Americans of Lemmy, what is your approach to next year's election?

2020 was… truly unique. It was so hard to stay away from doom scrolling, and I (and many others) were pretty disillusioned by the sad fact that so much of our country legitimately supported the Orange Man. I didn’t get a wink of sleep the night of the election because I genuinely considered it to be a make or break decision for America.

My point is that looking back on it, in the end the only real difference I made was at the ballet box. This year I’m going for the Head-in-the-Sand approach. I’m done with the political memes. Done with the Twitter screenshots. It just riles me up and this year I’m gonna do my best to fight that.

pr06lefs,

Fucking democrat all the way. Primaries I’ll vote for the less corporate candidates. The republican party is fascists and traitors.

Horsey,

Arizona here. Very likely voting straight Democrat. We’re a swing state that feels like it’s swinging further Democrat at time goes on. At least at ground level, it feels like things are changing for the better. Phoenix doesn’t look and feel like the land of the Karens and boomers as much as even 4 years ago.

janus2,
@janus2@lemmy.zip avatar

they all moved to Scottsdale

gibmiser,

If Trump gets elected again somehow then… I don’t know what we can do to fix the country. I can’t put into words my feelings about that situation, but I worry it will cause me to no longer believe our country can be saved.

SeeMinusMinus,
@SeeMinusMinus@lemmy.world avatar

I am voting for cornel west. I don’t give a fuck about stealing votes from biden. cornel west is who I like so I am voting for him.

BertramDitore,
@BertramDitore@lemmy.world avatar

I hear you. West is inspirational, and Biden is far too old and not exciting in the least. I don’t like Biden one bit. But unfortunately even if a vote for West is not necessarily a vote for Trump, it’s still a vote against Biden, which makes it more likely that Trump will win. Almost none of us get to vote for a person we actually like, so I’m genuinely begging you to reconsider and vote for someone who has a chance of winning. Unfortunately unless something radical happens in the next few months, that’s only Biden and Trump. If you’re trying to send a message with your vote for West, I don’t think the people that matter will hear it. I wish things were different, but unfortunately this election is between a boring old institutional politician and a racist, fascist, misogynistic, anti-Semitic, insurrectionist rapist.

Bitrot,
@Bitrot@lemmy.sdf.org avatar

I miss the days of the boring old institutional republicans. Third party wasn’t such a big deal when it was Obama and McCain.

rosymind,

Whichever is the lesser of the evils. It seems that’s been the majority of our choices lately.

To be clear I’m all for the people: whoever will create the least amount of suffering, and retain the greatest amount of human rights. It feels like we’ve stopped making progress and the best we can do for now is cling desperately to what we still have

So… not republican. Obviously.

FoundTheVegan,
@FoundTheVegan@kbin.social avatar

It's not a question of policy. Republicans literally killed people last election trying to overthrow democracy.

Not that I even like democrats, but anyone who votes red after Jan 6th is fundamentally an enemy of democracy.

PowerCrazy,

This sham democracy that you fervently support kills people everyday.

lukini,
@lukini@beehaw.org avatar

Ok, so what’s your solution? Vote third party? Don’t vote? Both of those help the republicans.

Protest or something similar? Sure, but the election is still happening.

PowerCrazy,

Voting is the least you can do, so I will choose to vote against Capitalists and not for genocide. If you can’t even do that bare minimum, you don’t deserve democracy.

TheFriar,

…what anti-capitalist do you think you’re voting into office?

PowerCrazy,

The PSL candidate.

DarkGamer,
@DarkGamer@kbin.social avatar

The Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL) is a communist party in the United States. PSL was established in 2004 and claims to be active in a wide range of social movements. PSL describes its primary goal as the overthrow of capitalism and the institution of socialism.

Yeah, that sounds viable. 🙄

starbreaker,
@starbreaker@kbin.social avatar

PSL are a bunch of losers. They can't even win local elections, let alone put any of their people in state or Federal offices.

PowerCrazy,

I’d be happy to vote for someone better who isn’t pro-capitalist and pro-genocide, who do you suggest?

starbreaker,
@starbreaker@kbin.social avatar

How about you vote for yourself? Who else can you trust to represent you if not yourself?

PowerCrazy,

It’s a bit cliche and a little too individualistic for what is supposed to be literally rule by the people, so I’ll gladly embrace the democratic ideal of voting for the organization I think will not support genocide and is not capitalist. After all it is literally the least anyone can do.

starbreaker,
@starbreaker@kbin.social avatar

Meh. It's your vote. And it doesn't really matter anyway.

ilinamorato,

It also happens to be where I live. Doing nothing doesn’t help anything.

PowerCrazy,

Agreed. So don’t vote to make things slightly less worse, vote to make things better!

ilinamorato,

If we used just about anything but FPTP, absolutely. But as I see it, if I want to have any hope of being able to vote to make things better next time, I have to vote to just make things slightly less worse this time.

Perfect is the enemy of the good, and the GOP is the enemy of both.

But hey, if you see it differently, I don’t see any reason we can’t be friends. I just disagree.

just_ducky_in_NH,
  1. I’m not gonna look a memes or opinion pieces, just review genuine news articles to keep on top of things. For local elections, I may have to dig a bit, but I’ll try not to get down into the sewers.
  2. I’m gonna vote for whoever is the least-bad option at every level.
  3. If I actually find a candidate that I can support on their own merits, I will talk them up to neighbors, and support them monetarily.
  4. I will remind myself that human nature has been the same for millennia, and nothing I can do will change it. All I can do is try to mitigate the fall-out. “Do what you can, with what you’ve got, where you are.” “You do the job that’s in front of you.” (Terry Pratchett, “Night Watch”)
ME5SENGER_24,

Stuck between a rock and a hard place. It sucks.

I’m tired of the 2 party system. I don’t think I really have a party or political ideology that aligns with Democrats or Republicans and third party candidates are all over the place. I want to start voting on issues and not just politicians.

I don’t care what my politician’s feelings are. They represent a constituency and the only things they should be speaking about and for are exactly what they’re being asked for. Instead we have this political machine that takes every issues and gives it a red spin and a blue spin and then it’s force fed to the people.

Congress should not be creating our ideologies they should create the laws that structure the things the citizens want.

The Supreme Courr overturned Roe v Wade, put it on the ballet and let the people decide.

Gun control, put it on the ballet

Universal health care, put it on the ballet

Abandoning fossil fuels, put it on the ballet

Stop forcing your political and personal ideologies on us and start listing to the people. If we vote “Yes” on universal health care, the politicians must then go and figure out how to make it happen.

Let it truly be a government of the people, by the people, for the people.

Sir_Kevin,
@Sir_Kevin@lemmy.dbzer0.com avatar

Preach!! That’s how a democracy should operate!

Kuori,
@Kuori@hexbear.net avatar

i’m pretty sure the u.s. will collapse before it becomes a democracy, but it certainly is a nice dream

yenahmik,

The same way I always do. Ignore as much of it as I can until I get my ballot.

Research people/issues as I fill out the ballot.

Check the results the next day to see how the results shake out. Repeat for the next election.

brutallyhonestcritic, (edited )

Fuck everyone in the US Government except Rashida Motherfucking Tlaib.

I’m going to write in Rashida Tlaib. It’s all bullshit. What is happening right now proves it. Even fucking Bernie Sanders sounds like a Warhawk right now.

Ps. You’re all a bunch of lesser evil voting shitlibs. Doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results is the definition of insanity.

What did your harm reduction get us when we put Biden in office:

  • genocide with our tax money
  • cop city
  • stoking the Cold War and enthusiastically sending our tax money to interfere in another country’s business BECAUSE IT’S WHITE PEOPLE to enrich the Military Industrial Complex rather than helping US citizens
  • overturned Roe vs. Wade
  • no marijuana legalization (mark my words: until the primaries or GE next year when it will help Biden in the election)
  • Medicare for those who can afford it
  • austerity
  • austerity
  • more austerity
Yondoza,

I understand your frustration, but unless the voting system is modified to approval or ranked choice you are probably not acting in your best interest voting for a third party. I hate that fact as much as you and I want to see it changed, but that’s the reality of the system we’re in.

brutallyhonestcritic,

Literally ranked choice voting will never ever happen. We will always have First Past the Post and it will never change. This country is a sham democracy and I refuse to participate.

criitz,

That’s the great part, by not participating you help the worst of them!

brutallyhonestcritic,

Please explain to me what Biden and Trump would have done differently in the context of sending our tax money to turn Muslim people into hamburger.

Bitrot,
@Bitrot@lemmy.sdf.org avatar

Trump would’ve loved to have troops on the ground helping our very brave allies in the IDF. Just like he wants troops on the ground in the US when people protest.

TheAlbatross,

I dunno if that holds up, though, either side needs votes to win.

If both the Biden camp can claim not voting helps Trump and the Trump camp claim not voting helps Biden, I don’t think not voting helps either.

Plus, your vote only matters in a swing state, otherwise it’s largely worthless.

criitz,

Obviously the statement can apply to either party. But the guy I replied to was praising Rep. Tlaib. For them, the alternative to not voting (or voting third party) would presumably be voting Biden, never Trump. So by not voting they are helping Trump.

As far as non swing state voters having no power… Definitely true.

MrVilliam,

This country is a sham democracy and I refuse to participate.

This is how they want you to feel. Republicans win by making people like you feel hopeless. The wins last week in OH, VA, and KY happened because young people turned out more than expected, and young voters skew more progressively. Like you, I’m frustrated too, but the Overton window will continue to shift right unless you put Democrats in at the general and vote progressive in primaries. That goes for the entire election all the way down to the lowest local elected office because that’s where people get their start. You’re right, we’re not getting ranked choice across the board within our lifetime, but some areas do use ranked choice and may help elect people who will push for it at the state level, and maybe one day federal. The same is true for enshrining abortion rights and legalizing marijuana, which pushed a little further last week. I know federal legalization won’t be here any time soon, but the first step is rescheduling from I to II or maybe even III, and that could be here within a year as a nice poll bump right before elections.

A society grows great when old men plant trees in whose shade they shall never sit. By not voting, you’re allowing poison ivy to take root instead of a peach tree because you’d rather have an apple tree.

If you really want to focus your time and energy into making a difference, check out Run For Something. If you don’t want to run yourself, you can support progressive candidates by donating or volunteering.

PosadistPotatofish,

This is the right answer. I’ll write her in too

frauddogg,
@frauddogg@lemmygrad.ml avatar

I dunno. She’s still a dem at the end of the day. I need to see her shuck the label and start something new before I’d hitch my wagon to her horses.

sucricdrawkcab,

The only reason he lost is because people were loud, reading, reposting and following. People who probably wouldn’t vote did because of the doom scrolling post being shared and talked about. Personally, I will continue to do it because this guy is running on revenge.

criitz,

Blue no matter who. Nothing has changed about that.

davefischer,
@davefischer@beehaw.org avatar

I think leftists ranting about not voting for Biden in the general election at the moment are just blowing off steam, and when election day comes, everyone on the left will remember 2016 and vote blue.

DharmaCurious,
@DharmaCurious@startrek.website avatar

I absolutely will not. Vote blue no matter who is why we have the situation we have. 2016 did not give us trump. Generations of shitty corporate politicians on both sides of the aisle gave us Donald Trump. Populists win because they’re popular, and trump got popular by pointing out the factual information that the house, the Senate, and the oval office are filled with corporate skills and corrupt puppets. Sadly, it was the fascist who got popular pointing it out, but it doesn’t make that part of what he says untrue.

I live in a red state where my vote for federal office does not count. So I will cast my pointless protest vote for the green party in the hopes that one day they’ll get their 5%, and maybe something can change. Down ballot I’ll hold my nose and vote for the Democrat in most offices, and if I ever move to a competitive state, I’ll do the same for federal, because I’m being held hostage by the corporate shills, and I’d rather my family not die in concentration camps that are inevitably coming if/when the fascists fully take power.

But no. Fuck blue no matter who. Who. Fucking. Matters. If it didn’t, we wouldn’t be in this mess. Have some standards.

criitz,

But what are we supposed to do? We can vote for Trump instead or no-one instead. How does that make anything better? We agree there needs to be change, but we still have no real option here.

Hexadecimalkink,

Hilary Clinton in the 2016 election had supported Trump in the primaries because she thought noone would vote for that idiot. The Democrat Party apparatus will support worse than Trump in the future if they think it will help their chances of winning. You don’t want to wait another 4 years for change 🤷‍♂️

phillaholic,

Don’t care. I don’t want to hear their BS. Apathy is the enemy. Re-elect Biden, then go out and yell at him for whatever the hell you want. The alternative is never being able to vote again. Not hyperbole. Republicans are actively trying to change the rules to disregard your votes.

mjhelto,

Yeah I’m so tired of seeing this, “both sides,” bullshit. One party is openly flirting with fascism, the other is a turd sandwich. It really is a shame, and quite frankly alarming, so many don’t understand what is happening and what is at stake. Even if you hate them, vote for the party that will at least give you the opportunity to vote in future elections.

First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a socialist.

Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a trade unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.

There are so many that don’t know the horrors of that war and the brutality of the Nazis. We are doomed if they continue this ignorant rhetoric.

phillaholic,

Yes I don’t know how many are bad faith actors posing as liberals or what. You’d think losing Row would have been the wake up call, and looking at the last couple years of elections it has, so I’m hoping it just that. Otherwise the constitutional originalists are going to turn back the clock to only rich white land owners having the real right to vote before all is said and done.

PowerCrazy,

I remember what the “blue team” did in 2016 by forcing an unelectable shit candidate upon us. So I will never vote for them again.

marxistsynths19,

I’ll be voting for a socialist candidate. Vote for a president who tells us it’s okay to stand by a genocide or vote for trump who will tell you the genocide is good. Neither for me thanks. If trump had just served his 8 years we wouldn’t be here again.

Cuttlersan,

If Trump had served 8 years we’d be in a much worse place as a nation. That’s a hot take if ever I’ve seen one.

arefx,

Well I won’t be voting for the fascist party…

PP_BOY_,
@PP_BOY_@lemmy.world avatar

Ah, a third party supporter I see

gravitas_deficiency,

Fuck off.

We don’t like that we are only allowed to have two choices.

The problem is that a moderately small number of people and corporations who combined have more money than god have decided it’s a great idea to execute regulatory capture of the entire US government.

I just hope guillotine season starts before the world catches on fire.

thecrotch,

We don’t like that we are only allowed to have two choices.

You chose it and chastised someone for telling you to stop choosing it lmao

gravitas_deficiency,

Do you genuinely think that the population of the United States likes only having two neoliberal political parties that have been able to get laws enacted that make it effectively impossible for any 3rd political party to exist in an effective fashion?

Pull your head out of your ass.

thecrotch,

I think they keep voting for it, so if they don’t like it they must be pretty fucking stupid.

able to get laws enacted

What laws have they passed that force you to vote A or B?

mjhelto,

Tell me you don’t know how FPtP voting systems work by not telling me you don’t know how FPtP voting works. Please read up on it and the “spoiler effect.”

Any vote for a third party is a vote against your preferred candidate. It happens with any first-past-the-post voting and two parties is the eventual end result. Eventually multiple parties get eliminated by voters who don’t want their vote to go to waste.

thecrotch,

it’s FFtP that does that. It’s your attitude that does that. You’d rather throw your hands up and whine about the situation than make even a tiny effort to change it.

mjhelto, (edited )

Wtf are you talking about? Who said anything about not wanting or trying to change it? But voting third party will do nothing but fuck yourself and the party you’d rather have in power. No one with less than a 7-digit bank account wants to vote for one of two parties. We do what we must today for a chance to do what we want tomorrow. To do otherwise is either disingenuous, uninformed, selfish.

The US almost dropped the electoral college in the last decade. Back at that time we had a moderately functioning govt, higher taxes on the rich, and less money in politics.

That’s why I say it won’t change now. It’s even more impossible than the last time we failed to make it happen.

thecrotch,

No one with less than a 7-digit bank account wants to vote for one of two parties

Then stop doing it dumbass and stop encouraging other people to do it

mjhelto,

It’s clear you’re trolling or your reading comprehension is subpar. Either way, I don’t have time for either.

thecrotch,

You literally have a choice, you make a choice that you don’t like and then whine that you had no choice. It’s clear you’re either trolling or have a pretty severe victimization fetish.

emergencyfood,

It happens with any first-past-the-post voting and two parties is the eventual end result.

39 parties are represented in my country’s Parliament. The UK has 10, Canada and Russia 5 each. Electoral systems like FPTP that produce a single winner tend to favour a two-party system (Duverger’s law), but it is not inevitable.

PosadistPotatofish,

Which one? The Democratic Party has been supporting genocide. It’s well past time we recognized that the Democratic Party and the Republican Party are both fascist and reject them accordingly.

TheFriar, (edited )

I get the concept. I do. And I wrestle with the notion myself, as I’m an anarchist (you and I don’t agree on a few things, lemmygrad friend).

But I don’t subscribe to the notion that not voting as a principled abstainer is a righteous act…I don’t think. Because I do agree, of course. The democrats are capitalist, war-mongering shitheels. They aren’t “good” or just or righteous by any stretch of the imagination. They destroy the environment and will kill us if we challenge the status quo of lte stage consumer capitalism. I have no illusions about this.

But doing nothing in the face of a Republican Party that is hellbent on wiping trans people from the face of the earth, strapping us all to the whipping chair until they can establish a Christofascist nightmare in which we are all beaten into straight, white submission is…not a heroic act. Because, yeah, the democrats support Israel, they are neoliberal capitalist pigs. They boost police budgets whenever they can, they take obscene amounts of money from special interests and work for them, not for us. But the republicans do all the same shit PLUS hating trans and gay people and pass laws that make it so they can lock you away for protesting and they are clearly more “business friendly” because they can be open about it while the democrats have to do slightly less because their rhetoric and their base don’t approve like Republican voters do.

My point is, there are two terrible options. Yes, we are in agreement. And yes, electoralism is bullshit, incrementalism will get us nowhere. But hierarchy is bullshit. Capitalism is bullshit. These things will exist until some insanely devastating event upturns the way the world has run for a long time.

Not voting won’t change these realities. VOTING won’t change them. But all the people that are hurt by an emboldened xenophobe and vicious bigot WILL be hurt. Actual, measurable hurt. PLUS the Palestinian people you’re basing your position on will continue to be killed. Because the US supports Israel. Not the democrats or republicans, but the US.

Not voting against a party that is openly using REAL LIFE fascist methods and speech so you can maintain your perceived purity isn’t noble.

We can all hate capitalism. But we’re stuck with it right now. We can all hate electoralism. But we’re stuck with it right now. Capitalism kills way more people than the genocide currently happening in Palestine. But you’re way more involved with it than you would be in electoralism by casting one vote.

These things are truths right now. You’d do a lot more good (or at least contribute A LOT less hurt) by abstaining from capitalism than you would abstaining from electoralism. We can all be principled. But all-or-nothing-ism that is rampant on “the left” (read: in modern people with principles and humanity and half a brain) isn’t noble because it helps. It’s perceived as noble because you can say, “pfft. I didn’t _____.” You’re not helping anymore but yourself.

Engage in praxis. Fight for your beliefs. But when your abstinence will be weaponized by insanely powerful and horrible people, and leveraged against minority groups, your “purity” is nothing but self-aggrandizement.

Not voting against anti-trans Christian fascist bigots is a huge show of privilege.

frauddogg, (edited )
@frauddogg@lemmygrad.ml avatar

Amerika as an empire deserves to die. I will not pencil-whip your colonizers or genociders without them giving up said colonialism and genocide first, and verifiably, long-term at that. I will not stand alongside that and tarnish my community’s history misleading that way; and I don’t care how many people try to couch it in “but what about your (white) countrymen?!”

If they cosign the Democrat Party’s genocides, if they back the colonizing invaders, then fuck them. They are emphatically not my ‘countrymen’, especially not my allies, and can only be seen as weak links that deserve to go with the nation in the same fire.

We may as well be two entirely different nations at this point with how much enmity I see in your party of colonizers.

TheFriar,

Lol you really didn’t read what I said, huh?

frauddogg, (edited )
@frauddogg@lemmygrad.ml avatar

On Stoke, as soon as you wanted to play the “not voting for the blue genociders is an act of privilege” horseshit like every other aggrieved liberal cracker I’ve had the misfortune of knowing, I stopped caring what you had to say. You’re just another opp to me seein that-- because not a single peckerwood that’s ever run the play you’re running right now, where you try to act like you’re ragging on the Democrat party while still stumping for them, not one has ever been able to sell that shit. That’s disingenuous to me, just as disingenuous as the Republicans who go token-fishing to find minorities to weaponize.

TheFriar,

Nah, man. I’m just an adult. I have my principles. And casting a single vote, I’m still sure what my principles are. And they don’t align with the Democratic Party.

But while there are two harmful options, one is significantly more harmful to populations of people whose very existence is apparently up for debate, friends of mine who I see struggle every day—also anarchist, but transgender (…who have also decided to give up a little of their pride in their stringent ideals in order to not be made illegal or to keep younger trans kids from suffering the way they did growing up in the 90s/early 2000s), opened my eyes to the urgency of the situation for them.

I didn’t vote for Hillary Clinton. Obama didn’t get my vote either time. But I did vote for joe Biden. I didn’t love it. But I did it. It didn’t take too long, and I continued living my principles. I didn’t burst into flames.

I’ve voted third party most of my life. And I’ve wavered on this as I’ve gone through my life. I make a judgement call when I can. But I started reading anarchist literature young. Like I said, I came of age under late Clinton/bush II. So my radicalization happened early. And my proactivity in my beliefs has come and gone. But my principles have stayed the same. I dunno how old you are, but honestly, I’m assuming you’re kinda young based on the way you speak. I was cooking for FNB and burning American flags and spray painting banks and paint bombing Lockheed Martin longer than you seem to have been alive.

I think of my taking a few minutes to cast a ballot against a genuine fascist movement like harm reduction in drug addiction. I don’t support drug addiction, but I do want to help those at the mercy of the worst of it. Drug addiction is horrible. Our electoralism is horrible. I don’t want to support either. But there is a little I can do to reduce the harm to most vulnerable victims of both.

I’m secure enough in my beliefs and can still be a full-fledged anarchist doing my praxis and casting a vote. My beliefs aren’t so flimsy that I need to PROVE TO EVERYONE IM ABOVE IT. I’ve been there. I can still see the problems inherent in our system while casting a vote. I can still hate capitalism while working and spending money. It’s not the system we want. My beliefs are lived through my praxis and my sense of what I believe. Not by what I DONT do. Electoralism will still exist if you vote or not. Not participating in the vote doesn’t do shit to electoralism. You not voting won’t help the Palestinians. My voting won’t help them either, as we both agree. But there are people in my direct vicinity and in my life and in this country that I MIGHT have the off-chance of keeping from harm by sacrificing my own sense of “purity as an anarchist.” The electoral system doesn’t live nor die by my vote. To think that way is beyond self-centered.

nooneescapesthelaw,

Spoiled vote

  • All
  • Subscribed
  • Moderated
  • Favorites
  • •
  • random
  • uselessserver093
  • Food
  • [email protected]
  • aaaaaaacccccccce
  • test
  • CafeMeta
  • testmag
  • MUD
  • RhythmGameZone
  • RSS
  • dabs
  • oklahoma
  • Socialism
  • KbinCafe
  • TheResearchGuardian
  • Ask_kbincafe
  • SuperSentai
  • feritale
  • KamenRider
  • All magazines
    •