If Biden loses in November, don’t blame voters who are angry over Gaza | Arwa Mahdawi

https://lemmy.ca/post/16351154

If Biden loses in November, don’t blame voters who are angry over Gaza | Arwa Mahdawi - Lemmy.ca

I’ll blame each and every eligible person who didn’t show up to vote for him, regardless of what their excuse is. This isn’t the time to be playing around.
But you won’t blame the Biden administration for disregarding the wishes of their constituents?

Do you (or anyone who thinks not voting for Biden is a smart thing) think that Trump would do anything differently? Because those are the two choices. If you don’t vote for Biden then you are either voting for Trump or helping Trump by taking away votes from Biden… unless you live in a blue or red state where your vote doesn’t matter anyway.

I do blame Biden for how he is handling this situation. However, I am smart enough to understand that there is more than one situation that a president has to handle while in office. For the most part, Biden has honored the wishes of me as a constituent. If the only thing you care about in life is how the President of the US handles a conflict on the other side of the world, as opposed to the US economy, civil rights in the US, US Supreme Court justices, US circuit court judges, environmental policy in the US, etc., then that is your right as a voter. I hate what is going on over in Gaza (and the region in general), but I also care about is going on in the country I live in.

If you don’t vote for Biden then you are either voting for Trump or helping Trump

I'm so tired of this rhetoric. Let people vote for who they believe in without shaming them. Americans should not be strong armed into voting for a candidate they don't actually want.

If you are eligible to vote, and don't, that is the same as a vote for the winner - whoever that is.
No, it's not. For the record, I'm a huge advocate of voting. I think everyone should vote for the candidate they believe in.
If you're driving in a bus with 40 people voting on where to go, with 14 wanting to drive to a buffet, 16 wanting to drive off a cliff, and 15 saying that they don't care enough to vote but they don't really want to go to the buffet because they're not hungry, yes, I am going to judge the 15 people who are content being driven off a cliff.

You can criticize the fact that they didn't vote, I literally just said that I think everyone should vote. But that's not the same as saying they did vote for the winner. If you're mad that the bus is driven off a cliff, then be upset with the people that did vote for it.

This is excusing that I personally think your analogy is an oversimplification.

Both instances are willful action that contributes to direct harm to yourself and others.

No, in the context of a voting system, it is not literally a vote for the other option. I don't think your friends tumbling off the cliff will really care much about the distinction that serves no purpose other than personal moral satisfaction.

I trust my friends to distinguish between the people who voted for the cliff and those who, you know, didn't vote for that.