and vote for what/who you really want.
But once you hit the general election, it is essentially cast in stone that either the R or D candidate will win.
We need ranked choice voting so that candidates care about what the people really want, versus just getting more votes than one specific other person.
voting third party effectively supports whichever mainstream candidate you don’t want to win.
What if you don’t want either to win and see the trend of both parties turning more to the right since Reagan and locked in a death spiral. Corporate tax rates are as low as ever, both parties support the military industrial complex and police state, both support the Palestinian genocide, neither party wants to get rid of Citizens United and Super PACs (regulated less than charities) now control and appropriate political action for corporate interests, neither party supports public healthcare. Like yeah the degradation may happen slower under Democrat but they haven’t shown signs of turning their backs against the corporate interests ruining the country/world.
If you don’t want either one to win, there is no way for you to legally make that happen.
So if you accept that is true, and you have a preference among the two parties, that is where pragmatism suggests voting against the greater evil.
But if you honestly have little to no preference, then you won’t care about the so-called consequences of voting third party, and can do whatever.
I mean obviously you can always do whatever you want. This is just the game theory you’re thinking that means we need to change our voting system before the two-party lock-in would even start to loosen.
Pragmatism would suggest I spend my efforts being politically active in other ways rather than dedicate it to a bipartisan death spiral. I’m active on the labor, municipal, and environmental front, and none of it is online.
That sounds awesome!
I was just talking about the vote decision in the booth though. Actually helping change along is arguably even more important than voting in the first place, because each individual involved has a larger effect, and one that they care about much more than choosing the lesser evil.