I don’t like Biden either, but anyone with half a brain knows there are two choices in the 2020 election. If we had a sane voting system, voting third party might be worth it, but as it stands, no one but you knows your favorite candidate exists and unless you want to become their campaign manager that will still be true in November. Even if you did, and even if you convinced two thirds of the people who would otherwise have voted for Biden to vote for your chosen candidate instead, Trump would still win because half the country voted for him and your guy only got a third. If you vote third party you might as well stay home.

Not voting isn’t going to stop the genocide in Gaza. The US will continue to funnel them arms no matter which candidate wins this November. Trump practically campaigns on how much he hates the Jews and he’s publicly told Israel to “finish up their war”. He’ll also make life a living hell for anyone who isn’t a straight cisgender male back here at home.

A vote for a candidate is not an endorsement of them or their policies, it’s a statement that you like their policies more than the other guy’s, and “sticking it to liberals” and “refusing to support genocide” (that’s not what voting for Biden is doing, by the way – a vote for either candidate is a vote for genocide and a vote for neither is an endorsement of both) is not more important than keeping the furthest right politician America has ever seen out of office.

How incredibly privileged do you have to be to see an entire national election as what will happen in the Middle East and ignore Trump’s campaign promises to wipe transgender Americans off the map, and further, to not realize that the same thing will happen in the Middle East regardless of which candidate wins?

I hate Biden as much as every other leftist here. But I’ll still vote for him because Trump is worse. If there’s a single bone in your body that cares about the lives of your trans friends you will too.

  • rutellthesinful@kbin.social
    5·
    3 months ago

    other elections, primaries

    but those are both votes

    ideally, yeah, if you wanted to exercise pressure on the biden administration, you wouldn’t withhold your vote in this specific election, but those “other elections” have already passed

    you could vote differently for the house and senate, but arguably that might actually lead to a worse outcome

    donations

    if you’re very rich, then maybe, but most people aren’t

    general social pressure

    general social pressure means very little without votes to back it up

    sanders has a tidal wave of social pressure behind him, but then lost the primary, so nothing changed

    it’s why every time a politician tries to campaign for young voters, they crash and burn, because while young voters often inflict the most social pressure, they never actually go and vote

    The alternative is to abstain or vote for someone with no chance

    the point isn’t to vote for the person to get them into office

    the point is to vote for the person whose policies you prefer, so that you shift the other candidates closer to that position

    yeah, 4 years of a very bad candidate is worse than 4 years of a meh candidate, but if you vote that way forever your candidate will never be anything more than meh

    appoint three SCOTUS justices, irreversibly damage the environment, and pass voting “reform” to lessen the impact of your future votes

    if you think this outweighs the benefit of improving the democrat position going forward, and that’s a perfectly reasonable position to have, then sure vote for them

    but don’t act like you never had any choice in the matter, or that voting for somebody else would be meaningless