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Wait... single issue politics is a real, proven, thing. Don't lump that in with ad hominem attacks. If you're not going to vote for someone you otherwise would because of a single issue, you're a single issue voter.
While I do absolutely agree that single issue politics is a real thing like you showed, literally the only reply to your comment was "if you are a single issue voter, you're an idiot".
So I also think OP has a point here and we're talking more about the people who use the term as an ad hominem attack, which I certainly have seen plenty of. And now Lemmy has provided us with yet another example of people taking something legitimate and turning it into a weakness/attackable offence. Like some trolls and racist people on the right now talk about DEI in negative terms
Fair points. I'm guilty of just saying "single issue voters," without elaborating on every comment. That could easily be seen as an indirect ad-hominem attack. Maybe I should make a copy-pasta response for whenever I see someone arguing for single-issue decision making.
That said, there are justifiable single-issue decisions. If Trump was spouting rhetoric about shutting down all support of Israel, yeah. I can stand behind folks "switching sides" over this. Free Choice, ditto. 2A I have a harder time with, but that's because there are usually so many other issues that you'd think are more important. Not my decision, but I have less sympathy for people who think being able to own a gun is more important than the ability to unionize.
Anyhoo, like I said: fair points.
I thought it was you decided who to vote on based on a single issue. If you care about multiple issues, and any one of them is a deal breaker, then wouldn't you be a multi-issue voter?
edit: "can can" -> "care"
I thought that's what I wrote, but if it didn't come across right, I apologize.
Single issue voting means how you vote is determined by a single issue. That includes not voting at all because of a single issue. What I meant to say above is that if you would vote for X, but choose to not vote at all because of one issue, you're a single issue voter. A single issue is deciding your vote.
As Rush once sang:
But if you would have also not voted because of issue Y or Z are also dealbreakers, then you'd be a multi-issue voter. If candidate A believes Y and Z, but not X, candidate B believed in X and Y, but not Z, and candidate C that believes in X and Z, but not Y, so you just didn't vote, it would be clear its 3 different issues that you care about, but for each candidate, it would be a single issue why you aren't voting for them. Would that just mean you are a single-issue voter for 3 different issues?
But if candidate A believes in Y and Z, candidate B believes in Z, and candidate C doesn't believe in any of them in a particular election, in that case X alone would mean not voting for any of them.
Hold on... I need to whiteboard this.
OK, now a serious response.
What you are describing, to me, is how people should vote. It's normal voting behavior. In realty, there are dozens of issues people care about to varying degrees, and you can assign values to each issue (how much it matters to you), add them up, and vote based on that.
My issue is that single-issue voters assign infinity to one issue and vote based on that, which is both usually lazy and stupid. There are cases where it's reasonable, but they're rare; if Trump supported Palestine and Biden supported the genocide (which tells you which side I'm on on that topic), then yeah; I think genocide is a reasonable single issue to make a decision. But in this case, Biden is pro-Israel, and Trump is pro-genocide (he's said he thinks Israel isn't going hard enough), so pro-Palestine voters should vote Biden.
Going back to your example: if two candidates do have the same position on issue X; and candidate A supports Y and Z; and candidate B doesn't support Y or Z, then even if your single issue is X, you don't just not vote. You have an opinion about Y and/or Z, so you vote for A or B based on that. And in your specific example, first: there is no candidate C in the US; there hasn't been since Abraham Lincoln. Voting on the US is fucked up, and a vote for a third party is a wasted vote: not a protest vote, but a wasted vote, b/c C has zero chance of winning, and you're taking your vote away from one of the other candidates, one of whom is more aligned - even if only slightly - with you values. Second, it would be unusual if you cared about X, Y, and Z equally, so one of those two candidates is going agree with you on one of those topics which is more important to you, and you should vote for them. Or - and this is the real situation in the US - two candidates are very similar about a half dozen issues, but widely differ about another dozen pretty important topics. And although that long tail of issues may not be your triggers, the weight of all those issues should make it clear which guy (and, so far, it's always a guy) you prefer.
Biden and Trump agree on Palestine, although it's clear Trump is the worse choice for Palestinians. They agree on big business. The differ about many other important topics:
and many other "lesser" topics. Saying that you aren't going to vote because Biden is only less bad about Palestine is making a decision about a single issue, and it is a problem; it's thoughtless, and lazy.
Yes, if you consider more than one issue (X, Y, Z) when deciding who or who not to vote for you are a multi issue voter, if you only consider a single issue (X) when deciding who or who not to vote for, you are a single issue voter. It's not per candidate, it's per vote.
And an idiot