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every time i see a "leftist" talk about not voting for biden, and thus supporting trump...
Agreed in the general election.
Strong disagree for primaries.
Primaries are for voting with your heart, the general is for voting strategically
Primaries are for pretending we’re a functioning democracy. The general is for acceptance.
My local district flipped blue for the first time in decades, local elections and primaries are very important
I'm sorry, it's probably considered some sort of a smug European truism by now, but I have to say it. There is no left in the US two-party system. It's right or center-right, that's the choices you have, a giant douche or a turd sandwich.
used to be... now it's fascism vs. center-right
More like right wing fascism vs neoliberal fascism.
Is it really center-right? I think it is more far right and facist extreme right. Atleast when observed from scandinavia
There is but you have to think of each party as having sub-parties within them. There aren't external coalitions between parties but internal coalitions within the parties.
So a guy like Bernie Sanders is left, though not technically a Democrat, he caucuses with the Democrats effectively creating a coalition. There are many members within the Democratic Party that are also left wing, and others that are center, and others that could be considered right wing.
The Republicans are similar, but have an internal coalition with the far right MAGA faction. Which causes them a lot of problems.
The primary system is effectively a run off system which is used to determine a final two candidates to vote for in the final election. This system is old and has some bizarre traditions and has vulnerabilities to there being a third party spoiling everything.
Obviously it's a crusty system that developed without planning, but the the Presidential election it's not that dissimilar to France's run-off system, just takes more time. And the legislatures having coalitions between people with different politics happens everywhere, it's just happening within the parties and requires people to vote in primaries to get more representatives that have similar views to their own to make up a greater percentage of the coalition (which also happens everywhere).
In fact having coalitions within a party gives people more information when voting. If I'm voting for one of a dozen parties I don't have a say over how a coalition is formed after an election. Someone declaring which coalition they intend to be a part of before the electorate votes gives the electorate both a say as to which individual they want (via primaries) and which coalition they want (in the general election).
That's why OP wrote "leftist" instead of leftist.
yeah pretty much
Fair enough
This isn't true in a global sense, nor is it true in a practical sense. There is a left in America, but it is tiny and rarely successful. Most liberal democracies are to the right of American Democrats at the global level on most issues. Every country has drifted rightward over the past half century, so the US isn't unique.
It can be both true that there is no true Left with any political power in the US - individual congressional delegates, maybe, but no coalition or party - and still recognize that there remain differences in the parties and differing outcomes from their governance.
It's not anything like the Southpark situation; leftists forget so easily what could - and has - been lost under conservative leadership, that would not have been lost if the person who won the popular vote in the past 6 elections. Women would still have protected body autonomy in all states - that loss was a direct consequence of the Trump administration.
If Biden wanted my vote he could simply stop supporting genocide. Really quite a low bar for him to clear.
There's "holding your nose" and there's voting for someone actively aiding a genocide.
there's "administration aiding a genocide, but also doing so because they're being lied to by israel, who also has a massive propaganda campaign to manipulate americans into supporting them..."
versus
Project 2025 and their plans of a fascist dictatorship right here, complete with a genocide of trans people and hispanics... and muslims... AND a continuation of supporting israel...
oh and aiding russians commiting genocide in ukraine.
voting trump in won't save palestine, and it'll make it soo so much worse
no one is proposing voting for trump here
Not voting is letting trump have an easier time at victory
I'd prefer he had the hardest time imaginable
Not voting is letting trump have an easier time at victory
The core of the GOP's strategy for holding on to power is the disenfranchisement of voters who are opposed to them. Not voting (or voting third party) is self-disenfranchisement and doing the GOP's work for them.
i mean to vote for someone who won't support the genocide, but i wouldn't fault anyone for looking at all the candidates and deciding none of them deserve to have the office.
I was young once too. Eventually you'll figure out that the party that got 1% of the vote last time isn't suddenly gonna sweep it with 51% this time. Every single person who has a nonzero chance of being president next year supports Israel, so you should vote based on what the best possible outcome is.
I was young once too
this is ad hominem. what i'm saying is true or false regardless of how old i am. also, you don't know how old i am. and on the internet, no one knows you're a dog: you could be 12 years old for all i know.
this statement is pure sophistry. it's disgusting rhetoric, and you should be ashamed.
It's not ad hominem. I'm not saying you're wrong because this is your first election, I'm saying I can tell this is your first election because voting third party is incredibly naive. If this isn't your first election, then you should know better.
It’s not ad hominem
it is. you're attacking me instead of what i said.
No, I'm attacking what you said by calling it naive. I never once intimated that your belief was wrong because you were young. I also think that anyone above the age of 22 who doesn't vote Biden is also wrong. It has nothing to do with age.
I was simply giving you the benefit of the doubt by assuming you'd never been burned by voting third party before. Am I wrong to do that? Are you actually stupid, and not naive?
Every single person who has a nonzero chance of being president next year supports Israel, so you should vote based on what the best possible outcome is.
i only vote for someone i want to have the office. you don't get to tell my what i value or how i should express my values. you certainly don't get to tell me how to vote.
I can absolutely tell you how to vote, and you can absolutely ignore me. But next year, if Trump wins, it will be your fault. Just like it's my fault that so many women don't have access to basic medical care because I didn't want Clinton in office. The country and the world will be worse if we let Trump win, and there is exactly one legal way that we can work against Trump winning.
if Trump wins, it will be your fault
the only people responsible for electing trump are those who vote for him. i'm not doing that, so it can't be my fault.
If there are 10 people including you and the majority chooses who gets to be president and the vote ends up as 5 for Biden (including you) and 5 for Trump. Then the vote gets recast and the only thing that changes is that you decided not to vote for Biden, it would be 5/4 for Trump and the person responsible for electing Trump would be everyone who voted for him and you. If you had voted against Trump instead of abstaining, he would not have become president.
That's a very basic concept and it's clear that it extrapolates to the actual election.
Not voting for the only person who stands a chance against him is helping him win. The distinction is meaningless. If we're playing CoD Zombies and you don't help barricade the house we're in or shoot zombies and we lose on the second round, you don't get to say "it's not my fault we died, the zombies were the ones who broke in and killed us!"
Eventually you’ll figure out that the party that got 1% of the vote last time isn’t suddenly gonna sweep it with 51% this time.
no one proposed that
The. What is the goal? To get to the magical 5%?
How’d that work out for Nader in 2000 when he didn’t even get to 3%? Was it worth it, when nearly 100k people voted for him in Florida, and Gore lost to Bush by a margin of only 537 votes? Would the environmentalists who supported Nader be more appreciative of Bush’s outcome than they would have been if Gores?
Third parties are great. We absolutely need them. But they cannot and will not ever get a foothold starting at the top of the ballot. Yang really has the right idea in The Forward Party, starting down ballot before even contemplating higher office. It’s the only way another party will ever get any significant standing.
Yang really has the right idea in The Forward Party, starting down ballot before even contemplating higher office. It’s the only way another party will ever get any significant standing.
if you think that, you should put energy toward that. but I don't and won't.
The best possible outcome for Palestine is Biden reversing his support for genocide. They don't have till the election.
Nobody running for president, ever, has deserved the office. I sincerely believe, as Douglas Adams so eloquently put, that “those people who must want to rule people are, ipso facto, those least suited to do it.”
I can’t think of any point in recent history where the choice is of who is deserving for office. The choice is, and has always been, who is the least undeserving of office (or the spoiler candidate). This year, I think it’s pretty obvious who is least undeserving of office.
The choice of who is deserving for office is reserved for everyone else further down the ballot.
Nobody running for president, ever, has deserved the office
Eugene debs
Adlai Stevenson
The choice of who is deserving for office is reserved for everyone else further down the ballot.
maybe for you. I don't vote for someone unless I want them to win.
What happens in a FPTP system with only 2 viable parties when everyone doesn't vote for the least maniacal of the two?
Who do you think wins that bout?
whoever is first past the post. if you know I'm not voting for Biden and your only concern is keeping trump out of office, you shouldn't vote for Biden, either: vote for Jill stein or cornel west
That's how you split a vote.
vote splitting is a myth that relies on the presumption that I would vote for anybody except the candidate that I'm choosing. it presumes that The votes belong to some candidate and giving them to another candidate is siphoning them away. The truth is that the votes belong to voters and it's up to politicians to earn them.
That works in an idyllic world, but sometimes I want my actions to leave an impact I agree with.
i don't agree with putting biden in power.
Then you agree with putting Trump in power.
Ow. Fuck, that hurt. And, now I have this big red handprint on my face
🤦🏽♂️
Stop acting like Biden is just being lied to by Israel and is some helpless victim. He is absolutely responsible for his continued allowance of the genocide of Palestinians. Hold your politicians to a higher standard.
He is responsible, though I don't expect a different response from the majority of people in Washington. I hope regret about his continued complicity in genocide continues to weigh heavily on his shoulders.
I believe only 2 points about Palestine in this election:
-
Trump will be worse for Palestine than Biden.
-
Biden is likelier to switch positions on Palestine than Trump.
When I look at everything else Trump endangers on top of Palestine, it's not even a decision.
-
So the CIA, NSA, ... are just a bunch of idiots that can't have info on their own? Then why spend so much money on them?
wat?
If the CIA has to relay on what the Mossad says, they can't be considered an intelligence agency.
relay?
Sorry. Not my language and sometimes I make mistakes.
Do you really believe not voting for Biden deceases the likelihood of genocide in Gaza? Because the alternative seems so much worse in every way, both for Gaza and so many other massively important issues
You are on a different and better level. You are a Chad consequentialist. Managing probabilities, shooting for the best outcomes, minimizing losses. Setting up the group of ideologically aligned leaders for future success. Fighting off fascism for four more years against all odds.
They are a weak feelings voter. Hopes Biden senpai will notice them and throwing a temper tantrum when he doesn't. Talks about genocide, but doesn't actually care if Trump will handle the genocide any differently than Biden. Wants everyone else to suffer because they are suffering. Hoping if Trump gets elected that someone else will do the hard work and fighting to fix everything. Is burned out on politics, but instead of not voting quietly, makes big posts about how not voting is actually a good and very smart idea because they can't handle the fact that they need to rest.
I'm not voting for someone who's pro genocide, sorry.
So you're going to let the person who wants to genocide many groups of people and strip rights away from at least half of Americans have an easier time winning?
Permanently Deleted
And instead, a genocide will still be on, and also more women will go to prison for seeking medical care, and also my LGBT friends will have their rights eroded even more, and also the new president will annoint more christofascist Godkings to the Supreme Court ensuring that any attempt to vote for an actual leftist in the future is impossible, and it'll be fine, because at least you didn't vote for the guy that wouldn't have done all that extra awful shit
A vote is not an endorsement, stop treating it like it is.
Wow that all sounds awful. Biden should really try to win in order to prevent that.
I suggest he make himself more appealing by being anti-genocide.
Yeah, he should, and if he doesn't, you still have to vote for him anyway, because the alternative is necessarily worse.
It absolutely sucks that Democrats are able to make zero effort and get votes based solely on the fact that they aren't Republicans, but that's the way it is. Vote in primaries, fight to make Republicans adopt better policies so that Democrats have to react, and vote blue in November, because the alternative is half the people in the community we're arguing in going to fucking jail for being trans.
you still have to vote for him anyway
fuck you, i won't do what you tell me
Then you get someone pro genocide anyways, but you get to hold your head real high when your friends die because they had an etopic pregnancy. Good job.
that's not going to happen, so don't worry about my friends
Okay. Don't vote blue, and contribute to the eradication of LGBT folks in this country. Be proud of the fact that you didn't do anything to prevent it when they get rounded up and sterilized.
Nah. He knows what he needs to do to get my vote.
A vote is not an endorsement, stop treating it like it is.
it is an endorsement.
No, it's not, unless you specifically decide to define the words to mean the same thing. A vote is simply a choice between two or more options. Voting for someone is not a way of showing approval of them, it's a way of saying that given the available options, one of them is preferable to the other, in much the same way that an appendectomy is preferable to dying from appendicitis. Anyone would rather do neither, but when you have appendicitis, neither isn't an option.
I'm not asking you to. I asked if you truly think things will be better when you don't?
cool bud, then you'll get someone who's pro genocide anyway. what a difference you made.
At least their conscience will be clean when our trans brothers and sisters are rounded up for extermination.
Biden isn't pro genocide, at least there is no evidence to say that. The Biden administration has been against the ground invasion from the start.
Biden has made some missteps in my opinion, but America pulling support for Israel was never a real option. Israel does require aid, but Netanyaho doesn't care if that aid comes from the US, or from his buddy Putin. Israel realigning with Russia would put Palestine in an even worse position because it would threaten their support from Iran.
Then, of course, there is the risk of a regional war breaking out of Iran takes the strained relationship between the US and Israel as an opportunity. That could easily pull other countries in and become WW3.
Foreign policy is about more than just virtue signaling. It's outcomes that matter, and what a lot of people are calling for will not get them the outcomes they are looking for.
Not that I'm shaming anyone for pressuring Biden. The positive movement on aid shipments was very likely helped along by the protest votes in Michigan.
How would aligning with Russia would help Israel when the US locks every weapon they can lock?
Israel does a lot of research and innovation for US technologies, including weapons. That would be of great value to Russia. I can't speak as to what weapons the US can and can't lock.
All of this is in a kind of unrealistic realm, because US support for Israel isn't going anywhere.
Note: I despise Trump.
Maybe it does... But not in the way many think.
Imagine Trump wins, starts doing the shit he is saying he will do and the outcome is a civil war. I think Israel would stop being something the US would think about. And then the genocide stops... At least in one direction. But given the bad blood there is now there...
I think Israel would stop being something the US would think about. And then the genocide stops...
I don't think Israel would stop doing what they're doing just because support stops from the US. They still have a lot of support from Europe and their own resources besides. They're a nuclear power, they have however much leverage they want.
The US should cut ties to at least partially absolve itself of responsibility for the genocide, but Palestine is not going to be saved until some global power is willing to stand with Palestine against Israel.
And I'm sure letting trump have an easier time getting elected will make things so much better.
I would recommend talking to your local representatives about the current situation and how important it is to you and expressing how you may support other people running against them if they don't support a ceasefire.
Local elections are really important.
And letting the greater evil in at the local level???!!!!1?!! Just admit you love Putin smdh smhmh
Poe’s Law makes it impossible to know how to vote this comment
Trump will be much worse on letting the Israelis genocide Palestinians.
So the only argument in favor of Biden is "I'm shitty but not like Trump"?
This is the stance I really don't understand. You do know that if Trump wins, even the limp-wristed calls for constraint go away? That Trump will actively encourage and endorse the genocide? That things will get measurably worse for the Palestinians?
I really do want to understand how people who hold this particular position think not voting for Biden will improve the lot of the Palestinians. Please, enlighten me.
I won't vote for someone who's pro genocide. It's pretty simple.
People who aid and abet genocide don't get my vote.
Biden's not changing course, so he clearly thinks he can win just with the votes of people who are okay voting for a pro-genocide candidate. That's his call to make.
Sorry for the delayed response.
This year, it's a choice between a person who's funding a genocide while applying (admittedly limited) political pressure to restrain Israel, and a person who's publically stated that he supports the genocide and thinks it isn't going fast enough, and who would increase funding to increase the speed of the genocide.
By not voting for the former, you are implicitly endorsing the latter (saying, he's just as hood as the former), and are culpable if he is elected - the definition of moral evil includes inaction. Sitting this one out because you like neither candidate is a moral evil, since one candidate is categorically worse (genocide-wise) than the other.
Biden has agency here. He could very easily get my vote, but chooses not to. He's making conscious decisions with expectations to how people will receive them. That leaves us with two possibilities, which I alluded to earlier:
- He cares more about genocide than winning the election.
- He thinks he can win without the anti-genocide vote.
If it's 1, I don't want him as my president. If it's 2, he's not expecting my vote and nor shall he get it.
Our voting system sucks
I live in a red state so it doesn't make any difference who I vote for. I'm not voting for Biden because I don't want to support the Democrats and my vote doesn't matter anyway. If I lived in a state where it mattered then I would probably vote for Biden because he's not Trump.
that's totally fair...
depending on how red it is, some states do flip, especially with redistricting...
ive voted third party in a super blue state before... but against trump, i even swallowed my vomit and voted for hillaryi have a trans child, and i don't want them put into a concentration camp for sneezing in a school zone or whatever they're cooking up in Project 2025...
Please still vote though! At least rest of the way down the ballot. The more local the office the more weight your vote has. Plus there is legislation to vote on. Sorry if you were already planning to, this was also more for anyone who agreed with the sentiment and will stay home.
Agreed. Local candidates and referendum votes are often more directly impactful to local communities.
Things like legalization of weed, protection of abortion rights, and ranked choice voting usually show up as referendum votes. And when it comes to how homelessness, police, financial aid, schools, etc. in your area are managed, that's all local politics.
Exactly!!! Locally they are trying to recall a school board member for basically being liberal. Mask mandates, covid policies, some sort of race related class or club... you know the real egregious stuff. That's really where conservatives are more active too.