this post was submitted on 29 Jun 2024

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[opinion] I don't care if you abstain from voting for president. (lemm.ee)

submitted 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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Don't vote for president if you don't want to, I get it. It's stupid we only have 2 options, especially when both are in mental decline and show little to no ambition to reduce needless deaths and suffering. Both want to move this country towards fascism, and both are creating a worse world they won't have to live in for much longer.

To those who see this and think I'm saying both sides are the same, I'm not. I'll probably vote for Biden in November because he's driving towards the cliff at a slower speed and at least does the bare minimum for marginalized in this country. Also Trump said some pretty racist shit last night. Still, to those who don't want to support either candidate for the reasons above, that's valid.

The point I'm getting to is VOTE DOWN BALLOT. Vote for your congress person and your senator, both federal and state. Vote for your city council and your sheriff and whatever bills there are and everything else. That's where the fight still matters. That's where you can make the most difference. The social justice you want to see won't get near the white house until it's represented in the lower offices. It doesn't matter who the president is if you get enough decent people in a position to stand in their way.

unnecessary addendum

That's the important bit but here's a some sort messages to a few blocks of voters. To Republicans and right wingers, you should reevaluate your positions because what you're supporting is stupid and selfish and often inhumane. To Democrats, if you get enough control over the house and senate it doesn't really matter if Trump is president, also recognize and correct the failures of your party please. To the leftists, please run for office and bring those ideas into the mainstream discussion, try to reach out to your community and to share rather than driving them away with self righteousness. Also, don't be bigoted, that goes for everyone.

Edit: I even said I was voting for Biden and the libs are still mad I think he sucks. Again, the point of this post is to get people to pay attention to the other things on their ballot. The president isn't as important or as powerful as we act like it is. And if you want better options, you have to support better options in races where they actually have a chance.

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (2 children)

You’re wrong, but it’s not your fault.

First Past The Post is a terrible system. We have it in the UK and we’ve had governments formed by a party that got less than 40% of the votes (as in, people ago actually voted, not including eligible voters who did not cast a ballot).

By any objective measure, “60% of people did not want these clowns in charge” is not really what I’d describe as “democratic”.

So that needs to change. But until it does, that’s the game. And unlike Wargames, you can’t win by not playing.

Not voting for Biden (however bad he is, he is objectively the lesser of two evils), whether not voting or voting third party, is giving Trump’s votes more weight. Yes, that’s shit, no, that’s not fair. But that’s the way the system is right here right now. Deal with it. Vote Biden or you are implicitly saying you’re OK with Trump.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 4 months ago

I think the amazing thing is how much improvement you get from going from "choose one" to "choose all you like." (AKA approval voting). The ultimate goal is proportional representation, but approval is such an easy first step.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago (1 children)

This doesn't acknowledge the core of my argument. This doesn't even contradict anything I've said.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 4 months ago (1 children)

You know what? That’s fair. You’re actually mostly right.

I disagree that the position of president isn’t as important as people think - as you you found out during the Trump presidency, a president can potentially pick several Supreme Court justices, and given some recent rulings, it may already be too late to fix that arm of government. Plus as the head of state, they are one of the biggest symbols of national identity.

And as such, telling people they don’t necessarily need to worry about voting for them is dangerous, and I think it undermines your argument that there are other roles to vote for on the same ballot. If low voter turnout is a problem, and they don’t want to vote for arguably the important role, why would they bother going out and queuing at all?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago

a president can potentially pick several Supreme Court justices

Only if they have support from the senate.

Plus as the head of state, they are one of the biggest symbols of national identity.

Maybe they shouldn't be.

If low voter turnout is a problem, and they don’t want to vote for arguably the important role, why would they bother going out and queuing at all?

I'm arguing it's not the most important role and trying to get people to go vote even if they skip the president part of their ballot.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Both want to move this country toward fascism

Explain

[–] [email protected] -2 points 4 months ago (2 children)

Massive support for war and policing. Crack down on protesters. Etc.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 4 months ago (1 children)

So Palestine. We're doing the Palestine argument again. What if I told you that support for Israel has been so baked into our foreign policy since its inception that no president alone can go against it without incurring the wrath of a neoliberal horde? Is Palestine suddenly the one issue that's worth committing political suicide over, just to make way for a worse, actual fascist autocrat who would be bff with Netanyahu while he erases the Palestinian people? I think Biden is shitty on Palestine, but I also think he's in a terrible spot and he's doing what he thinks he can against decades of foreign policy. The other guy would be shitposting on Truth Social about sending bombs to Palestinian children for Christmas.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago (1 children)

That's included but not the only thing I'm talking about. Also the real point I'm trying to make is if we're able to elect better people to congress and make those voices unignoreable, then it doesn't matter who the president is.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 months ago (1 children)

it doesn't matter who the president is

I promise you that in this election, it does.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago (1 children)

If we keep focusing solely on the president we'll never get better options.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago

100% agree

[–] [email protected] 5 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (1 children)

I think your copy of Umberto Eco is a preproduction copy or something

It’s actually not accurate that Biden has instigated any crackdown on protestors, as far as I know; he’s spoken at plenty of events with protestors without having them beaten or anything. There are police agencies in the US (quite a lot of them) that don’t give a shit what a Democratic president does or doesn’t want them to do.

Trump, on the other hand by way of example of what it would mean, tried to get the National Guard to shoot protestors with live ammunition, and actually was able to mobilize some federal police to snatch protestors off the street and drive away with them without ever even identifying what agency they were with or where the people were going (it turned out they were CBP).

But that’s besides the point - even if what you were saying was entirely true, it wouldn’t mean Biden’s trying to resurrect fascism for real in its real unfettered form. If fascism meant war, and police abuses, there would be quite a lot of fascist countries in the world today and we’d need to invent some new word for the very specific and very dangerous thing which is actual fascism.

[–] [email protected] -3 points 4 months ago (1 children)

You're so right, because we are not currently living under a full extreme fascist state, that totally means the US isn't moving in that direction. /s

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Yeah, when Biden invested two trillion dollars in climate change and unions, and increased corporate taxes to spend on working people, Mussolini

(I took out a dick joke that followed after that because the mods are sometimes sensitive in my experience)

(You're gonna have to use your imagination for what Mussolini might have done in his grave to indicate how excited he got about Biden's final realization of his lifelong dream of staffing the NLRB with labor people and pausing weapons shipments to a war criminal ally because they were committing human rights violations)

[–] [email protected] -2 points 4 months ago (1 children)

We still have snow sometimes that means there's no global warming.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (1 children)

If we had two trillion snowstorms one recent winter, when every other winter since like 1980 had been more or less 0 except for some healthcare that fell once from the sky during winter 2010, I actually think that would represent a factor that someone could bring up to say bro at least in the last couple of years it seems like it’s been getting colder

And then on top of that if someone else said naw man it’s all global warming anyway so ergo I don’t mind if we bring back the guy who owns his own personal methane factory staffed by like 30% of the country at this point and has promised to turn it on and produce nothing but methane all the time and also kill anyone with an electric car, because it’s all pretty much the same, I think that would represent a factor that would make me question that person’s motivations in saying that

[–] [email protected] -2 points 4 months ago

That was pretty weird. You're also misrepresenting my argument. As far as my motivations for posting, they are 1, get people to vote even if it's not for president and 2, steer more conversation towards local politicians.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

the libs are still mad I think he sucks

I’ll only speak for myself - my disagreement was nothing about sucks; it was with you saying he’s moving us towards fascism and creating a worse world.

If you had said, sure he took big action on climate change and strengthened unions and raised corporate taxes and increased working class wages but he also supports Israel which is fuckin genocidally appalling and even that early stuff we need like 10 times more of that to actually come to something like the scale of what’s required, so how do we vote downballot to get there, oh btw I just think he sucks in general also and he’s old, I actually don’t think I would have expressed any disagreement with the sucks part and just would have weighed in on your down ballot question.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Vote for your congress person and your senator, both federal and state. Vote for your city council and your sheriff and whatever bills there are and everything else. That's where the fight still matters.

I checked they all suck ass

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago

Then run for office.

Also with how far away we are from elections, I doubt you've actually checked what options you have in the more local races.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

Agreed. At the end of the day, it's your vote and it's your right to vote how you choose.

[–] [email protected] -3 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Do the downvoters think the office of president is the most or only thing worth voting for on your ballot?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 months ago (1 children)

The down voters probably disagree with your trivialization of what fascism is by suggesting that both candidates are pushing toward it, your encouragement to not vote for the president when one of them actually is pushing fascism, and your claim that the president isn't that important, when we've seen (and continue to see) the devastating results of the judges and other administrators they appoint.

Obviously the other offices on the ballot are important, and you're not wrong about local representation, but flippant equivocation of a doddering neo-liberal with an actual fascist is a danger to put democracy.

[–] [email protected] -2 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Thanks for ignoring the second paragraph.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago (1 children)

I didn't ignore this part

Both want to move this country towards fascism

[–] [email protected] -1 points 4 months ago (1 children)

You ever hear of the ratchet effect? It only works that way when the 2 controlling parties have similar goals.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago (1 children)

That's not even remotely true

[–] [email protected] 0 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Well the democrats seem to be either too weak or unwilling to release the lock on said ratchet, so take your pick. Either way we should still be trying to elect better people to the offices where we can actually make a difference.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Right, but you realize that equating inability/unwillingness to move left of neo-liberalism, with actively desiring to move towards fascism, is extremely ignorant if not downright disingenuous, and a reasonable explanation for the down votes. No one disagrees that we should vote down ticket and in local elections, they disagree with your other claims.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 4 months ago (1 children)

The actions the democratic party has taken in the past few decades seem to be legitimizing the radicalization of the republican party that is inching the US towards a fascist state. You may be able to argue that's not their intention, but that doesn't change the results they're achieving. Whether they keep the ratchet locked with desire or ineptitude doesn't substantially change my argument.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago (1 children)

And the action of thoughtfully abstaining from voting for that lesser evil legitimizes the radicalization of the Republican party moreso still. You may argue that that's not the intention, but that doesn't change the results.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 4 months ago

Yeah that's why I'm saying to vote down ballot. That will push back against the current trend more than either option for president.