this post was submitted on 22 May 2024
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Being "very unfair" to expect that the President represents those who elected him by changing his position to match that of those who elected him is not just broken Democracy, it's the full-on acceptance that the President of the United States of America shouldn't even care to represent his voters (otherwise it would not be "very unfair" to demand him to change his position to align with that of his voters), which is the kind of shit from countries like Russia were the vote is pure theatre and citizens have no power.
I mean, it's fair if "in my country the vote is not a real election of a representative of voters" is what you accept as reality, but that's like saying in Russia that "well, Putin will do whatever he wants either way so people most vote for him", which not really a moral argument to push on anybody who is unwilling to endorse by voting that rigged system with a meaningless vote.
Whilst that's a perfectly valid choice for you fully accept that you don't live in an actual Democracy, that doesn't really give you the moral highground to convice others that they too must fully accept it.
Didn't answer the question. What happens in November/January?
I happen to agree with you, what we have is not an actual democracy. But the two options for change are working within the system, or tearing down the system. Apathy for the system brings no change. The single most misguided idea of your little apathy movement is believing that stamping your feet in frustration is actually DOING anything.
What happens in November/January is that America will elect as President either a confirmed Sociopath with Fascist and Authoritarian tendencies or a confirmed Narcissist with Fascist and Authoritarian tendencies: America is getting screwed either way, the difference is in the speed of the screwing and whether you're getting smooth talk or dirty talk with the screwing.
Tactically, this battle is lost and has been lost for months now. The vote now only has any power to push for change at a Strategic level: what your vote for or not now can influence, is whether in subsequent elections the Democrat Party will genuinelly fear defeat and hence field a presidential candidate who actually represents his electors or if they feel confident that "our guy is slightly less evil" propaganda always works to secure their Left flank (if it works even with a Democrat candidate who is openly and activelly a supporter of a far-right ideology committing Genocide, they are bound to conclude it always works) in which case they will move even more to the Right and field an almost-Trump candidate.
Keep voting for lesser evil no matter what and the Democrat Party will keep giving you increasingly evil options.
We ALREADY TRIED this tactic when we got lazy and apathetic about Hillary, and that's what gave us Trump the first time around. If we had showed up like we meant it in the primaries, we could have had Bernie.
When we sit on our hands, the wolves lunge for our throats. It will take decades to undo the pillaging of another Trump presidency. Good luck surviving to the next election (assuming Trump permits one) if you're gay, brown, happen to become pregnant, etc.
Actually the equivalent to that would be to, this time around, to not attend the primaries again, rather than to refrain from voting Biden.
You might have noticed that you didn't even got any primaries and the DNC just decided that the left(ish) faction of the Democrats should not get a choice and will just have to vote for the slightly less far-right supporter of ultra-racist fascists commiting Genocide so as to stop the slightly more far-right supporter of ultra-racist fascists commiting Genocide.
Lefties didn't sit on their hands: the election was already stollen from them months ago and the only option they have now is to either "go along with it" or "punish".
Game Theory indicates in this kind of setup were one side decides how to divide the cake and the other side can either accept (i.e "going along with it" and getting what little the other side allocated for you whils they get the big bulk they allocated for themselves) or reject (i.e. "punish", since reject means they both lose), "punish" is the only option that can convince the other side to act differently in the next round and "going along with it" is guaranteed to make them act in the exact same way or worse in subsequent rounds.
You're not just voting for the President in this election, you're also voting for how the DNC will behave in the next round and hence what options you will have in the next Presidential Election.