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My voting flow chart is socialists, then democrats, then nobody.
Imo, we can fight over what shade of blue after the pedos are out of office.
This right here. And it goes for centrist dems too. If a progressive is the candidate on the ticket, vote for them. Don't let the pedophiles win this one
Seems notable that we don't have a headline with Joe Biden or whoever urging moderates to vote Democratic
It's not this headline, but I'm sure he has. Either he has or he's been told that saying anything may drive people away instead, so he's staying silent. Obama frequently does say this.
That might have more to do with the senile and dying thing. Or he might've said it already. He probably did but I'm too lazy to check.
Yes. The centrist ass dem I voted for veto'd a pro union bill. I would still vote for her over the alternative.
My primary votes are all left though.
except Fetterman, fuck that guy
Turning in a ballot with an empty selection is exactly the way to send the "voting for nobody" message that non-voters convince themselves they are sending, rather than the "you don't need to care about my opinion on the issues because I don't vote" message that it actually sends.
I cannot tell you how many sanctimonious jackasses I've met in my life that think their non-action is "sending a message".
Staying home or doing performative nonsense like not selecting a candidate or voting third party is basically non-action, and virtually no one sees the message or cares.
I thought it rather silly when I was still in university and hearing it from peers. These days, when someone my age tells me they have been doing this for decades I usually ask him them who has gotten their "message" and what was done about it?
We've tried nothing and we're out of ideas!
that's how i feel about the democrats every 4 years. -They keep trying the same thing while expecting different results.
One of the recent local elections i voted in had a list of 3 shit Republicans for sheriff. I chose to vote for none of them. Every other ballot choice i filled out.
On a practical matter the message is still "both are equally acceptable to me", with a small shade of a slightly louder "I wish there was someone better".
But it indicates you actively participate and are therefore a winnable vote. That means campaigns are more likely to reach out to you in some way.
Since votes are secret, it really just indicates "I voted is this election and are 50/49/1 percent likely to have voted winner/runner-up/either"
I think not voting at all is a stronger message of "I wasn't encouraged to actually vote for or against either", but it's also indistinguishable from "I just don't care anymore" or "I was in a coma that November"
Have you observed that to be moving the DNC to the left over the past few decades? My observation is that after Kamala received fewer votes than Biden and lost to Trump, in the face of the historic (yet still measly) 4% of the primary vote being for Uncommitted, the entrenched neoliberals are digging in their heels and continuing to oppose progressive primary candidates in 2025 and 2026 primaries. My conclusion is that they don't care, and we can't trust them to get any message other than "you're fired, and being replaced by this progressive candidate." And the only way to do that is by voting for a progressive primary challenger in the primary.
I see people who don't vote saying they never receive any flyers, calls, texts, canvassers, or any other kind of outreach from any campaigns. And then I see people who voted in either the primary or the general say they are bombarded with those types of outreach. So it's hard for me to conclude anything other than that campaigns by and large ignore people with a public record of not voting. Because it's harder and costs more to get a non-voter to vote than it is to get a voter to vote against the opposition. And in first-past-the-post, that is truly what your vote is in the general. Not a vote for the best, but a vote against the worst who is most likely to win.
"First-past-the-post" is a terrible moniker to describe the sort of single ballot plurality wins elections common in the USA. It's metaphor is clumsy to the point of inaccuracy, since there isn't any predermined scale that declares a winner. Whether only 3 votes are cast or 3 million, the winner is whomever has the biggest pile. A better sports metaphor might be "shotput", but I think "plurality wins" is clear enough.
That being said, that the democratic establishment is ignoring the signals doesn't mean that they aren't relatively strong. The party's voters are moving to the left, so even if the consultant gang isn't responding to the collective "ew" of Uncommitted someone is.
Yeah, agreed on the wording.
What I mean is whether the signal is being ignored or misinterpreted is kind of immaterial. The desired result is not being observed, so a different tactic is required. We consistently have more non-voters than primary voters, so why not try voting in the primaries where each vote carries more weight than it does in the general? It certainly can't be construed as a tacit approval of neoliberal policies like a vote for such a nominee in the general could be. So you still get a more clear and direct message than you did with non-voting.
There’s always a worse choice of the choices for who to vote for.
Vote for the other one.
The only perfect candidate for you is you yourself. If you're not running, and you don't have some form of ranked choice, not voting against the worse candidate is one fewer vote they need to overcome in order to win. And for your 1 vote against them, they need two for them to get ahead.
you just wrote 'die' on a piece of paper...
"I'm aware."
In Canada, we have “centrists” that are really just fascists that don’t openly hate gay people. There is almost no difference between our current prime minister and the guy so many people were voting against. The stupid thing is that we have a proper progressive party.
My message to you is this: The conservatives know you’re scared and are using that. Their only tactic is to tell you that you need to vote against someone who is worse than them and then they get their power either way. It’s always “we can argue over the shade of blue once you put this specific shade of purple into power” and then nothing happens. The name-brand conservatives complain about them being woke, the “moderates” act like the problem is solved, and the left has to deal with both those idiots refusing to do any work.
Democrats have won multiple times since Carter and we're still broke and rent is still insane. You're preaching to the choir, but we didn't operate concentration camps on American soil, or start two-three(who knows!?) wars.
Better, at the moment is all I can get. One italian kid having the balls to shoot a ceo isn't enough for these sheep to actually do what's necessary to fix the disunited states.
Have you considered that maybe part of the reason is that we keep slingshotting back to Republicans every other cycle and they do what they do best and fuck everything up, exactly like they're doing now?
It's massively disingenuous to imply Democrats don't do anything. They have a PROVEN track record for being better for our economy. They've regularly bolstered social support programs. They passed the ACA/Obamacare, which definitely helped me when I was younger. They've worked to forgive student loans. They don't make a hobby out of violating Constitutional rights. They don't send masked goons into our cities to kill Americans. They don't threaten our allies. They don't impose tariff taxes.
They aren't perfect, and clearly we should expect more out of them, but they definitely do get shit done and are a WAY, WAY, INFINITELY better option than Republicans and, realistically, the only other option on a federal level.
You're right. They held our wellbeing just high enough for us not to riot. Now they know our bottom line is even lower than the meager leftovers they used to give us to make us think they're the good guys. I'll still vote for them over Republicans but the "good cop" party only cares about us as far as it gets them.
Now, that's gonna change, hopefully. "The Democrats" that are pre-Trump are going to be seeing a bit of a socialist makeover before there's any power grab by them ever again. The Democrats we knew won't be The Democrats we know soon enough.
Gotta agree here. In terms of endorsing human rights, Dems have a far superior record to the GOP. However, it’s their motivation that I question. Since most Dems are beholden to their corporate donors, their motivation is “freedom of consumption,” that is, giving access of consumption to marginalized groups to maximize profits. I wonder how much of it is a genuine concern for human rights.
It also explains how Dems don’t go far enough or fight hard enough when it comes to marginalized groups.
I’ll take a win regardless of the motivation, but it’s interesting to investigate the underlying motivations.