this post was submitted on 23 Aug 2024
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What would Trump do that the Dems are not already doing? Trump would be a genocidal monster, yes, but we have DNC goers literally mocking Pro-Palestinian protestors and covering their ears:
Nope, there are an infinite number of options. If a math question is "what number is greater than 10?" And the Dems said 4 and the Reps said 2, that doesn't mean the Dems are correct. Voting will not save us, so we must move outside the realm of electoralism. Join an org, build up dual power, replace the DNC and GOP by force.
But those aren't mutually exclusive things. Voting for the Dems doesn't prevent you from doing those other things in the meantime.
If you only have two real choices that will affect the outcome and one of them is better than the other, voting for neither of them just makes things harder for those that would have made it slightly better. More compromises have to be made and that means the situation can't improve.
I see constant posts about how Trump splitting their base is going to mean the end of the Republican party but that seems very short sighted. It is a simple matter of natural selection, and in a two party system only two parties will ever exist. It also inherently gravitates to very close races between those parties. Any split of the Republican party might cause a term or two of chaos, but it is just a matter of time before something fills the vacuum and balance is restored.
Each party would prefer to move further towards their end of the spectrum, but they are forced to move their values (or choose more centrist candidates) until they have enough of a majority to win.
Gerrymandering, the electoral college, what's left of the judicial branch, apathetic voters, parasitic third parties, and wedge issues have allowed the Republicans to shift further right while maintaining their power. The only possible response to that from the Dems is to also shift right as well. If they didn't the Republicans would just end up with trifectas or super majorities.
Trump was also able to shift racist/authoritarian/nationalist policies much further right by shifting his fiscal policies further left than what Republicans normally would do. His whole campaign was based on deficit spending (tax cuts without any real cost cutting, stimulus COVID spending, etc), public works (multi billion dollar worthless walls), and his focus on blue collar workers (not directly supporting unions but he pushed anti China + US manufacturing boosts).
Every vote for a third party is one less vote that the Republicans need to gain, which is a little more right that they can slide and maintain power, and since natural selection links the two parties it is also a little further right that the Democrats have to slide to maintain their power as well.
If you want to shift things left voting third-party won't do it. Third parties have no power to make changes and never will in our current system.
Voting for the only party that has a chance of winning and is willing to make voting reforms to improve that system is the only hope of shifting the parties to the left where the actual political center of the country lies.
Voting for anyone else is illogical and won't prevent this genocide. Protests, and organizations can maybe help in the short term to push the Democrats to change course but it also disenfranchises more voters to not show up, and pushes more to vote for third parties... And so the snowball tumbles down the hill to the right gaining momentum leaving us with frankly no good choice.
Voting is the least important part of the political process. America is not a democracy, voting merely serves to legitimize the state with an illusion of choice.
It might be the least effective especially for those not in swing states, but it certainly isn't the least important.
And as far as "not a democracy" the NPVIC isn't that many states away from effectively rendering the problems with the electoral college moot. Certainly a steep uphill battle though.
If voters actually turned out for primaries/elections there would be much better candidates. So your argument becomes "nobody else does it, and because of that the system is broken, and so I won't do it either".
It seems like people get caught up in the media hype on the presidential election and forget that some of the most important change needs to start from the bottom up, and a couple of. votes can make a huge difference in State levels, and congressional/senate elections. A president is worthless without a Congress/senate passing laws that actually matter.
Just look at what Minnesota has been able to with voter reform in the last year with their very narrow trifecta. I.e law went into effect this year that allows residents to sign up to automatically receive absentee ballots for every election/primary in their area. A minor improvement, but an important one. Guaranteed that there will be folks that wouldn't bother to vote on non-presidential elections that will be now.
They also added a "right to be absent from work to vote" which gives Minnesotans the ability to vote without using any sort of vacation/leave time without losing pay. Full list of other rather import changes here
Things like that can snowball into a larger shift at the state level.
The state has no need for you to legitimize them. Even if the system is weighted against you every vote still has power, and the only thing that not voting accomplishes is sending a message that you are okay with the system as it is. There are plenty of politicians out there that want change to happen, and they can't do it without enough votes behind them.