I take responsibility but still think it was the correct choice not to vote for Kamala. This is because from my perspective the Democratic party relied on its voters usung harm reduction strategies in order to run candidates that don’t make anything better for regular people in the long run, other than some tiny little concessions as tribute.
Don’t think there can’t be worse presidents than Trump. Don’t think it can’t get worse here. Back when Bush was elected people thought he was the pinnacle too. And before that people thought that about Reagan. But people like YOU kept voting for the lesser evil, and the Democrats, who are on the side of billionaires just like every other politician, didn’t really make things better, kept cooperating with Republicans, and together they laid the groundwork that allowed Trump to be elected. If that pattern keeps up, one day (soon) we will have something worse than Trump.
I understand the current situation is worse than the situation would be if Kamala had won, but we have to draw the line before it gets even worse. The way it’s been going, the country was on an oscillating trajectory with a downward trend. Its shortsighted to only consider 4 years ahead. You’re thinking about yourself for the next couple years, I’m thinking about all the future generations after us for decades.
Anyways, I took responsibility, so please do your part and downvote Kamalaposts now
I have a fairly progressive friend group, and they still have problem with accelerationism in many contexts. They’re not the ones being hauled off to camps when they talk about more ICE getting white people to be so inconvenienced they finally vote to abolish it.
This mindset of I want to make a statement in a way that disregards the effect of how that statement is made on marginalized communities is still alive and well. You want the Dems to change, then you need to do actual leg work to support and lift up opposing candidates within the party. There’s no easy way out of this.
So just to be clear, I don’t hate you or anything, we’re trying to achieve basically the same goal, we want the same thing. Our disagreement is just about what actions will most effectively bring it about. That’s much better than the people who fundamentally want something different, so I want to be clear that I don’t wish to characterize you as “essentially identical” to those actual enemy groups.
Anyways, from my understanding of the world, you voting for Kamala also disregards the effect on marginalized communities, its just marginalized communities of 2030-2080 and possibly onwards, rather than the communities of 2025-2030 which you are more directly affected by. That’s the way I see it, at least. Its funny because really both the people who voted for Kamala and the people who don’t are thinking to themselves: “this isn’t how I really want things to go, but its a noble sacrifice to make for the greater good”. I think the disagreement between the two groups truly comes down to complexities of which method will actually end up bringing about change. I leaned towards the choice I took, because when I look at the political history of this country since the 80s, it seems as though the Democrats have gone soft as representatives, which created that famous political ratchet effect.
I’m sorry, and I know this sounds like me just being lazy, but I truly do not believe putting in the leg work to change the party this way will matter. I know people who burnt literal years doing grassroots campaigning for truly progressive candidates and it went nowhere. I’ve been to more than a few of those types of events where everyone is trying to change the system the way it’s supposed to be changed. But you know why those people never went any further? Because the party didn’t need them to, because the party can get the votes they need AND have their donor cake too, because even many of the people in these grassroots campaigns will fall in line to vote for the normie candidate when the time comes and the Democrats know that. They know it because of the millions of dollars they spend to verify and ensure it for themselves.
So to me, since the “lift up opposing candidates” thing has been failing for 50 years, and the “blue no matter who” thing has been making things worse for 50 years, the only thing left to try is not voting. That’s the one thing that might actually hit Democratic politicians where it hurts (their power/money). I know its not your strategy and you have every right to keep trying yours too, even though I think your strategy is part of the problem and you think the same about mine. I think the only way to come to a consensus is to debate why we expect one strategy to work better, and so far I feel like recent political history is clearly on my side. But I am interested in hearing counterarguments.
But everyone should understand that continually posting this Kamala shame stuff just makes people like me drastically less willing to hear those counterarguments, because it demonstrates how the people making them haven’t even bothered to properly understand the nuance of our voting reasons, and instead prefer to strawman us as dumbly caring only about Middle Eastern genocides above all else.
So it seems like we both think the other tact is ineffectual, because if progressives don’t vote, then Democrats will simply court Republican voters instead which they are currently doing (multiple candidates have tried out throwing LGBTQ people under bus in the coming primary alread). They don’t care about ideology, or even being in power. They just want to be able to cash checks from donors.
You need to inject new influence into the party, from my perspective your approach is harmful in both the short and long term.
Ideally we have a system that makes third parties viable, but we don’t so we need to treat a faction within the democratic caucus as a third party and have them primary sitting candidates and influence policy until they have enough members to drive out the old guard. Actual progress is not immediately visible.
Our disagreement is just about what actions will most effectively bring it about.
Yeah.
You admitted you didn’t vote for either of the only two candidates that could win the presidency. So you voted 3rd party? Or didn’t vote at all?
If you didn’t vote at all I have zero respect for you and you shouldn’t even bother to continue reading. I don’t really have any interest in conversing with people who don’t respect the democracy people died to give them by not participating.
If you voted 3rd party, do you not understand that you can’t just vote 3rd party for president and expect it to magically happen? It will be MANY years before that’s even a possibility. And it will only be a possibility if people start taking local/state elections seriously and start getting 3rd party candidates in Congress, because there are currently NONE.
So logic states you vote 3rd party in local/state elections and then perform DAMAGE CONTROL in the presidential election by selecting the one that isn’t a felon rapist pedophile fraud.
I mean this is all just simple common sense.
You have to understand people keep posting the Kamala stuff because people like you fucked up BIG TIME and a lot of people are suffering for it. You’re going to keep seeing the anger and the finger pointing.
I take responsibility but still think it was the correct choice not to vote for Kamala.
I’m trying to imagine what happened to you in your life to make your brain believe it was right to make a move that resulted in what we’re currently experiencing.
Like, there really isn’t a debate here. Trump was absolutely a worse decision than Kamala. So not voting for Kamala when it came down to Trump and Kamala means your brain thinks Trump was a better option. Because it was one or the other…period. No 3rd party even came remotely close to winning. As in the 3rd party candidate with the most votes only got 0.5% of the total votes cast.
Try addressing the reasoning that I explicitly laid out rather than restating your own reasoning that we started off with. That’s how conversation works. I have no problem having a rational back and forth discussion, but if you won’t even respond to my actual reasoning there’s no point to it. I don’t want to antagonize someone who is ultimately on my side, but you sure make it hard to resist by being so inflammatory. I understand you’re upset and think I did a horrible thing, but I also think the same thing about you, yet I am not holding it so harshly against you because I understand your heart was in the right place. If someone keeps being so aggressive to me, I’m only human, and its hard for me to keep a level head. But I want to keep a level head and have a reasonable discussion. I can tell you that I’m open to having my mind changed, although perhaps you may not believe that. But if you want to actually change someone’s mind, I’m right here and ready to talk about it. But I ask that you at least respond to the reasoning I laid out, not just my claim but my reasoning for it, and to try to be respectful. I get that it’s not always possible, I mess up too (I’ve done it in this same thread), but let’s just try to assume the best of each other and be open to being wrong (me too) and maybe we could actually come away from this with at least one changed mind.
Edit: I’ll happily try to elaborate in response to your other comments if you want, but it seems like you would rather I just shut up, so its up to you. I don’t wanna waste time typing out an argument that you aren’t interested in having
Its just confusing because I’m told I should have voted for Kamala because:
I need to think about more people than myself
Sometimes we need to pick a lesser evil for the practical benefit of more people
I need to make personal and ideological sacrifices for the greater good
I need to accept that hard choices have to be made and be willing to take real action even if it inconveniences me
I can’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good
But from my perspective, that’s exactly what I AM doing, in fact to an even greater extent, by not voting for Kamala. And when I bring this up, suddenly your rebuttal is that actually I should be picking… What’s best for me personally in the next couple of years?
I knew Trump winning would mean disaster for me, my family, my friends. But I felt like Kamala winning would just buy us a few more years of relative peace (at the continued expense of exploiting much of the rest of the world), only to then land us with the same ultimatum ,but with higher stakes, four years later. So I:
Thought about more people than myself, my friends, my family. I also thought about their kids, and people all over the world, and about millions of people who haven’t even been born yet but one day will grow up under the same horrible America that we’ll still have even if progressives manage to undo the last 20 years of crazy.
Picked a lesser evil (Trump now) over a greater evil (another century of stable American evil at home and abroad) for the practical benefit of more people (future people and young people)
Made personal sacrifices (I need to plan to leave the country) and ideological sacrifices (I don’t like picking lesser evils! I wish I could only ever pick good things!)
Accepted hard choices (not voting for Kamala) and was willing to take real action (selling all my stuff, boycotting corporations, giving up a hundred comforts, and preparing to leave the country)
Didn’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good: Of course not voting for Kamala would ideally not be so catastrophic. Ideally vote boycotting would have started decades ago. But oh well, we can’t have things be perfect, so I guess starting the change now, messy and painful as it is for me today, will be good for future generations after me
I knew Trump winning would mean disaster for me, my family, my friends. But I felt like Kamala winning would just buy us a few more years of relative peace
It’s like you already know the answer, but you STILL did the wrong thing.
And you justify it by ASSUMING the stakes would be higher 4 years later? How so? How would it be WORSE after 4 years of a LESS bad president? That makes no logical sense.
Ideally vote boycotting would have started decades ago. But oh well, we can’t have things be perfect, so I guess starting the change now
What the actual fuck? There is NO SITUATION in which choosing to not exercise the power to vote that a fuck ton of people died to give you is the right thing to do. You use that power to primary bad actors out of the party you most agree with, so you can reform that party. Something that’s happened multiple times throughout U.S. history.
Anyone that utters the phrase “vote boycotting” needs to stop and re-evaluate their lives. That shit is downright disrespectful.
I hate Kamala, I think she’s a terrible candidate and don’t disagree that she would’ve just bought us more time. But it’s easier to fight back with a persistent cold than with supertuberculosis.
Because Trump got elected, my partner and I uprooted our lives, said goodbye to a massive community of people, gave up multiple career prospects, and moved to another country. I’m a trans latina immigrant in a gay relationship, so enemy of the state #1. The battle isn’t over either as we’re now dealing with immigration. I’m not legally allowed to work so I’m just living off savings right now, and effectively starting from 0. I still worry about my friends back home, many of which are also trans immigrants but who lack the opportunity to move, who are now scrambling to stockpile meds and fighting daily to continue living. I’ve had to talk friends down from suicide. I have never cried as much as I have in the last year. And I’m just one person.
So thank you for that, your direct lack of action contributed to it. I hope your horse was worth the blood on your hands. You’re no better than the other centrists eager to throw us under the bus while calling it “progress”
It was, you’re welcome. Now go be selfish somewhere else
Edit:
(If its not obvious, I don’t mean this, but figured I’d show you what its like for someone to disregard 90% of your post and call you selfish when you explicitly made an argument for why you’re not)
You can insult me all you want, but I listed out plenty of reasons for why you’re the one sacrificing others in order to sit on your high horse of having voted for Kamala. But you fall back to insults because you can’t actually address my points. You are selfishly choosing the well-being of your immediate social group over millions of people in the present and future.
I refused to vote because I believed it would maximize the well-being of good people over the foreseeable future. My intent was good. You can call me completely stupid if you want, but its totally irrational to call me an asshole. I purposely intended to give up my own well-being for the greater good. That’s not asshole behavior, I would think. Again, feel free to say that I am stupid and had the wrong plan for the greater good. That’s a good debatable stance. But claiming I’m an asshole only demonstrates that you can’t see my argument as it is, but only as you want to see it
I take responsibility but still think it was the correct choice not to vote for Kamala. This is because from my perspective the Democratic party relied on its voters usung harm reduction strategies in order to run candidates that don’t make anything better for regular people in the long run, other than some tiny little concessions as tribute.
Don’t think there can’t be worse presidents than Trump. Don’t think it can’t get worse here. Back when Bush was elected people thought he was the pinnacle too. And before that people thought that about Reagan. But people like YOU kept voting for the lesser evil, and the Democrats, who are on the side of billionaires just like every other politician, didn’t really make things better, kept cooperating with Republicans, and together they laid the groundwork that allowed Trump to be elected. If that pattern keeps up, one day (soon) we will have something worse than Trump.
I understand the current situation is worse than the situation would be if Kamala had won, but we have to draw the line before it gets even worse. The way it’s been going, the country was on an oscillating trajectory with a downward trend. Its shortsighted to only consider 4 years ahead. You’re thinking about yourself for the next couple years, I’m thinking about all the future generations after us for decades.
Anyways, I took responsibility, so please do your part and downvote Kamalaposts now
I have a fairly progressive friend group, and they still have problem with accelerationism in many contexts. They’re not the ones being hauled off to camps when they talk about more ICE getting white people to be so inconvenienced they finally vote to abolish it.
This mindset of I want to make a statement in a way that disregards the effect of how that statement is made on marginalized communities is still alive and well. You want the Dems to change, then you need to do actual leg work to support and lift up opposing candidates within the party. There’s no easy way out of this.
So just to be clear, I don’t hate you or anything, we’re trying to achieve basically the same goal, we want the same thing. Our disagreement is just about what actions will most effectively bring it about. That’s much better than the people who fundamentally want something different, so I want to be clear that I don’t wish to characterize you as “essentially identical” to those actual enemy groups.
Anyways, from my understanding of the world, you voting for Kamala also disregards the effect on marginalized communities, its just marginalized communities of 2030-2080 and possibly onwards, rather than the communities of 2025-2030 which you are more directly affected by. That’s the way I see it, at least. Its funny because really both the people who voted for Kamala and the people who don’t are thinking to themselves: “this isn’t how I really want things to go, but its a noble sacrifice to make for the greater good”. I think the disagreement between the two groups truly comes down to complexities of which method will actually end up bringing about change. I leaned towards the choice I took, because when I look at the political history of this country since the 80s, it seems as though the Democrats have gone soft as representatives, which created that famous political ratchet effect.
I’m sorry, and I know this sounds like me just being lazy, but I truly do not believe putting in the leg work to change the party this way will matter. I know people who burnt literal years doing grassroots campaigning for truly progressive candidates and it went nowhere. I’ve been to more than a few of those types of events where everyone is trying to change the system the way it’s supposed to be changed. But you know why those people never went any further? Because the party didn’t need them to, because the party can get the votes they need AND have their donor cake too, because even many of the people in these grassroots campaigns will fall in line to vote for the normie candidate when the time comes and the Democrats know that. They know it because of the millions of dollars they spend to verify and ensure it for themselves.
So to me, since the “lift up opposing candidates” thing has been failing for 50 years, and the “blue no matter who” thing has been making things worse for 50 years, the only thing left to try is not voting. That’s the one thing that might actually hit Democratic politicians where it hurts (their power/money). I know its not your strategy and you have every right to keep trying yours too, even though I think your strategy is part of the problem and you think the same about mine. I think the only way to come to a consensus is to debate why we expect one strategy to work better, and so far I feel like recent political history is clearly on my side. But I am interested in hearing counterarguments.
But everyone should understand that continually posting this Kamala shame stuff just makes people like me drastically less willing to hear those counterarguments, because it demonstrates how the people making them haven’t even bothered to properly understand the nuance of our voting reasons, and instead prefer to strawman us as dumbly caring only about Middle Eastern genocides above all else.
So it seems like we both think the other tact is ineffectual, because if progressives don’t vote, then Democrats will simply court Republican voters instead which they are currently doing (multiple candidates have tried out throwing LGBTQ people under bus in the coming primary alread). They don’t care about ideology, or even being in power. They just want to be able to cash checks from donors.
You need to inject new influence into the party, from my perspective your approach is harmful in both the short and long term.
Ideally we have a system that makes third parties viable, but we don’t so we need to treat a faction within the democratic caucus as a third party and have them primary sitting candidates and influence policy until they have enough members to drive out the old guard. Actual progress is not immediately visible.
Yeah.
You admitted you didn’t vote for either of the only two candidates that could win the presidency. So you voted 3rd party? Or didn’t vote at all?
If you didn’t vote at all I have zero respect for you and you shouldn’t even bother to continue reading. I don’t really have any interest in conversing with people who don’t respect the democracy people died to give them by not participating.
If you voted 3rd party, do you not understand that you can’t just vote 3rd party for president and expect it to magically happen? It will be MANY years before that’s even a possibility. And it will only be a possibility if people start taking local/state elections seriously and start getting 3rd party candidates in Congress, because there are currently NONE.
So logic states you vote 3rd party in local/state elections and then perform DAMAGE CONTROL in the presidential election by selecting the one that isn’t a felon rapist pedophile fraud.
I mean this is all just simple common sense.
You have to understand people keep posting the Kamala stuff because people like you fucked up BIG TIME and a lot of people are suffering for it. You’re going to keep seeing the anger and the finger pointing.
I’m trying to imagine what happened to you in your life to make your brain believe it was right to make a move that resulted in what we’re currently experiencing.
Like, there really isn’t a debate here. Trump was absolutely a worse decision than Kamala. So not voting for Kamala when it came down to Trump and Kamala means your brain thinks Trump was a better option. Because it was one or the other…period. No 3rd party even came remotely close to winning. As in the 3rd party candidate with the most votes only got 0.5% of the total votes cast.
So…what exactly happened to your brain?
Try addressing the reasoning that I explicitly laid out rather than restating your own reasoning that we started off with. That’s how conversation works. I have no problem having a rational back and forth discussion, but if you won’t even respond to my actual reasoning there’s no point to it. I don’t want to antagonize someone who is ultimately on my side, but you sure make it hard to resist by being so inflammatory. I understand you’re upset and think I did a horrible thing, but I also think the same thing about you, yet I am not holding it so harshly against you because I understand your heart was in the right place. If someone keeps being so aggressive to me, I’m only human, and its hard for me to keep a level head. But I want to keep a level head and have a reasonable discussion. I can tell you that I’m open to having my mind changed, although perhaps you may not believe that. But if you want to actually change someone’s mind, I’m right here and ready to talk about it. But I ask that you at least respond to the reasoning I laid out, not just my claim but my reasoning for it, and to try to be respectful. I get that it’s not always possible, I mess up too (I’ve done it in this same thread), but let’s just try to assume the best of each other and be open to being wrong (me too) and maybe we could actually come away from this with at least one changed mind.
Edit: I’ll happily try to elaborate in response to your other comments if you want, but it seems like you would rather I just shut up, so its up to you. I don’t wanna waste time typing out an argument that you aren’t interested in having
How dare I think about my own desire to not starve to death in a repurposed K-Mart
Its just confusing because I’m told I should have voted for Kamala because:
But from my perspective, that’s exactly what I AM doing, in fact to an even greater extent, by not voting for Kamala. And when I bring this up, suddenly your rebuttal is that actually I should be picking… What’s best for me personally in the next couple of years?
I knew Trump winning would mean disaster for me, my family, my friends. But I felt like Kamala winning would just buy us a few more years of relative peace (at the continued expense of exploiting much of the rest of the world), only to then land us with the same ultimatum ,but with higher stakes, four years later. So I:
It’s like you already know the answer, but you STILL did the wrong thing.
And you justify it by ASSUMING the stakes would be higher 4 years later? How so? How would it be WORSE after 4 years of a LESS bad president? That makes no logical sense.
What the actual fuck? There is NO SITUATION in which choosing to not exercise the power to vote that a fuck ton of people died to give you is the right thing to do. You use that power to primary bad actors out of the party you most agree with, so you can reform that party. Something that’s happened multiple times throughout U.S. history.
Anyone that utters the phrase “vote boycotting” needs to stop and re-evaluate their lives. That shit is downright disrespectful.
I hate Kamala, I think she’s a terrible candidate and don’t disagree that she would’ve just bought us more time. But it’s easier to fight back with a persistent cold than with supertuberculosis.
Because Trump got elected, my partner and I uprooted our lives, said goodbye to a massive community of people, gave up multiple career prospects, and moved to another country. I’m a trans latina immigrant in a gay relationship, so enemy of the state #1. The battle isn’t over either as we’re now dealing with immigration. I’m not legally allowed to work so I’m just living off savings right now, and effectively starting from 0. I still worry about my friends back home, many of which are also trans immigrants but who lack the opportunity to move, who are now scrambling to stockpile meds and fighting daily to continue living. I’ve had to talk friends down from suicide. I have never cried as much as I have in the last year. And I’m just one person.
So thank you for that, your direct lack of action contributed to it. I hope your horse was worth the blood on your hands. You’re no better than the other centrists eager to throw us under the bus while calling it “progress”
It was, you’re welcome. Now go be selfish somewhere else
Edit:
(If its not obvious, I don’t mean this, but figured I’d show you what its like for someone to disregard 90% of your post and call you selfish when you explicitly made an argument for why you’re not)
You can insult me all you want, but I listed out plenty of reasons for why you’re the one sacrificing others in order to sit on your high horse of having voted for Kamala. But you fall back to insults because you can’t actually address my points. You are selfishly choosing the well-being of your immediate social group over millions of people in the present and future.
Says the asshole who “vote boycotted”.
Seriously dude. Fuck you.
I refused to vote because I believed it would maximize the well-being of good people over the foreseeable future. My intent was good. You can call me completely stupid if you want, but its totally irrational to call me an asshole. I purposely intended to give up my own well-being for the greater good. That’s not asshole behavior, I would think. Again, feel free to say that I am stupid and had the wrong plan for the greater good. That’s a good debatable stance. But claiming I’m an asshole only demonstrates that you can’t see my argument as it is, but only as you want to see it