Edit: new and improved image, now with 100% less support! Used my expert photo editing skills to change “supporting” to say “voting for”
I’m going to copy /u/kiniz0r’s comment from a few months ago because I think it’s extremely perceptive and accurate:
People have a fucked-up understanding of voting in the US. You are not voting for the person you agree with. You are voting for the person you’d rather negotiate with.
If you actually care beyond the aesthetics of whether you did the cool thing or not, you have to think about the function of what you’re doing and not just whether it feels good.
Your political choices shouldn’t be performative, they should be as effective as possible in the present.
You do the best you can with what you have.
My favorite analogy is that voting is like taking the bus, just because it doesn’t drop you off in front of your house, doesn’t mean you’re better off walking.
And also - do you want the next bus or the last bus?
Idk why people think negotiation starts after voting happens
We’re negotiating right now, this is the negotiation.
Absolutely, but the negotiation also continues after the voting happens, so it’s probably worthwhile to vote for someone who can be negotiated with.
Not If your negotiation partner is unwilling to provide concessions before you give them what they want…
No no, see the best time to negotiate is after you’ve already given someone everything they want from you. This totally isn’t a textbook recipe for being taken advantage of. /s
A most poignant and apt critique.
I have observed that a lot of us treat the enormous good luck of democratic participation as a team sport, and it’s depressing.
I’ll have to keep that in mind. That’s very well put.
I’ve talked to a bunch of people who were barely of voting age in 2016 and who treated their first voting experience as an edgy popularity contest, who didn’t think about anything other than the presidential race.
Then Roe was overturned and they were like ‘Ohhh. I get it now.’ And then it was too late.
I also hear from people who are just coming into voting age saying similar things. Biden isn’t doing enough about Isreal (as if he has the power to unilaterally stop the fighting), and they seem completely unaware that Congress, not the president, controls most things. This is not (yet) a dictatorship.
But they’re planning to vote like it’s a horse race. Sorry Buttercup, but that’s not how this works. Biden is at least sane. The entire right is not. Please for the love of humanity, please don’t lock us into fascism because you think Biden is too old or whatever. I agree, we should have better candidates – nobody seems to be mentioning that trump is only 3 years younger than Biden, which at their age is nothing – the fact is these are the two we will be choosing from. There is no third option in this system, and no amount of protest votes will change that. It’s just a fact.
I would vote for Biden’s corpse before trump and the fascism he openly calls for. If you wouldn’t, you need to learn more about this system and processes before casting your vote. It shouldn’t even be a question.
The bigger issue is the whole system behind voting, not the symptoms that we call our candidates.
Oh yes, well another commenter already put out the recommendation for ranked choice voting which would be a great improvement over our current first-past-the-post system.
I’m really not sure how we even start getting such a change implemented though.
That’s the nice thing about the two political party system: Who else are you going to vote for? Abstain or third party? You’d run the risk of having democracy end, when the other party wins, and getting thrown into a camp for your “Unamerican” beliefs.
You understand the president you vote for is only part of this right? We could elect Bernie and we still wouldn’t have healthcare in 4 years without a blue congress.
What is Biden supposed to have done in the last 4 years about healthcare on his own? The changes on requirements for prior authorizations is a big help for many but things like that are about as much as he can do without Congress.
You understand the president you vote for is only part of this right?
I’ll point you to Henry Cuellar down in the Texas Valley. He’s one of the most consistently right-wing Democrats in the House, he’s in a Safe Dem seat and has been since the district was packed with Dem voters during the 2006 Tom DeLay lead redistricting ratfuck, and every time a progressive primary opponent sticks a head up he gets millions of dollars in party to support to bail him out.
This is the fundamental struggle with “You just have to support Biden and then figure shit out downstream”. Guys like Biden and Clinton and even Kerry and Gore have created this perpetual undercurrent of conservativism in the party, such that every election becomes a “Bad Democrat v Worse Republican” all up and down the ballot election after election after election.
And because they can command these enormous sums of money and vast media influence campaigns from their position as leaders of the party, we keep getting these turds jammed up in our plumbing for decades - Manchins and Sinemas and Feinsteins and Gillibrands - who actively undermine everything in the official party platform with their concern trolling.
Even if Biden wins, another four years of a glorified insurance lobbyist who gave Strom Thurmond’s fucking eulogy is not going to benefit anyone young, colored, or queer who still cling to faith in the party. He and his team are going to keep putting up these turds like Merrick Garland and Anthony Blinken in the bureaucracy and backing a team of mummies for the next Congressional election and doing everything they can to kneecap anyone under 40 with the gall to challenge someone in a primary.
I’d fuck me?
We don’t get to vote for “better” in the US. We get to vote for “less worse” or “more worse.” But not “better.”
Better takes ages. Massive organizing. And probably some violence on someone’s part. But you don’t get to vote for “better” in this country.
As evidence: We’re the only country that needed a war to decide that slavery was wrong.
And voting in LOCAL elections, which way, way too many people ignore as not important. We can actually have “better” in a lot of those elections, if people would pay attention. People started paying a lot more attention where I live after a council member skipped 3 straight months of meetings but still had time to go to campaign events, and we realized that there were serious issues with several council members who all voted for conservative bs in lockstep. We managed to flip enough seats that it’s now a 5-4 Democrat majority so the mayor can’t just force through her pro-oil & gas nonsense at every turn, and the new members actually give a shit about the community.
My dad is a local official and he couldn’t stop some giant, ugly, car-brained development from going in. He could only vote for the least bad one. Which is still terrible.
So, no, I don’t think even local elections get us “better.” But “less worse” is still worth voting for because it honestly doesn’t take that much time.
They do though? It would be much easier to mobilize on a smaller scale and build up. ike I’m sorry that happened to you but some places are getting better. A few areas have ranked choice which I think is a step forward. Do don’t gone up hope and keep trying to make things better
As evidence: We’re the only country that needed a war to decide that slavery was wrong.
Uh. Pretty sure that’s not even close to true.
Okay, Haiti, too. But I don’t really count that because it was a slave revolt.
But most of Europe just passed a law saying it was illegal.
Most of Europe didn’t have any significant amount of slavery to ban. Even then, there was considerable resistance - France abolished slavery during the French Revolution (a time of civil war, if you will remember), then reimplemented it, then abolished it again. Most of Latin America abolished slavery only with wars of independence; many of them not even then, having civil wars of their own during which the issue was resolved. Brazil had a coup over abolishing slavery, much of Africa and the Middle East retained the institution until stripped of independence (via war) during the colonial era… the list goes on.
Wars over slavery are presented any time there is a powerful slave-holding elite in a post-Enlightenment society.
While Europe just reformed and compensated the slavers with money, at least we fought a bloody war to end the slavery menace, bringing the emancipation cause to the forefront of the world. Albeit Reconstruction was sadly misused but at least some good was done for the world.
Didn’t European countries invade several African kingdoms and tribes and brought emancipation to their slaves?
Goddamn if this ain’t the truest thing I’ve read in weeks. Just an addendum, slavery has never gone away. It built the foundation of this country and continues to be the reliable and cheaply paid engine that drives it. Slavery exists, it just has been frosted in corpo speak and glitter to fool the masses.
Where do you believe slavery still exists in the US? Can you give an example of humans being owned by an individual or company and forced to work for no wages in 2024?
Sure: in prisons that are disproportionately filled with minorities, as is explicitly allowed in the amendment.
I can see that, prisons are a good example.
Chattel slavery ended, which is where people literally owned other people as their deeded property. There are other forms of slavery though, like the other commenter mentioned with involuntary labor in prisons. Wage slavery is also a thing.
We don’t get to vote for the best option because we don’t have ranked choice voting.
We will always be voting for the lesser of two evils because we are afraid of throwing our vote away on a third party or lesser known candidate.
If we had ranked choice voting, we could actually vote for people we like instead of voting against people we don’t like.
It would open the doors for so many new politicians to stand a chance against the ones who simply have the most name recognition.
This is the most bullshit comment I’ve read in this thread
I’ll go further: actually bothering to talk about some of the positive things that happened under his presidency will be necessary for him to win.
If progressives, leftists, antifascists, etc. can only manage to offer a “I guess he’s not a literal pile of shit so maybe I’ll consider holding my nose and voting,” there’s no permission structure for Enlightened Centrists™, Never-Trumpers, or even tired Democrats, to turn out. Trump voters are mad as hell. Lots of them really think the election was stolen from him. They’re going to turn out.
We need more than holding your nose.
The child tax credit cut child poverty by possibly as much as 46%. Biden’s campaigning on bringing it back to stimulus levels. That’s money in the pockets of people who need it the most.
Biden tried to forgive student loan debt. Conservative judges blocked him. Re-elect him so he can keep appointing judges and finding new ways to fight against more bad decisions like this.
Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act may include some of the most impactful climate policies ever enacted by any American congress since the creation of the EPA.
There are "yes, but"s for each of those points I made but my argument is simple: you don’t get to make more accomplishments if you don’t talk about the ones you made already.
This hasn’t been a perfect administration, we’ve never had one. But he damn sure hasn’t done nothing when it comes to some of the most important political issues of our time.
It’s weird that there’s been so much accomplished but so little talk about it. I only ever hear them listed at the end of a Brian Tyler Cohen video.
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Can you please list something he actually did rather than “try”? Because otherwise people should just “try” to vote for him.
The only thing I remember is breaking the back of the railroad strike (most pro union president btw).
I listed two already and others have listed more, but I’ll take your comment as if it’s in good faith anyway and link to:
more information about the Inflation Reduction Act
Which is both a huge investment in infrastructure and climate initiatives and also pretty poorly understood by most people.
And to make a bigger point: on the left we have an intrinsically harder job than the right does, since their argument is that government sucks and then they prove it by working in it and doing a shitty job.
It’s hard for government programs to work effectively, even when they have huge popular support. People with money and power always want them to fail. It means our results sometimes aren’t pretty, and aren’t perfect. But if even we shit all over them at every possible turn, how do you expect average voters to think any different?
Which is both a huge investment in infrastructure and climate initiatives and also pretty poorly understood by most people.
This sentence represents the DNC’s approach to politics so well and why they fail to connect with many voters. They approach politics inversely, coming up with policy and trying to invent/convince a politics around it, so they need a brand to sell their policy basically which Obama was so perfect at. You see this with the former Obama staffers Pod Save guys a lot. They constantly plead with their audience to realize why something like public healthcare isn’t a realistic policy, or why some policy that connects with very few is actually the best thing for you. This is also just the general DNC-sympathetic approach in the media coverage, “here’s why, despite you struggling with increased economic uncertainty and material stresses as a result of our decaying economic system, your life is actually better because of Biden and the DNC.”
Inversely you have the GOP who shamelessly accept any and all public politics to the point of absurdity. Trump is like the inverse-Obama where instead of a political brand selling policy, he’s parroting back the politics that people present him with as if it was a “yes, and” improv exercise. And they effectively take that public fear approach towards Trump from the Democrat-sympathetic media and flip it around, “your life didn’t significantly change under Trump despite this insane reaction to him,” which for many Trump supporters actually connects.
So average voters, they don’t care about policy or some political argument, most American’s aren’t engaged in politics at the online level. They vote based on how much they personally connect with a politician or by circumstance. The DNC fails to approach politics this way and desperately wants to find more Obamas to perform the function they require for their approach to work, vs the GOP who offer up anything no matter how ridiculous or absurd and contradictory.
I agree with you that the DNC, and lots of democrats, are often terrible at messaging.
I’d quibble with your framing about some of these things not connecting with average voters, but I’d rather take a step back a bit.
I guess my main idea is: If we care about the project of government being involved in people’s lives in a helpful way, we owe it to people who are less privileged than us to walk and also chew gum here. We, the people who have time and resources to research this stuff and debate instead of picking up a second job to make ends meet.
Maybe you don’t have time for this shit. I don’t blame or judge you if that’s the case. I’m speaking to the terminally online people who have time to worry about this stuff.
And when I say “walk and chew gum” I mean:
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Vote in the primary against shitty centrist dems when you can,
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Vote for them over their fascist opponent if they win the primary anyway.
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Have conversations about solutions that are simple and straightforwardly helpful to people’s lives to help broaden that Overton window. Including criticizing the DNC when they fail to offer those.
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Do the DNC’s job for them on communication about the helpful policies we do get. Because we have gotten some. Positive conversations about government programs that are currently being implemented are not happening enough.
They do take time to implement, and they’re not enough, and on and on. I agree with the negative sentiment about it. [Edited out some unhelpful whining here] That said, there’s too much work to do for the problems with the DNC to be the whole conversation. If you don’t support fascism, we’re on the same side.
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Shameless plug for ranked voting.
Score voting is better, but any voting system that allows you to express preference in a way that doesn’t flush your ballot down the toilet is infinitely better than the garbage we have.
STAR voting is peak. And shoutout to approval voting.
You are a true connoisseur
As are you good sir
Me personally, I’m a fan of the Schulze method, but we take them as we can get them.
Agreed
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Not wrong
What I like most about this meme is that it implies that supporting the Biden won’t exactly lead to a good outcome for you either, but at least it’s not as immediate as getting the Trump again.
Biden is the lotion you apply to soften your skin so it can, once removed, make capitalism pretty.
Capitalism can’t be pretty, it’s more like sunscreen. Prevents your skin from dying quite as quickly, but it’ll get there eventually.
At least my tan will be even 😐🔫
That’s just voting
You want to change the system, I am literally 100% behind you. Until then, any registered voter that stays home is a vote for Trump. That is the greater evil…
If not voting for Biden is a vote for Trump, by the same logic not voting for Trump is a vote for Biden
If you can convince a Trump supporter to stay home, sure. More likely, they’ll just vote when your back is turned and try to drop in you’re ballot for Trump.
An individual vote only has meaningful significance in a few specific locations. If you aren’t doing anything to materially impact votes in those locations, emphasizing your individual vote as significant online is more about self-affirming and displaying your allegiance among others who agree with you.
Don’t worry, third party voters are still wearing crowns.
That’s not how voting works but hyperbole does.
Any government in power doesn’t care about your concerns if you’re not participating in the decision-making.
And when I say not caring about your concerns, I mean not fixing old lead pipes that are poisoning an entire town because it couldn’t give enough of a damn
It literally is, at its core.
Do you need a definition of literally? Because you sure don’t show understanding.
Blaming no confidence voters for staying home because the DNC decided to hold their votes hostage is top tier victim blaming.
Again, might as well vote for trump bud
You’re the one voting for israel not me. Crazy that you’re projecting your endorsement for genocide on others
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only a vote for trump is a vote for trump
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no, in every election office.
The greatest evil is America though, so if you’re telling me Trump is going to destroy America…… He’s looking pretty fuckin’ awesome.
Before you set the house on fire, consider all the people locked in the attic.
Some of you may die, but that’s a sacrifice I’m willing to make
aha, but what if I have a master plan to save them, which involves removing the structural barriers to them escaping the attic via an attack that uses fire? we’re making the mother of all omelettes, jack, you can’t fret over every egg, or whatever.
this is just raw accelerationism though, and I’ve been told that’s not a kosher ideology, so we can’t legitimately engage with it. kind of a shame, but also pretty easily co-opted into just being like, neo-fascism, so, understandable. we need to start lighting the types of furniture I don’t like on fire! we need to let the attic burn, with the people inside, because it will provide warmth! and so on. we won’t disassemble the house with the master’s tools, or what have you, and a house divided against itself cannot stand, but it’s also impossible to move houses in this economy, so I dunno. do we need to start knocking out walls for an open floorplan, or what? is the metaphor falling apart, and beginning to collapse, like the house?
Cis white heterosexual revolutionaries will have a shining new day once the ashes clear, I’m sure they will build a monument to all the oppressed people they sacrificed to the fire.
Well of course, all the normies would need something to direct their two minutes’ hate at, or whatever.
ah yes poor americans are more important than yemeni getting droned. Classic liberal. Not every life is equal I see.
Have fun at the middle school dance tonight
Trump isn’t going to destroy America, just the parts of it he doesn’t like. The parts that are democratic and tolerant will be his primary targets.
Trump destroying America doesn’t mean he’d make it better. He would make it worse. Even if you think it’s the “greatest” evil, that doesn’t mean it is at maximum evil.
I miss old Lemmy, when this would have been the upvotes comment instead. Redditors need to look in the mirror before posting here.
I can think of about 200 other countries that are worse than America. Hell, in Germany, they have far right nationalists becoming popular again.
Lol
I like the implication that in this scenario, the actual threat of getting the trump again is coming from the same person that’s instructing to put the Biden on its skin. Also that in the end, ‘it’ gets made into a skin suit either way
I also like the flexibility: it could just as easily be leftists threatening the DNC with getting the trump again
If this is a bit it’s absolutely perfect, 10/10
Okay but I’ve watched that film: Either way, whether you conform and put the lotion on or you get the hose again, either way you’re still in the pit and you’re going to get killed to make a skinsuit unless Clarice Starling shows up and rescues you.
Hello, I am once again asking for you to release that woman from the hole.
This is the best worst Photoshop I’ve ever seen. Incredible.
I’ll hold my nose and vote for Biden. It’s obviously important and right. But I’ll never pretend he doesn’t stink.
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The point of voting for biden is to not give power to an unhinged far right russian assett. Or were you being sarcastic?
do you have any evidence rfkjr is a Russian assetm
Nope, just his words and actions.
can you be any more specific?
His campaign used stock footage supplied by their russian handlers just like kari lake and had to scramble to delete it after it came to light, most of his talking points mirror russian narratives, he constantly publicly defends russia, his position in us politics as spoiler on the left closely mirrors the strategy russia used with trump to dominate the republican party - only rfk is somehow less competent than trump.
It’s just quite obvious from everything he does and says. I’m sure a little searching would turn up more examples.
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everyone uses stock photos for merch. what makes you think the Russian state is involved?
when did he defend Russia?
He’s not only inviable but actually just worse from what I know. Seriously, why the fuck would you recommend voting for him? Even if my impression is dead wrong, that’s just stupid.
And remember to be rational, to remain somewhat detached from the constant stream of political narratives and spins that gets thrown your way, where the positive or neutral things get ignored because that gets no click-ad revenue, everything that gets screamed at you is a distortion of reality.
Separate the garbage and the appeal to visceral reactions.It’s easier then to see that Biden and his cabinet inherited an incredible mess, is genuinely trying to clean it up, and there are no overnight miracles when the other political party constantly engages in sabotage of the gears of democracy, while a large segment of the population remains electorally apathetic and aloof.
This constant, perpetual media and social media provocation and clickbait, makes an intellect vulnerable to “divide-and-conquer” tactics, keeps him/her apathetic and aloof, while simultaneously demoralized. And the constant stream of infotainment excrement just keeps on flowing like a river during rainy season.
EDIT: To put in a nutshell, tldr:
Electoral apathy benefits republicans.
Electoral engagement benefits Democrats.
Now guess which side engages most with “divide and conquer” infotainment dumps to keep the electorate as cynical as possible.Removed by mod
If there were some kind of guarantee that the DNC collapsed on a Trump victory…
Can’t have a DNC if we never have another election.
Like not having elections anymore?
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Obviously the only solution is to vote Trump out of spite!
Not voting is a vote for Trump.
Voting third party is no better than not voting.
Also, we need you to
Like, Subscribe, and ShareDonate, Blockwalk, and GOTV or you’re not really committed! And if Biden loses? It’s somehow still your fault for being insufficiently zealous.only one party gave us trump
That submissive defeatist mindset lol. “You have to vote for my guy because the other guy is worst, you have no choice.”. What if I tell you that’s the whole plan? And what about the millions people who politics doesn’t align with the liberals? Does their voice not matter?
How can you pretend living in a democracy lol we’re not perfect but at least we have proportional representation.
we’re not perfect but at least we have proportional representation.
One State Two Votes
Not the message you want to spread…
Ain’t it the truth, though? Four more years of Bipartisanship With Fascists or we give you Pure Fascism.
One is rusty shitbox, the other is radioactive rusty shitbox that is also on fire.
I choose rusty shitbox every time in this situation.
Does it suck? Yeah.
Not as badly as the alternative.
One is rusty shitbox, the other is radioactive rusty shitbox that is also on fire.
I genuinely don’t understand what people think happened between 2017 and 2021. The idea that democracy ended, the country collapsed, and we all got radiation poisoning and died seems systemic.
Two of those four years even had a Dem majority in the legislature, ffs.
So, you’re ignoring the coup attempt now?
Imagine a world in which and angry mob had caught up with Mike Pence, Steve Scalisce, and Scott Walker.
You should apologize for the poor trillions of electrons that died to spread your bullshit.
Oh, you mean the pink hats? Who invaded the capitol like two years prior?
Get professional help before you hurt yourself or others. I am not saying this as a joke.
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Biden completely ignored helping healthcare and tuition debt UNTIL he lost the majority. Democrats rely on letting Republicans take the heat for the conservative legislation they want to enact.
Biden completely ignored helping healthcare and tuition debt UNTIL he lost the majority.
Well, he was convinced that he could pass bipartisan legislation back in 2021.
Why? Who the fuck knows. Presumably because he’d slept through the 111th United States Congressional cycle.
Democrats rely on letting Republicans take the heat for the conservative legislation they want to enact.
They hated him because he spoke the truth.
If he worked quickly, he wouldn’t have to pass legislation with Republican permission. Better healthcare is akin to socialism to the two main parties. Biden and Obama would rather have the garbage on the “open market”. Imagine paying $400 a month (for individual) and the best you can get is to lock emergency care to a few grand (which is better than nothing - the Democrat motto).
Seriously, have you ever had free market insurance? It’s horrible; thankfully my job offered to pay most of the monthly cost until I found a job with better healthcare. That was a few years ago; it’s worse now. The open market is not a replacement for good healthcare; and the good work-group based healthcare is not offered with every job in the first place.
They hated him because he spoke the truth.
I’m sorry but I did not understand this reference. Which person are you referring to and what did this person say?
Literally going psycho mode on the 2016 strategy of shaming the voters they need rather than blaming the DNC in any meaningful way for it’s lack of ability to appeal to those voters. They don’t understand this has already topped out on effectiveness. Not realizing Biden won because of the pandemic in spite of this strategy is going to mark the failure and likely GOP win this year.
Sad and pathetic to see it happen this way, where the very people they need to win are the ones they target and judge harshest.
I mean, kinda is though
If the DNC could stop shooting themselves in the foot and blaming everyone but themselves, theyd be unstoppable.
God, what a glorious way to tell that truth! I really hate being in this position but there seems to only be one safe way out.
Let’s see what happens in 4 years when trump runs again if he loses (because of course he will).
hopefully he’ll be too much of a literal pants-shitting vegetable or just dead by then
Seeing as how his brain dead followers have likened him to the God Emperor of Mankind before I am not sure him being worm food (poor wormies) would stop them from voting for him.
Hamburger 2024!
Has something changed? I thought Trump was ahead in most states.
