This is your status quo, this is what lesser evils of the past have won you.

Thank you, this bears repeating. Voting for the lesser evil has consequences. These are them. The consequences are here. Blaming those of us who won’t vote for genocide is like blaming the people who don’t give a homeless beggar $20. Sure, that money could help the guy get a meal today, but he’s in that situation due to decades of neoliberal policy. It’s ridiculous to heap the culpability for all of that on the skinflint today.

If you want anything other than a farcical good cop/bad cop routine carried on until the country implodes, your strategy has thoroughly failed, repeatedly, for decades.

The historical pattern is that pendulum swings and the party in the White House changes after each President. So, there’s a good chance of that implosion coming in 2028.

Really? Huh, TIL. I just assumed it was the person I responded to since it came soon after I posted, but I guess that was presumptuous of me.

Oh sure let’s talk about LGBTQ rights and Women’s rights shall we. Under which president was Roe v. Wade struck down? Under which president have abortion bans in many states popped up with complete inaction from the federal government? Under which president have anti-trans laws popped up with complete inaction from the federal government?

My expectations of Trump is we will have a buffoonish worsening of the current conditions of the world. Under Biden we will have a cynical worsening of current conditions. Am I priveleged? Yes, I live in the imperial core. I live in a blue state. I have a stable job. But don’t think for a second that I can’t see what’s happening around me.

and they are not even close to the same on other issues (LGBTQ rights, unions, women’s rights, taxes for the rich, etc.).

Yes they are

If “supports genocide” is the single issue for you, then you live an immensely privileged life

Square peg argument in a round hole of reality. Literally just copy and pasting into a thought terminating cliche what was absurd and ghoulish when you used it for healthcare.

abstention is, quite literally, not a vote for the person you like less.

Send troops. Enact a draft to that end to “make the libz cry.”

You are really out of touch. Trump loves imperial domineering, but he generally prefers to avoid boots on the ground because they represent a liability to his image. He will not send volunteers and he knows as well as anyone that it’d be suicide to enact a draft.

Send more weapons.

Biden does this.

It’s only logically moot specifically because there’s only two options.

This is also not true, which is why i said your idea of what voting itself is reductive. There are of course more than two options this and every election.

Allowing your mind to bend to their narrative, believing that voting is a binary choice is one way their democracy-destroying little game works.

If voting were only two choices, i wouldn’t vote at all as you seem to suspect. but it isn’t. i will in fact be participating as i have done for 30 years. Just not gonna do it the way you’d like, an imaginary binary election. Before you say it, there is also no such thing as throwing a vote away.

It’s only logically moot specifically because there’s only two options. Refusal to participate doesn’t change the fact that it will either be Biden or it will be Trump in the Oval Office next year. Choosing a third party will also not change that fact.

This is simplistic. There are only two outcomes to the upcoming election, but there are countless political strategies, many of which do not treat 2024’s presidential election as a totalizing issue. Other people, for example, think that what matters is building a strong leftist opposition so that we can escape the cycle of Republican vs Republican-lite elections, accepting that it means not giving unconditional support to so-called “moderates” for whom genocide is moot. Your logic only makes sense because you are question-begging by framing the question like the future doesn’t exist beyond the next four years.

until and unless we collectively withhold our votes and so express real and actual power, the left will always remain powerless. repudiate the democrats or be forever doomed to an endless cycle of voting for the “lesser” evil. (no moral calculus can ever frame a genocidier as the lesser evil - he’s so far beyond the moral event horizon that I no longer care to calculate)

Cool, by opting out they get shot in the face. But you get to feel better about yourself so congrats.

Realistically what do you hope to accomplish by voting for someone else?

it’s not a strategic vote! it’s an abdication of strategy that pretends only the current election matters! it assumes the present is eternal and that no electoral strategy could ever consider the future. an electoral strategy would admit the left has no real power absent a dedicated bloc and would work on creating one. to do so, you must be willing to sacrifice a few elections, because you must withhold votes and force the democrats to the bargaining table. otherwise you will forever be trapped in a cycle of voting for the “lesser” evil. FPTP does not preclude a long-term electoral strategy.

why participate in such a fundamentally broken system at all then?

Because I have no choice. “The System” happens to me whether I like it or not; the laws happen to me whether I like it or not, and if I can have 99% Hitler vs 100% Hitler, I’ll take the lesser. My refusal to participate doesn’t change the fact that those are my two options, and one will be chosen.

I would rather have a voice than let someone else choose for me.

What makes you hexbearians think this is a good response to anything? Literally just “I depicted you as the soyjak”

And what did I say that was incorrect?

Im not sure it’s possible to be more pro-union than being literally the only president in united states history to ever step foot onto a picket line and protest.

He is doing what he is legally able to do for abortions and unions. The president is not a lawmaker, nor a king like you would seem to have him be.

Again, its not his fault you seem to be ignorant of the structure of the US government.

The union strikes and saber rattling achieved their own results. The workers had the power since they scared the establishment to give them what they wanted. However Biden took all the credit for it even though he crushed their union rights which just goes to show how irrevocably damaged the liberal brain is

The top doesn’t have as many options as people think.

Ben Shapiro is dumb and I don’t fault anyone who can’t bring about a worker’s paradise, provided they make an incremental improvement in the lives of others. That includes Biden.

After taking millions of tiny steps forward, we’ll eventually get to where we need to be.

They’ll repeat any propaganda that divides the Kremlin’s adversaries.

Hey, I generally agree! It’s impossible to revolutionize a system while sticking to the rules of that system. We can and should fight wherever possible to improve things for our fellow man, no matter what we’re “supposed” to do as defined by the people that stand the most to gain from our apathy.

But that fight includes voting for the lesser harm. Voting for Biden to stop Trump from being president is an entirely valid strategy – and for the people who stand the most to lose, like racial and gender minorities, we cannot ignore harm reduction.

We can’t let perfect be the enemy of good.

That would be great advice if we weren’t standing at the literal precipice of fascism. Fascism is a storm (pardon the unintentional pun towards QAnon) threatening to overtake us. If ever there was a time to suck it up and choose the “flotsam” to survive to fight another day, it’s now.

The Republicans, aka the Fascists, have a large and cohesive voting bloc, driven by propaganda and fear, that will vote for them just because they’re not Democrats, regardless of the fact that they are known criminals, grifters, and will vote for things that hurt them. This is not the time to divide into ideological factions and hope we make it.