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“I Am Done Voting for the Lesser of Two Evils. I Will Not Vote for Joe Biden in 2024.”
(inthesetimes.com)
this post was submitted on 25 Oct 2023
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electoralism
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I'm failing to understand this POV. Even if you think neither outcome is good why wouldn't you do what minimal thing you can to keep the worse option from happening?
The vote is performative.
At this point, you're voting for the window dressing.
Which bill was it where dems legalized gay marriage?
Which bill was it where they protected abortion rights?
Which bill was it where they protected the right to marry other races?
etc.
Basing your record on a few supreme court decisions, which can (and have) get overturned is fatuous.
Aside from taking a slightly less shitty stance on things, you'll find that for the most part, the dems, when they had full government control, did fuck all to enshrine minority rights, provide a living wage, or make steps towards universal healthcare.
I used to think like this, I'm 50 and voted like my life depended on it since '92. All I've seen since then, are conditions getting worse and worse, regardless of who was in office. I bought Obama's schtick and watched as he did half assed measures and frittered a majority away.
And by the way "b-b-but conservative democrats" line has been used as far back as I can remember. If you consistently see members of a party blocking vital legislation over and over and over again. Maybe that shit is performative too.
This country needs a reset.
Shit, is this not actually the law, just another SC ruling?
Loving v Virginia
Look if Genocide Joe wants my vote, he could try doing something to earn it instead of just saying "I'm not Trump".
I can agree Joe is a genocider and still vote for him instead of trump*.
Trump is happy to apply his genocidal ideals to his own countrymen. Biden, less so - mostly directed outward/foreign. If my vote has influence on this matter, even slightly, who am I going to choose?
Moreover, I'm not pretending my vote is some sacred gift I can only give to the most perfect candidate. Rather, I am happy if my trash vote can negate a even more-trash vote.
* I predict being the_dunk_tank material and I accept my fate.
Also I want to say, I am really trying to understand this. even if I say wierd/bad faith/something stuff it's an accident and I want to understand the point of view of "anti electoralism" -- if that's the right term.
I can't. It should be an easy red line to have
That's relatively straightforward. Elections are a distraction, they redirect energy into a form the political order can digest without changing. The more you invest in them the less you are putting into alternatives that are more useful. Vote, if you want, it might do marginal good in an infinitesimal scale, but agonizing over voting is playing into a system that exists to funnel all your energy into itself.
Biden has Trump beat on deportations, police funding, military funding, and he's completely unwilling to stand for abortion right, trans rights, and debt forgiveness
And now he's a genocider, so what actually are we supposed to be afraid of from Trump? At least with Trump most of the media and 50% of the establishment will oppose him, unlike with Biden where the 90% of the media backs him and 80% of the establishment cosigns his genocidal ideals
I fear Biden and his ilk more than I fear Trump and his incompetent clown show, because at least with Trump I can be confident most of the country will oppose him
I can't even be confident that so-called "leftists" will oppose Biden, because here you are arguing we should vote for a man who's committing genocide
I'm not going to defend Biden or dems in general, but part of your point that I want to address directly is this:
While he and other dems are "unwilling to stand", they are also not actively working against those or certain other causes. If everyone who believes in these causes chooses to not vote because they're not being addressed, republicans will win and do their damndest to stomp all over marginalized groups even more. This is why I vote (against them).
Oppose him verbally, sure. But that has no effect, and actually sometimes emboldens him and other R's as they do stuff to "own the libs". Why is opposing him like this good, but opposing him with my vote bad?
I think my stumbling block in trying to understand this POV is that I do believe there is inherently a difference between voting for someone and voting against someone else. I'd rather not freely cede anything to those I consider to be worse. I understand you may see the outcome as "the same" and for some people, it is. But I do believe that there are people where a difference between the parties exists and is important in their lives.
To address your last point, I'm not trying to convince anyone of anything, certainly not against their conscience. I'm trying to understand why walking away from elections is (or at least seems to be) the general consensus amongst this community.
Thanks for your thoughts.
Why did you zoom in on the "completely unwilling to stand for abortion right, trans rights, and debt forgiveness" part, but completely ignore the "Biden has Trump beat on deportations, police funding, military funding" part? BIDEN IS DOING his damndest to stomp all over marginalized groups, even more then Trump when it comes to those specific areas of contention
Also not being willing to stand up to republicans in terms of abortion rights IS the same thing as "actively working against those or certain other causes", in fact false alliance is worse than outright hostility, because it confuses and disarms marginalized people who look for allies
Really? An entire country with every liberal and leftist org united against Trump and the only opposition would be verbal? And I thought I was a doomer
Because your vote strengthens the Ratchet Effect, as we've seen with Biden's rightward shift
If the person you're voting FOR is doing the same or worse things than the person you're voting AGAINST, then your politics are frankly incoherent and insincere, and you'll end up valuing the lives of certain people over the lives of others, and at that point you might as well just become a republican
http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/45a/298.html
Linked elsewhere in the thread, but W.E.B. Dubois explains it here, in ways that still ring clearly today.
Thanks for pointing out the discourse from elsewhere in the thread (and from history) , I'll give it a skim-read soon and an honest sober read tomorrow
So the part of this that stood out to me the most is this:
Now we have ~80 million people abstaining in the 2020 elections (per NPR: https://www.npr.org/2020/12/15/945031391/poll-despite-record-turnout-80-million-americans-didnt-vote-heres-why), and yet the dumb farce goes on. If people continue removing themselves from the voter pool, it'll still continue on. I'm failing to see the hope here. Maybe that's why I'm having a hard time understanding this point of view.
Thanks again for pointing me to that link.
If neither party represents your interests, what's your vote doing? Making sure that they can both ignore your interests even more?
The US two-party system is a complete and abject failure of democracy.
If a fascist finds it important to vote, I intend my vote to counteract theirs.
It's less important that someone "represents my interests" than it is that overall suffrage and equity is reduced at a slower rate. It's sad, but that's what it seems we're up against in the modern republican party.
The two party system IS a failure, and I have a laundry list(*) of electoral changes I want throughout the country, some of which are already in place in a few voting districts including my own. How is not voting going to improve any of that?
(* If you're interested I can add them tomorrow when I'm more sober and at a keyboard)
If you're forced to vote for a party to avoid the collapse of your democracy, that's no longer a democracy. That's a one-party state with a few more steps.
If you are doing this at the expense of not taking even a chance at stopping the reduction of equity, you are in fact helping the reduction of equity even as you are slowing it.
If they want my vote they've got to do something to earn it
I was willing to vote for Bernie Sanders in 2020 for harm reduction reasons. He was the compromise. Dems rejected it.
It's a pressure campaign. They're offering to stop if Biden backs a ceasefire.
I don't follow - this seems to be about a very specific thing; I was speaking very generally trying to understand the anti electoral stance.
Maybe I missed the demonstrative nature of your example - if you're willing to explain further, I'm happy to read/learn.
Thanks for your perspective and time.
Sorry, I assumed you were talking about the article. I'm not anti voting, I'm against using running for office as a strategy for social change.
No worries, that's a reasonable assumption. My apologies for being off on a tangent here in the comments :)
Thanks for inspiring me to be conversational
Why would they ever change if people keep supporting them?
I think it boils down to a few factors.
Materially all you are doing is helping the Democrats keep being shit because they believe they are entitled to the vote of every decent person on the basis of this lesser evilism. Breaking their base, even if it lets the Republicans win one cycle, would actually pressure concessions out of them.
I appreciate what you're saying, but its not resonating with me.
"This is the most important election of our lifetime" -- yes, I know you all make fun of people for saying that, and I am mostly quoting it because I know I'll get called out if I try to dance around the wording. But, that sentiment seems true to me based on what R's have been getting up to lately. They seem poised to take over if they win one more cycle.
I appreciate your attempting to exercise self-awareness, but I am again asking you to step back and look at the bigger picture: Let's say there is validity to the claim "This is the most important election of our lifetime." I reject that claim, it seems to have no material basis, but let's say it is real. What is this really saying? "This is the most important election you have encountered yet" This is a critical distinction that is never articulated because the simple fact of the matter is that what you are saying didn't become a meme this cycle, it became a meme -- being generous -- in 2016 (less generous would put it in the mid-20th century). 2016 got this treatment, 2020 got this treatment, 2024 is getting this treatment, and can you tell me with a straight face that 2028 won't be treated the same way?
So we have a pattern of crisis being proclaimed, where each one is said to be worse than the previous crises, and there is absolutely no model to stop it except by being so myopic you can't see the future 3 inches past your nose. Let us say that it is "the most important election of our lifetimes [so far]," that's because it beat out the previous crises, but the ones after will surely be worse. Even giving what I view as an unreasonable amount of leeway to your hypothesis, the calculus of risking Trump winning in order to actually make positive change and develop a means to break this vicious cycle of ever-greater threat of catastrophe. You are sinking and debating that we should spend forever slowing how quickly we sink instead of trying to get out of the water.
We make fun of it because its been an excuse for like 40 years if not more