chaonaut

Which is also why they wind up filled with "small business owners" who seem to all be about making money off land they own.

Based on the numbers I'm looking at, the people who didn't vote were the ones that were likely Republican voters. The people that stayed home were likely Republicans who did not vote for Trump. I'm all for political engagement, but I'm not sure how invested I am in making sure Trump gets all the votes he told people not to cast.

I'm not sure how intense your off year elections are, but one of mine had only a single uncontested race, so I'm not sure I'd jump to considering missing some of the offyears "abysmal".

Overall, 70% of U.S. adult citizens who were eligible to participate in all three elections between 2018 and 2022 voted in at least one of them, with about half that share (37%) voting in all three.

-Pew Research Poll on Voter Turnout

And it looks like a significant portion of the 30% who don't vote are white adults without a college degree who lean Republican.

Actually, the recent record turnouts should really be getting you to pay attention to how the elections are structured. It turns out, the way districts and the electoral college are organized means that where you get out the vote matters. Telling people to vote harder doesn't make those systemic obstacles go away.

Sounds like a reason for Biden to set a whole bunch of legal precedent while he's still president.

If you vote with the hope that it will fixes problem by itself, you won't get very far. Voting is sort of the end of a political process, the other end starting in people building political movements. For your vote to mean something, you have to be voting with a political project. So, focus on the political projects: start building the structures that protect people first, without relying on the government's approval. Support your communities of care and build your mutual aid networks. Don't wait for it to be delivered from on high, get with people who also care about the things you care about and start using what you have to build what you can.

Because you're complaining about people who you believe don't vote the way you want them to (in this case, not casting a vote). I mean, if you want to do the same thing you're criticizing people for, then you must at least believe that you are subject to that criticism. You think they're harraunging you for voting for someone while not visibility engaging in putting in the work. How is complaining about those people any different?

Let me be clear: the Democratic party and particularly the Biden campaign is failing hard at giving people something they want to vote for. They have gone all in on being a protest vote against Trump, and that's not very exciting, especially given the strong misgivings people have about the Biden Administration's role in supplying the weapons used in Gaza. Like, what is the Democratic Party planning to do to reach someone in Southeast Michigan who lost relatives to weapons Biden's admin sent to Israel? Who voted "uncommitted" in the primary because of that? Because I haven't seen anything besides "Trump would kill more of your family" which rings awfully hollow. This is in a state that was fairly key to Biden's previous victory. So, what work is being done on the ground to reach out? Like, that's the sort of things that actually need, like, visibility campaigns, so if that work is being done, why aren't showing off the work they're putting in?

The way I see it, so much online arguing is devoted to people complaining that "do-nothings are complaining about how I plan to use my vote!". There is so much more that can be done outside of elections and GOTV that spending all our efforts solely on the elections is a grave misuse. You think the people complaining about people voting for Biden and Trump are sitting on the couch and not doing anything? Encourage them to get out and do the things that make it so we don't have to vote for the same horrible dichotomy every four years. Are they doing the work? Encourage them to give visibility to the work they're doing (or the work people like them are doing). Stop complaining about how people handle dealing with bad choices in a system that isn't really responsive to them.

If only people here bothered to try and understand how nuanced actual politics are and that shit can’t be simplified so easily just because you happen to think in simple terms.

What outcomes they get from not voting really depends on what they're doing outside of electoral politics. I get it: you're really invested in the election and maybe have went all in on the outcome of Biden v. Trump, and, to be fair, it's a damnably important election and Trump getting the seat again will do a ton of damage.

But you know what I learned from previous elections? No matter how much I personally care, or personally do, I might still wind up living under a Republican presidency bent on making my life worse. But that doesn't mean I'm gonna throw my hands up and say nothing can be done.

Building on-the-ground support networks and working together to build enough political power to make waves in elections is where it's at, as far as I'm concerned. I'm concerned about the outcomes of the elections, certainly, but the better we're able to help each other, the less impact an election (and therefore someone not voting) has.

You realize that voting alone is very nearly politically irrelevant? Especially if your vote is reducible to an anonymous voting bloc? That most of the work that goes into making your vote mean something happens well before election day? Like, just voting on election days, no matter how many off-year election cycles and special elections someone votes in, if they aren't participating in an political movement that is properly reflective of their vote, then their share of political power is merely given over to someone else. The places where someone's vote has the most impact are the places where they're treated as an afterthought.

Like, consider the electoral college, and how the votes break down in most urban areas (which tend to be where most Internet users live). The margins in most urban areas tend to be very much in Democrat favor, so spending all your resources to win a few more votes (or even stop a small amount of votes being lost) does not actually result in very many, if any, additional EC votes. You could focus exclusively on a presidential race for unpopular candidates and pour all your effort into that for marginal value.

Or you could realize the top of the ballot is of limited value and in fact can be severely abridged by the down ballot races if overlooked(if we need reminders of "Vote Blue No Matter Who"'s shortcomings, please reference Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema), and realize that browbeating people into voting for a particular candidate instead of getting people engaged about things they care about is a way to burn out your political powerbase.

If you get real fancy, you can even realize that losing a particular election is mitigatable by on the ground action, and building political structures that don't rely upon the government to do all the hard work and never be out of the political favor of the party in power.

I was there for it, and watched it happen. I'm familiar with the sort of people who popularized the idea that Social Justice is something to be derided. I'm not too keen on basing my idea of what is bad social justice on the definition that comes to us from the people who thought journalistic malpractice was based on who Zoe Quinn's ex was mad at.

See, doing the work, I see a lot of people pushing back online saying "but are you going to vote for my candidate for the promise of maybe one day doing the work you're doing"? Like, genuinely, I've been being asked if I'm voting for Biden in 2024 for years, as if the only thing that matters is the election. Caring about a very specific election for four years is not all that distinguishable from only caring once every four years. And when the alternative political power structures try to express what little political power they have, the establishment runs back to "but if you don't vote for us regardless of what we do, the other guys will be worse". Even when there are examples of doing something as "awful" and "dangerous" as withholding an endorsement in an election year can be shown to be actually effective and get actual good work done (see: the UAW holding off on endorsing Biden until he actually went to bat for them and helped get landmark contracts passed). Should we considet the Biden or Bust crew that's been beating the drum the past four years just as disposable and unable to effect change they demand?