As the title states I am confused on this matter. The way I see it, the USA has a two party system and in the next few weeks they’re either going to have Trump or Harris as president, come inauguration day. With this in mind doesn’t it make sense to vote for the person least likely to escalate the situation even more.
Giving your vote to an independent or worse not voting at all, just gives more of a chance for Trump to win the election and then who knows what crazy stuff he will allow, or encourage, Israel to get away with.
I really don’t get the logic. As sure nobody wants to vote for a party allowing these heinous crimes to be committed, but given you’re getting one of them shouldn’t you be voting for the one that will be the least horrible of the two.
Please don’t come at me with pro-Israeli rhetoric as this isn’t the post for that, I’m asking about why people would make such choices and I’m not up for debate on the Middle East, on this post, you can DM me for that.
Edit: Bedtime here now so will respond to incoming comments in the morning, love starting the day with an inbox full 😊.
Edit 2: This blew up, it’s a little overwhelming right now but I do intent on replying to everybody that took the time to comment. Just need to get in the right headspace.
4 years ago, Democrats said the border wall was stupid and bad. They said that Republicans were racist for claiming all Mexicans were drug dealers and criminals. Today, Harris is saying she’s gonna build the border wall, be tough on migrants, and has basically adopted Trump’s policies on immigration.
There is no indication that the Democrats will not be just as bad as the Republicans on Israel in 4 years.
To address your second point “not voting for Harris is a vote for Trump”; why isn’t the opposite true? “Not voting for Trump is a vote for Harris”, follows the same logic, so refusing to vote or voting independent should be net neutral, no?
This election should be a slam dunk victory for Harris. The data shows that adopting leftist progressive policies is popular. Biden dropping out resulted in $4 million in small donor fundraising. Picking Walz resulted in another $2 million. People got really excited when it looked like the Democratic party was making leftist progressive movement.
Since then, the Dems have been aggressively moving towards the center. More lethal military, inciting panic about the border, ignoring Palestine. This has resulted in an extremely tight race as people are no longer excited to vote for Harris.
I want Harris to win. Moving leftward politically will attract more voters. Taking a firm stance on stopping the Israeli government’s genocide is a leftist progressive policy. The bag is right there, she just needs to grab it.
The opposite of „not voting for Harris is a vote for Trump“ isn’t true because of the electoral college, which heavily skews towards rural states with not many voters, which are often conservative.
You need roughly 4 Californian votes to match 1 Wyoming vote. That’s why Republicans seldom win the popular vote and still manage to win elections.
So if left leaning people don’t vote (or vote third party), the negative effect for Harris is amplified in comparison to conservatives.
Well, in that case, the Democrats should adopt policies that attract more left leaning voters. Saying stuff like, “I will prosecute migrants” doesn’t make any sense because if that is an important topic to a voter, why wouldn’t they just vote Trump who has promised that and more?
If the problem is, “not enough left leaning votes”, the solution seems like, “attract more left leaning votes”. People in this country love progressive leftist policies like universal healthcare or not funding genocides, no matter their party affiliation. People have not responded well to neo-liberal/conservative policies like means testing school lunches or increasingly stringent border laws.
And yet, the Democratic party continually adopts neo-liberal/conservative policies. It feels like voting Democrat is just, “voting Republican but slower”. The Democratic party has accepted the Republican framing about an imaginary migrant crisis, and that was with a much more firm stance against racism only 4 years ago. Yeah, they would possibly be better on Israel’s genocide than Republicans, but all the actions protesting the genocide have been met with vitriol from the current administration. It seems far more likely that the Democrats would just do the same thing as Republicans, just less loudly.
The Democratic party cannot expect to win simply because, “orange man bad”. They have not shown they will not continue to adopt Republican ideas and policies. If they want people to vote for them, they should do things to attract those voters. They should stop doing things that pushes away voters.
It’s not as easy as you make it out to be.
The Democrats have to try to achieve the impossible: trying to retain left-leaning voters while getting enough centrists/swing votes to overcome the systematic disadvantage the electoral college poses for them.
In a de facto two party system that puts them between a rock and a hard place.
But what does that mean for you as a (I assume) left leaning voter?
It’s actually quite simple: vote for the least bad option.
By not voting for Harris you may successfully show the democrats your discontent for their policies. But you pay for that by helping a possible fascist into power (remember: we already found out that not voting, helps republican candidates in most cases), who will be far worse on most policies you care about.
It really doesn’t feel like the Democrats are the least bad option when they keep adopting Republican policies. Sure, they don’t want to kill trans people or conduct mass deportations now, but it sure feels like 4 years down the line I’m gonna be asked to vote Democrat even though Harris or whoever is trying to increase police budgets to “fight rising crime” or something ridiculous.
I keep having to vote for “the least bad option” while the Democratic party only ever courts neo-liberal/conservative voters. It really seems like my options are Fascist Now Party or Fascist Later Party. If the Democrats don’t listen when I vote and don’t listen when I abstain, why should I vote?
I feel like it is not a winning campaign strategy to say, “vote for Democrats because the Republicans are far worse”. Progressive left policies are popular amongst centrist and swing voters, so it isn’t like the Democrats will lose centrists by adopting progressive policies. Everybody likes expanding healthcare. Nobody likes genocide. So if adopting progressive policies attracts voters from all across the spectrum, why are the Democrats only focusing on stuff like, “build the wall” or “stay silent about genocide”?
The answer is in your question. Fascism later is the better option because it buys you time to do something else. Fascism now means the game is over today. Nothing about that is difficult to understand.
You’ll have ample time (and freedom) to oppose Harris after November, but now’s not the time.
Based on how liberals have accepted genocide as necessary at this point, the “fascism later” option seems more likely to make people comfortable with fascism, rather than buying us time to resist.
Even if that was true, how is that better than having fascism today, given than genocide will happen no matter what? You seem to imply people will have more willingness to resist if it happens tomorrow (and I doubt it). But are you really willing to take the chance on actual fascism? It really seems like you want it to happen…
You guys have a twisted sense of priorities. You’re willing to trade a maybe for a surely.
America is currently “surely” assisting in a genocide. Hope this helps!
The electoral college ensures the vote in California has nothing to do with the one in Wyoming.
You still haven’t provided any proof that the net result of third party or not voting favors republicans though. It could just as easily still be neutral, or favor democrats.
It’s not rocket science. The person I responded to said they want Harris to win. Thus they are a potential Harris voter. When they don’t vote, Harris loses a potential vote, not Trump.
Depending on where they live, this gets amplified by the systemic disadvantage of left-leaning states in the electoral college.
You’re missing some context - “not voting [instead of] for Harris is a vote for Trump”. If the dilemma is between not voting and voting Harris, choosing not to vote subtracts a vote from Harris.
Of course Harris got a boost in donations after she became the candidate - she appealed the the people who thought Biden was too conservative. That doesn’t mean conservative democrats are an insignificant demographic, they simply already donated earlier. The move towards the center is meant to not drive them away into not voting [instead of voting for Harris]. Obviously there will be some progressives and some conservatives who will decide to not vote [instead of voting for Harris], the goal is to move to the point where these margins from both sides will be minimal.
There are far more people that don’t vote than there are conservative democrats. In fact, non-voters are the biggest chunk of population in this country. Instead of courting the center conservative voters, wouldn’t it make more sense to target non-voters with policies that have been proven to be widely popular?
People like progressive left-leaning policies. Streamlining the citizenship process for immigrants is popular. Fighting price gouging is popular. Not supporting genocide is popular. It seems like getting the couch potatoes excited to vote would have more beneficial results than trying to attract conservative democrats with unpopular neo-liberal conservative policies.
You simply cannot count votes you never had.
Classic progressive defeatist mantra: you’re not left enough so fuck you. Bring on the fascist.
The anti-genocide people have drawn a line in the sand and decided to stick to that principle. I think it is pretty reasonable to have lines you do not cross with genocide being a pretty understandable one. These people have decided, “if you use our tax dollars for genocide, we will not vote for you”.
You are asking them to, “ignore the genocide stuff and focus on the good stuff”, but unlike Biden, these people have red lines they will not cross.
If you don’t want fascists to come into power, then the Democrats should stop doing fascism-lite. I think it is reasonable for people not to support fascism-lite. They should indeed move further left away from the fascism they are barreling towards.
Stupid take. Genocide light is better than genocide on steroids. Netanyahu wants Trump to win so he can go in and show you what real genocide looks like.
Do you even hear yourself?
100%. And you are either a Russian/Chinese troll or worse, an idiot that think a dictator wannabe is better than a moderate.
Democrats making obviously winning plays? You cannot be serious.
They are intentionally bad at politics. Their greatest skills are snatching defeat from the jaws of victory and shitting and falling back in it. Wanna see how for yourself? Dig into the DNC. They’re not a political entity, they’re a corp. And they work for the interests of corps. If what they do occasionally isnt absolute shit its almost entirely incidental.
Thanks for the elaborated comment! Don’t mind the negativity around the replies, some ppl are so simple they will hate until you literally say ‘Harris good, Trump bad’.
I’ve recently seen a nice description of that - “peasant mindset”.
People who are not ready and willing to peacefully discuss reality with literally anyone, and most of all marginal and weird viewpoints, like sovcits and antivaxxers, because those are more interesting, - have that “peasant mindset”.
(I’ve found something like that in my head too this morning, so sharing the thought.)
Aggression is a sign of fear, and fear is something we feel when we are not ready to change our mind if we get some good arguments, or when we get bad, insufficient arguments, but are pressed to change our mind anyway.
Why can we not be ready for that, feel powerless before that possibility of deciding to think differently 5 minutes from now?
Because there’s something that we follow like a peasant follows their master. It’s the assumed identity, the family, the group, the party, the state, the nation. Such a decision, and a decision to discuss reality preceding that, is an act of defiance toward those. It’s a conflict, and we as humans sometimes try to avoid conflicts. It’s like discussing orders. Only there’s not a single soul above us who is entitled to order us how we vote or how we think.
Every decision worth making is destructive, everything new comes in the place of something old and something that could be, there’s nothing to fear.
Changing one’s mind by a conscious decision after careful consideration is a sign of having personal dignity. Not changing one’s mind in the same situation is too a sign of having personal dignity.
Keeping your head down and trying to eat anyone not in line is not.
(too long again)