jeffwBiden closes gap on Trump but third-party candidates pose danger, polls show
MagicShelThe first Trump criminal trial starts tomorrow. Trump’s fundraising is being crushed by Biden. RNC is hurting for cash and what is there is being gobbled up by Trump’s lawyers. Down ballot candidates will have zero assistance.
Republicans are facing the most devastating defeat in their history. Polling has been garbage for two election cycles. Just look at the writing on the wall. Trump is running on fumes and it’s only going to get worse.
Vote anyway.
Absolutely. Not voting is a vote for the candidate you don’t like.
No. Voting for the candidate you don’t like is voting for the candidate you don’t like.
XhieronIf the Republic plunges into a dark age, for example because democracy ended, and you stayed home when your contribution could have prevented it, you’re still sharing in the blame. No amount of smug self-righteousness will wind back the clock. You already have one previous devastating administration and an insurrection worth of warning.
Do you want to keep the Republic, or not?
Imagine describing not supporting genocide as “smug”…
We’re in this predicament directly due to 40 years of neoliberal strategy. There’s no one to blame but people who continue to reward “less evil” dems with power.
Do you want to keep the Republic, or not?
Corporates Dems are Republicans. When are you guys going to grasp this?
The genocide argument is a really bad one. Yes the Biden administration is culpable. The Trump administration would pump more money into it and start parading around the genocide like it’s a good thing.
There’s voting for the side who might get tired of the public opposition and stop funding that shit, or letting the genocidal wannabe dictator win.
You’re thinking in terms of a single election cycle. That’s why neoliberals are able to keep doing this every single election, how they get you to accept genocide.
SciaphobiaOkay, so we punish the Democrats and the Republicans necessarily win as a result. Hopefully that’s not a controversial assumption.
How many such intentional losses should be planned on so that we can show the Democrats try to move left to recapture support? How are we going to ensure they try to better court the left instead of moving to the right?
I’m always so confused by this because “punishing the Democrats by letting Republicans win”…wouldn’t the assumption just be that the people WANT a more right wing government?
Wouldn’t that simply encourage politicians to be like “Oh, the crazies won last time. Maybe that’s who our voting block is now. Maybe it’s time to also be crazy.”
You’re asking me how much Dems have to lose in order to understand why they’re losing and to stop playing chicken with our democracy?
How would I know that? You would hope one lost election to a reality TV star rapist would be enough to prompt a post-mortem, but the idiots learned nothing from 2016 so I would imagine it might take a while for it to sink into their thick skulls. How long does it take someone to add 2+2?
I’m not asking you to read minds. Just to explain how this works in your mind. I understand the frustration, and desire to express it, and the expression I’m, possibly incorrectly, assuming you have is to not vote for them. What is the process by which this accomplishes more than making Republicans win elections, and pushing the Democrats to the right?
What makes you assume the Dems would move to the right? Where do you think they would get votes from?
As much as the democratic establishment likes to pretend there’s some untapped well of “moderate” republicans they can access if they just get their messaging right, it doesn’t exist. Anyone who thinks GOP voters are going to vote democrat is deluded, Trump is going on criminal trial and is still loved by Republicans.
Even the exit polling for Democrats’ “tricky” Nikki Haley scheme in New Hampshire showed that most of the right-wing voters who despise Trump still wouldn’t ever vote democrat, they’re just staying home.
They can move further to the right if they want, but Democrats are barely able to scrape enough votes together to beat Donald Trump of all people, let alone compete with the GOP on their own turf. Meanwhile they refuse to acknowledge that their base is now increasingly Millenials and Gen-Z.
There’s a reason Obama won in a landslide before everyone realized he was full of shit, and it wasn’t because he signaled leaning to the right. It was because he convincingly pantomimed as a progressive promising “change”. Those same voters he fooled are now grown up and more saavy, they understand that money tells the truth. They’re much harder to fool.
Dems realize that they cannot pull the same old tricks but actually have to reform in order to get those base voters back. They understand it, they just don’t want to because it means an inevitable end to the corporate gravy train. So they paint their own base as “extremists” and concoct these crazy schemes to prop up right-wing nutjobs as their competition so their corporate candidates look better, but it’s simply not working. They’ve brought us to the brink of fascism and it’s not working.
Okay, fair. I asked that in that way because I believe that politicians listen primarily to corporations, sure, and secondarily to reliable voting blocs. My thought was that by proving to be an unreliable voting bloc, there’s a reasonable risk that instead of trying to court that bloc to make it turn out more, they would just go after other blocs that already are reliable.
But! You don’t think the democrats would try to court the right instead of the left if the left proves to be an unreliable voter bloc. Fair! What about the rest? We punish them via withholding of votes, they lose, and then… by what mechanism are they pushed to the left? By the loss, or is there more to the idea? What if they don’t, or don’t do it good enough? Withhold votes and make them lose again? Is there ever an adjustment to the plan, or is it just an unfortunate helping of our ideological opponents for however long it takes for the Democrats to get it right?
The mechanism by which you make it clear and demonstrate reliability as a voter is, in part, by still by voting. The Uncommitted vote is a good example of how you make a message very clear, but that uncommitted vote means nothing if those people then cave in November and vote for Biden despite him basically giving them the finger in response to their uncommitted votes. Any political analyst with half a brain would understand why Biden lost in that scenario.
So finding and using any means by which to send the message and then being willing to back that message up with action is how it functions.
I see. I appreciate your taking the time to explain your point of view. Still not my preferred method of engagement, but I understand better where you were coming from, and that’s what I was trying to accomplish!
CileTheSaneOkay, so when the election happens, vote to keep the fascists out of power, and every other day the 4 years in between do something to push politics in the direction you want it to go.
No I’m thinking in terms of we cannot revive the dead so let’s not put the genocidal wannabe dictator in power for 4 years. I clearly can’t stop what’s currently happening but I’m sure as hell not going to vote in a way that results in more people dying more quickly.
You mistake accepting genocide with trying to prevent a worse genocide.
Boomer Humor DoomergodDo you want to keep the Republic, or not?
I don’t want the republic but I don’t want fascism either
gmtomEnjoy having your bodily autonomy stripped away and turned into a baby making factory because you don’t understand the concept of harm reduction.
The fact that this is even on the table is why I’m upset. A sane government would not let that sort of thing happen. But we have a majority of the Supreme Court nominated by two presidents who lost the popular vote because a bunch of slave owners over 200 years ago were butthurt at the idea that the popular vote for president wouldn’t go their way.
The Electoral College was also established to aid in guiding in informed voters. It was logical to implement it for presidential elections, since most people wouldn’t have heard about the policy or platform of either candidate.
We have the Internet now, so that point is moot.
Exactly. Our government is like we took an 18th century sailing ship, bolted on a steam engine, piled it full of people, and then strapped on some wings so it could fly to the moon.
The structure of our government is so anachronistic I don’t know why people are upset it’s working so horribly.
The most important thing left out of the Constitution were the instructions on how to update it.
There are instructions, but those instructions were also modified at the behest of slave owners who wanted an outsized influence. So we can’t update it without risking something even worse.
What should have been added was the requirement that it be updated every 20 years.
Do you have a source? You’ve piqued my interest.
The Constitution of the United States: A Transcription
Note: The following text is a transcription of the Constitution as it was inscribed by Jacob Shallus on parchment (the document on display in the Rotunda at the National Archives Museum). The spelling and punctuation reflect the original.
The neat part is that, for me, voting is also a vote for the candidate I don’t like.
So I guess it comes down to which one will do the least harm to what you feel is the right thing. Both have had a term as president so we have a pretty good idea on how exactly they’ll act in their second one.