If anything, lefties shouldn’t be a single issue voter at all. They should be picking someone who might move toward that direction and have the chance to win, not abstaining.
As the famous word goes: Evil triumph when good men do nothing. You can’t abstain or do protest vote and expect anything to change under Trump, that single issue you hold so important will get worst, or even impossible.
Well this “single issue” of land stealing, white supremacist subjugation of a people on their native land, ethnic cleansing and genocide, has only gotten worse with every election.
If we look at AIPAC they arent powerful because they influence who wins. They are powerful because they onfluence who looses.
That is why being pro genocide remains a staple of both parties policies. The only way to change that, is to punish the side that claims to not be pro genocide generally, so it has to become against genocide specifically.
And we had one year of trying to do that before the election, where people here and in othernplace vigorously defended being pro genocide, as challenging that before the election would be bad for the election.
We saw with Biden stepping down that challenging the dementia candidate was actually beneficial for the Democrats election chances, despite the same denial and backlash over pointing out Bidens failing mental capacities.
Now i am sure that these sentiments of immediately attacking people who wanted the Democrats to become a non genocide party when it was still possible to achieve that for the election, were stirred by AIPAC and other establishment actors, who would rather have Trump win than end genocide or get to meaningful progressive politics like proper healthcare and workers rights.
Ho Chi Minh knew all about America’s long history of genocide and slavery.
When the time came to work with the American OSS to fight the Japanese he helped the Americans.
Any questions?
Yeah one question, what did America do to Vietnam after that?
What were the Japanese doing then?
Are you saying we should allow the genocide in Palestine to continue, and add suffering in America too?
all they have to do is point out that they don’t live in a swing state and that’s it, there’s nothing else to say, they just made a strong case and you have no rebuttal
lol
Lol they’re big mad about this one but it’s true. Next they’re gonna go blame the left in states that voted for Kamala for her loss.
But Palestine hurr Durr
You dumb fucks know how many more Palestine’s there’s gonna be if he gets in? You can kiss Ukraine goodbye, and probably hong kong too. This is nothing.
2016-2020 was the beta test. If this goes into production we’re all fucked.
You dumb fucks know how many more Palestine’s there’s gonna be if he gets in? You can kiss Ukraine goodbye, and probably hong kong too. This is nothing.
Tankies would love that, though.
You dumb fucks know how many more Palestine’s there’s gonna be if he gets in?
It seems like such a basic concept; trump means more dead Palestinians. How can someone simultaneously claim to support Palestinians and advocate for more dead Palestinians?
Nobody is advocating for that. That is the most vile claim. We tried to get the Democrats to become a non genocide party. There was plenty of time before the election. Instead we got attacked with the same sentiment like now.
The people accepting that genocide is the acceptable baseline and opposing the push for a non genocide option are the omes advocating for it.
I’ve had people telling me that I have “blood on [my] hands” because I’m voting for Harris. It’s insane. These people have no fucking concept.
If Harris wins, it will be by razor-thin margin. If she loses, trump wins. If trump wins, the genocide will get cranked up to 11. So voting 3rd party means even MORE “blood on my hands” than a Harris vote.
At least with Harris, there’s a CHANCE she can be reasoned with and stop the bloodshed.
These “Harris = genocide” people are liars, just trying to get trump elected - to sabotage this country.
There is a world where abstaining could be a reasonable approach. That world probably disappeared before I was born.
Even if that 1 to 10 scale was in magnitudes (10^n), 11 would still be an understatement for what Donald Dump would encourage Israel and Russia to do.
shortsightedness is a stubborn affliction
I imagine that folks on both sides believe this comment is about the other one.
I wish that more people could see that there aren’t two sides. Neither side is on your side, nobody is on your side, and you can think you’re on their side but it just doesn’t work that way.
Good point. Same goes for fake news. Let’s address the fear and anger on both sides first, only then we can get some facts in.
I’m not even convinced it’s even real leftists posting this stuff. It often seems like astroturfing. Not only would fake leftists possibly sway undecided voters, but they also tarnish any positivity the left deserves. Win-win for the right.
I’m a real leftist who is not voting this US election
...
I’m not an American citizen.
I’d like to think you’re right.
But I have heard borderline stuff like this in real life from people whom I know are solid progressives. (Admittedly, these are folks on my soccer team who are almost 2 decades younger than me. I can’t imagine what ending their teens during a pandemic was like so I kind of expect their politics to be wildly different.)
“Borderline” is entirely different. Voting for Harris while being salty about it is a perfectly reasonable thing real progressives should do, and it’s exactly the opposite of what these astroturf third-party propagandists are calling for even if the (alleged) sentiment is adjacent. That “border” is a knife edge and the difference between a genuine progressive and a[n effectively] pro-Trump useful idiot comes down to which side of it they fall off.
That’s absolutely true and very well put. Doing the right thing and being happy about it are two very different beasts.
Thank you!
Astroturfing exist to poison the minds of on lookers. If useful idiots didn’t adopt the warped logic they wouldn’t astroturf.
It blows my mind that people are dumb enough for it to work but in an era of razor tight electoral margins, even a few idiots can matter.
It’s all the fault of the Democrats. If they had run Bernie he would have been voted in and we wouldn’t be here.
The fact that Bernie endorses Harris is meaningless, because he’s not a real Socialist.
Things I’ve heard today on Lemm.ee
Ahaha, you had me terrified for a sec there.
Who on .ee are you seeing comments like this from?
I’ve never seen a fellow .ee like this. Curious to hear what communities it’s on
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B-but Bernie is an independent and not in any party. Therefore the democrats can’t really run him.
What bothers me about the people taking the bit of time and effort to go vote for 3rd parties is that there’s really no point to it. Making sure your own vote doesn’t matter is insane to me when voting isn’t mandatory. They could’ve just done nothing and achieved the same outcome.
Voting for one Party no matter what their policies are, is what makes your vote not matter. You signal blind loyality and no red lines. So the Party would be stupid to care about you.
They care about the ones willing to withhold their vote and money. That is how AIPAC helped shape both US parties into being pro genocide. Play both sides and punish the one that may “step out of line”
You saw how Dems panicked when there was the uncommited movement? Instead of seizing the moment and turn them into a non genocide party, people vigorously defended being pro genocide as the safer option. Just like people denied Bidens dementia until it was possible to deny. And switching from Biden was actually helping the Dems chances.
At the end the people who opposed pushing the Dems by making credible threats to their voting base, did not only accept genocide this way, they also helped Trump tremendously by preventing the Dems to switch to the majority platform of being against genocide.
The majoriy of Americans say they are against genocide. Some of them know that genocide has to be a red line. By preventing the Dems from becoming a non genocide party, it was prevented to unify the non far right side of the political spectrum to win in a landslide.
tbf if you don’t live in a swing state, your vote doesn’t really matter either way
They only be a statistical footnote that almost nobody will notice.
I haven’t done the math. Assuming full support, is there a 3rd party candidate on the ballot in enough states to actually win?
The last time a 3rd party candidate had an actual shot (and it was a looooong shot at best) was in 1992 when Ross Perot ran. He split the R vote badly enough that it handed the election to Clinton.
So long as we’re using first past the post a 3rd party candidate has a vanishingly small chance of doing anything other than helping elect the opposition.
And the lesson the Republican Party learned from that was to support the Greens—or any vaguely left party—hard.
Yes, I was there and that’s not what I was asking.
Admittedly, watching PR play out across the rest of the world kinda scares me. Israel is paralyzed into a destructive war because the ruling party is in a coalition with a few crazy extremists who will bring down the government (and thus expose Netenyahu to criminal trial) if their increasingly wild demands aren’t met. Germany’s having a clusterfuck of a time etc.
While there would be different parties, imagine the horribleness of a PR system right now in America. You could easily see a scenario where RFK acts as kingmaker and gets to demand whatever from trump or Harris. Given that trump would sell his children (maybe sub Melania for Ivanka) for the presidency, who knows what insanity would ensue? And there would be no real mechanism between the election and the next one to reign them in.
I didn’t think there was anything scarier than a trump presidency until thinking that one through. Uggggh.
Nope. The Green party’s got their candidate on the most states’ ballots, and they only managed to get 38 states. Granted, it’s still mathematically possible, considering the threshold is 270 votes, and the states that have Stein on the ballot comprise 440 votes… but still. Would be incredibly, almost impossibly difficult.
It doesn’t even matter whether or not the Green party is technically able to win. As long as America has this first-past-the-post voting system, people will have to tactically vote for Democrats, because otherwise the Republicans will win. To stop the current duopoly, there needs to be an electoral reform first. It’s probably nearly impossible to get that through but there’s no other way.
Stein and Oliver both do, though that’s certainly not going to make a difference in their actual chances
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Tiiiired of the same loser rhetoric of voting for the lesser evil of two consistently deteriorating parties.
Dummies, where will it end? Put these corporate cock suckers on notice. Do not legitimize their rule with your lips.
End the duopoliticial tyranny. Used to be whig party vs democratic party. Used to.
You don’t end the duopoly by voting third party. You end it by organising between elections. But it’s so much easier to virtue signal now and then lay back on the couch for the next 3.5 years plus you get the smug sense of self-satisfaction!
Well we tried that by demanding proper primaries and putting non genocide candidates on the ballots. And we got called being Trump shills for that. We also got called Trump shills for saying Biden is clearly too old for office. If it wasnt for Harris to replace Biden, the race would already be over.
Also the last democratic presidency has sucked a lot less corporate than previously.
If you’re not in a swing state, and Harris is going to win your state easily, it’s fine to vote for a third party. If there’s even a slim chance she is going to lose your state, you can’t justify it. Harm reduction, guys.
There is no such thing as “not a swing state” in this election. Take it from me, a Georgian: in 2020, my state wasn’t a swing state until all of a sudden it was. If people here took your advice, the Democrats would’ve lost the Senate that year.
I’m in Washington. The Dems are not losing Washington. You’re in Georgia. The Dems stand a good chance of losing Georgia. That’s the difference.
I think people forget what it’s like to not live in a swing state. I haven’t seen an ad for a presidential candidate all year.
No. Your vote still counts. Don’t throw it away on a third party “just because.”.
Vote third party in your local elections, where they actually can do something. Get them into the system. Do not waste it on a zero chance presidential election.
Voting for the Dems, a centrist party, in a non swing state, IS throwing your vote away. It will not make a difference and you’re not expressing who you really support. The point of voting is (in order) to (1) reduce the terrible shit that’s happening in our country and (2) to express your political preferences. If you’re in a swing state you cannot do (1) by voting, and if you vote for the Dems you cannot do (2), assuming you’re not a shitty centrist.
got invited to a 2016 watch party my a political junky friend. room full of people talking about how awesome it was that hillary would just win so they got to pick their dream 3rd party and make a statement with their vote. i didn’t even stay to watch my state get called. they were crushed by the realization that so many people were in fact exactly who they’d said they are. couldnt watch them experiance that, couldn’t find any sympathy to offer them.
Those people didn’t even look at a poll (which were actually fairly accurate that year)? They didn’t even check to see if Hillary was within ten points of losing their state (a greater margin of error than any modern polling miss)? That’s on them. That’s not what I’m advocating here.
they did though? this wasnt a room full of people still amped up becauee they’d just learned about the spanish civil war, or that anarchism isnt random acts of chaos. the party i attended was a room full of people who understood the electoral college well enough to make their own bingo style drinking game from it. we all got printed game sheets when we arrived. people who’d not voted for nader because they knew the price of that. everybody though the corpo democrats would show up. they thought a lot of republicans would vote for the overqualified lady who didnt smile enough inside that private voting booth when none of their friends could see. they all thought we were done with the klan until they watched an actual klansman winning. the fucking klansman is right there running again, we already watch how this thing goes.
As a Californian I’d have agreed with you except I think even a vote here signals something we need: the dire need to get rid of the electrical college. If Harris wins the national popular vote 60-40, it’s even more obvious how busted it is. She wins Senate and House? You might see change. At least, as likely as a 60-40 win, lol.
That said, let’s be honest, Green hasn’t deserved a vote in decades. I really wish they’d try smaller races they could win and build momentum.
Sending an electoral college message is a decent argument. I’m not persuaded about the house and senate argument though. In my case, I may not vote for Harris, because as somebody from Washington, she’s not gonna lose Washington. But I’m voting for a bunch of downballot Dems because they’re better progressives on a bunch of issues that Harris is not a good on. If it were even within fifteen points in Washington I’d vote for her, but I don’t want to vote for genocide if I don’t have to.
an active genocider running with the policy of continuing it getting 60% of popular vote will be the most shameful thing in our history.
Even in your hypothetical, Trump getting ~40% of the popular vote in that scenario is more shameful.
No.
