• dhork@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    113
    arrow-down
    13
    ·
    18 hours ago

    “Kamala Harris is not the perfect progressive candidate in every way. How can I possibly vote for her? I’ll sit this one out. That’ll show 'em!”

    • Rekorse@sh.itjust.works
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      11
      arrow-down
      5
      ·
      9 hours ago

      Trump won because the people that voted for him actually like him, they aren’t choosing the lesser of two evils or whatever nonsense. The democrats message of “at least we aren’t as bad” was awfully inspiring.

      Hey democrats, if you win what will you do with that power? Change nothing? Cool!

      Blame the democrats for getting tight lipped about literally anything anyone cared about.

      • thisjustin@lemm.ee
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        5
        ·
        6 hours ago

        You didn’t listen - they talked about corporations buying houses, the middle class disappearing, being unable to live on minimum wage, expanding medical for people that need it.

        The idea that a political party will change just because they lost because they weren’t exactly where you wanted is also ignorant. That’s never a guarantee. Otherwise we would currently be living in utopia. Maybe it will cycle back, by the time we’re all dead

        • aesthelete@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          1
          arrow-down
          2
          ·
          5 hours ago

          They honestly spent too much time talking about tax credits to start a business. Starting a business? Lady, I’m starting to look seriously at fleeing the country in hopes of finding one that hasn’t lost its collective mind.

    • Aurenkin@sh.itjust.works
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      74
      ·
      18 hours ago

      People need to accept that the electoral system in the US is just a trolley problem at the end of the day unfortunately.

      • Aceticon@lemmy.dbzer0.com
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        2
        arrow-down
        1
        ·
        7 hours ago

        Not quite.

        For starters it didn’t use to be a choice of “who would you rather see killed” - or in other words, nothing was forever lost if one side won instead of the other - and beyond that it has always been a cyclical choice, so it made sense for voters who felt insufficiently catered to, to punish a side on one cycle to try and get it to offer a better deal on the next cycle.

        Whether that remains the case - i.e. will Trump make himself dictator for life - is the big question.

        • Aurenkin@sh.itjust.works
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          2
          ·
          7 hours ago

          That’s true but I didn’t mean it as a choice of who you’d rather see killed, just that the system is set up in such a way that as a rational voter you are forced into a situation where you must act to prevent the worst outcome rather than voting for your interests and what you believe in.

      • NocturnalMorning@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        39
        arrow-down
        2
        ·
        17 hours ago

        Basically, and people let ‘the enemy of perfect get in the way of good enough’. Progress is incremental unfortunately. That’s just how it is. We can accept that, or we get this crap.

          • Soulg@sh.itjust.works
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            21
            arrow-down
            6
            ·
            16 hours ago

            This is exactly the fucking problem, if it’s not perfect enough then people allow it to get worse instead.

            • skibidi@lemmy.world
              link
              fedilink
              arrow-up
              8
              arrow-down
              11
              ·
              edit-2
              14 hours ago

              The only way a political party changes is when they stop winning.

              If Democrats think they will win by being Republicans who hate the gays a little bit less, then that is what they’ll do. They were just shown that that isn’t a winning strategy, so we’ll see if the party changes tack or doubles down.

              “You monster, it is your fault you gave us Trump”

              I make my voting preferences known in every primary, state, and federal election. I actively volunteer for candidates I like. The party knows what will earn my vote, if they wanted it. If they make the strategic bet that getting my vote will cost them more from somewhere else, then that is on them.

              “That is so entitled, how could you”

              Have you ever considered that the reason both parties seem so out of touch with mainstream thought is because they have 10s of millions of people who will vote regardless of policy, thereby preventing the parties from understanding what is actually effective in getting them votes?

              Elections are an information gathering mechanism.

              • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
                link
                fedilink
                arrow-up
                8
                arrow-down
                2
                ·
                15 hours ago

                You seem to think there will be real elections again rather than the type they have in Russia now that Republicans control all three branches of government.

                I’m not sure why. Do you think they will ever willingly give up power?

                • skibidi@lemmy.world
                  link
                  fedilink
                  arrow-up
                  5
                  arrow-down
                  3
                  ·
                  13 hours ago

                  It is impossible to argue against conspiratorial thinking.

                  Let’s say Kamala had narrowly won the election, would 2028 be the right time to hold the Democrats accountable for real, useful, policy changes? Or would there be another Republican Boogeyman (maybe Ted Cruz again? Or Desantis?) that would absolutely need to be defeated before it would be proper - in your opinion - to ask these public servants to actually serve me?

                  According to many commenters here, and I assume many of the downvoters whenever a comment questions the utility of unconditional loyalty to the blue party, the US has been hovering just above an irreversible descent into a fascist dictatorship.

                  So let me ask you, which of the leaders you voted for reversed that decline? Because the ‘vote blue no matter who’ dogma has given over a decade of historically unpopular candidates who consistently lose to - again according to you - naked fascists.

                  • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
                    link
                    fedilink
                    arrow-up
                    4
                    arrow-down
                    3
                    ·
                    13 hours ago

                    As I keep telling people, I take W.C. Fields’ advice when it comes to voting: “I never vote for, only against.”

                    And people like you don’t get that. I didn’t vote for anyone. I voted against Trump because there were only two viable choices.

                    And this has been true for me for every election in my adult life. Because I do not care about which team you or anyone else is on, all I care about is keeping the worst of the worst out of office.

                    And that failed, which is why I got the fuck out of America before my daughter was forced into a conversion therapy camp.

                    I expect, if you’re like others who take your attitude, your next response will be about how I should put the needs of Palestinians over my own child and there won’t be a genocide of queer people despite them being totally open about their intentions.

              • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
                link
                fedilink
                arrow-up
                6
                arrow-down
                3
                ·
                15 hours ago

                Your vote was meaningless? Even in local elections? You sat out the whole thing because of the top of the ticket?

                  • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
                    link
                    fedilink
                    arrow-up
                    1
                    arrow-down
                    1
                    ·
                    10 hours ago

                    I the fuck just emigrated to the UK because my gay daughter isn’t safe in the U.S. and I am 47.

                    Why does any of that matter?

                    Also, I’m not mad.

                • njm1314@lemmy.world
                  link
                  fedilink
                  arrow-up
                  2
                  arrow-down
                  2
                  ·
                  12 hours ago

                  Unfortunately yeah my vote was pointless and local elections too. I ended up getting a runoff for my city council District, both candidates use pictures of them with Ted Cruz in their advertising. That’ll sober you right the fuck up.

                  • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
                    link
                    fedilink
                    arrow-up
                    3
                    arrow-down
                    4
                    ·
                    12 hours ago

                    So the only down ballot election was the one for one city council seat?

                    You must have had a tiny, tiny ballot.

      • Apytele@sh.itjust.works
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        6
        arrow-down
        19
        ·
        edit-2
        13 hours ago

        At this point the trolley problem is "would you like to vote for killing 1000 per year for the next four years or would you like to vote for killing 4000 people this year with the hope that maybe it’ll cause the whole trolley system to self destruct…? (The numbers are purely illustrative).

        Edit: apparently it’s not obvious that I think these are both horrible options, and I voted for the limping painfully along for an extended period.

        • Bronzebeard@lemm.ee
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          32
          arrow-down
          1
          ·
          17 hours ago

          Making things worse based on the idiotic hope that it might somehow magically spark things to get better is the absolute dumbest fucking idea one can have.

        • MagicShel@lemmy.zip
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          12
          ·
          17 hours ago

          If by “trolley system to self-destruct” you mean violent revolution and a new system of government imperfect in a completely different way, yes. Good luck with the wait.

          • Apytele@sh.itjust.works
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            3
            arrow-down
            2
            ·
            13 hours ago

            That’s exactly what I mean, and I agree that it sounds awful. It’s like people go into these conversations deciding which side the other person is on based on which they can argue the most with.

    • NobodyElse@sh.itjust.works
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      18
      arrow-down
      27
      ·
      edit-2
      17 hours ago

      I voted for her because she was the lesser evil, but describing her as just “not the perfect progressive candidate in every way” is a gross misrepresentation. She was probably the most right leaning Democratic candidate to run in a general election and was openly adopting many of the Republican stances. There were basically two Republicans running.

      • Moineau@lemmy.zip
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        11
        arrow-down
        1
        ·
        12 hours ago

        Single issue voters are the reason the USA is now a dictatorship building concentration camps. That’s not an opinion.

      • dhork@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        27
        arrow-down
        4
        ·
        17 hours ago

        Really? She was to the right of the Clintons? Obama? John Kerry, even? I think you have a selective memory.

      • TrickDacy@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        21
        arrow-down
        5
        ·
        16 hours ago

        There were basically two Republicans running.

        Fucking absurd. There is a reason you don’t name one specific