Do you think if Biden called for a ceasefire or ended his support for a genocidal regime it would cost him votes?
I mean, at this point, maybe? I’m confident while probably both very small groups, the pro-genocide Biden voters are more than the anti-genocide Trump voters. Someone who votes Republican in modern elections doesn’t seem like they would be concerned for the wellbeing of black people on the other side of the planet.
But how do you actually press someone in that position? If Trump didn’t support genocide you could at least try and leverage on that, but he knows we have no alternative.
We’re in a situation where he knows every person with a brain that doesn’t want fascism will vote for him. He can only realistically be pressed to make changes that could appeal to Rightwing voters, and being pro-genocide might actually be a positive for those.
We can’t do that if people don’t vote actual leftist in the primaries because “commies won’t win the general”.
This is a really contrived hypothesis and probably wishful thinking considering the current state of the world, but hear me out:
You know how the Overton window gets shifted? Rightwing voters grew a lot in the US and Democrats had to get more to the right to appeal to them and not keep losing.
We just need to force the reverse. If Democrats keep winning elections Republicans will be forced to put out a candidate that’s more palatable to leftists sooner or later. Someone who isn’t a literal movie villain. At that point, Democrats will lose their only selling point (being the alternative to Satan himself), and they will have to actually push for leftist policies to get people to vote.
This can only happen if Democrats win a lot of times in a row though. Even one Republican win will ensure them that they can keep pushing fascists and have a chance to win.
There were other factors, such as the left in Italy generally tending anti-Ukraine
Wait, what do you mean? So far I think I’ve only seen some leftists be against sending weapons (which is still a stupid position to take considering the situation), but nothing explicitly anti-Ukraine and absolutely not the majority. Did I miss something?
You contributed to that by not voting for Trump, yes. That’s FPTP.
It absolutely makes no sense but it’s the system in place and there’s pretty much nothing people can do about it short of overthrowing the government.
I mean, do whatever you want, it’s clear you’re not going to change your mind. Just keep in mind that if Trump wins, you also contributed to that.
You’re just letting perfect be the enemy of good. And while unfortunately “good” is not really that good, the alternative is way too dangerous to risk it over moral principles. It’s sad, but as long as FPTP stays in place the only correct choice is to vote for the “least bad” of the main two.
And you already admitted it’s unlikely that’s going to happen.
I’d also like to become a millionaire, but that doesn’t mean spending all my money on slot machines makes sense.
Again, Palestinians will suffer in any case. A third party miraculously getting 20% of the voters will mean either of the genocide-supporting candidates still gets elected, and that means 4 more years of genocide will happen anyway.
And again, minorities are going through hell because of Trump-elected officials. The hope is that two consecutive Democrat terms will make the situation better, while if Trump wins that basically assures the next 4 years will be even worse than now, and that the following 4 will still have Trump-elected officials making it hard for whoever gets elected to get anything done.
It doesn’t matter how huge the chunk of voters that need a more left-leaning candidate is as long as the ones voting Republican are bigger. It’ll always make more sense to appeal to the latter.
Yes, we do. But voting third party and potentially handing over a second term to Trump isn’t going to achieve that. It’s just going to bring on 4 years of hell for minorities and encourage Democrats to appeal to Trump voters even more (especially now that, hopefully, Trump won’t be able to be elected a third time).
No matter how much you want to make Biden look bad, the end results are not the same (unless you live in Gaza, but even then I highly doubt strategic actions matter unless you mean straight-up overthrowing the government).
So you don’t care who wins but want to increase voter turnout?
Yes, because voting someone else in the primary doesn’t have the risk of electing a literal dictator.
I’d actually say 20% is quite low for a situation like that, it means 80% of democrats actually like Biden and that’s baffling to me. Compare that to 2020 when he got 51% in primaries and he actually gained consensus.
That’s undeniably true. But to say they’re very similar is a huge exaggeration.
It’s the difference between drinking expired milk with or without cyanide inside. You’re still getting food poisoning but one is most definitely worse.
So the difference is for one you have to waste your time to achieve the same result?
…and you think in a FPTP system voting for someone who is very unlikely to win isn’t effectively the same as voting “whatever”? What’s the difference?
So many of the things people are saying Trump will do is already happening under the Biden administration.
…because of officials elected by Trump.
There’s a crapload of policies others already pointed out that make Biden extremely different from Trump, if you still think they’re “very similar” you’re just being willfully ignorant at this point.
I’m assuming the average leftwing person is pro-free healthcare. Neither Biden nor Trump are. Did Jill Stein get a huge amount of voters for being the only candidate to support it in 2016? She barely got 1%.
That’s not how it works. It’s just going to shift the Overton Window even more.
Voting Biden doesn’t prevent you from doing this, you know. Rather, it would probably make it easier.