So, I’m not usian, but isn’t it better for the long term to show Dems that you will vote a candidate for what their policies are instead of just because they aren’t the other guy, thus making them choose candidates that at least pretend to listen to what the people want?
Voting for “not-Trump” just enables them and allows them to keep moving to the right, as long as the other guy is worse, like it’s being happening the last 20+ years. “You need to vote for the eating-babies candidate! The other one is advocating for eating babies AND puppies!”.
The problem comes when you’re weighing a protest vote/no-vote against milquetoast corporate centrism, and the outcome should that protest vote sway the election is that the Slavering Fascist Apocalypse-Makers sweep into power, turn any future elections into tightly-controlled farces, and then begin a sweeping range of internal and external pogroms. Voting for the corporate centrists sucks, but from a standpoint of harm reduction it’s the only viable choice. A bunch of people stayed home in 2024 on the logic that by doing so they’d send a message to the Democrats, and as a result America might lose its democracy entirely.
Voting for the corporate centrist is viable harm reduction in the short term, but in the long term it’s a harm multiplier. Trump winning 2020 absolutely would have been worse than Biden winning, but Biden’s win and subsequent failure to do anything whatsoever to prevent future harm made Trump’s 2024 win even worse. If Harris had won 2024, she would have continued to fail to hold republicans accountable for their treason, and the next republican would be even worse. The only way this method of harm reduction functions in the long term is if a republican is never elected again. Republicans will be elected again, and we need an opposing party that’s willing and able to oppose them, not delay them.
So, I’m not usian, but isn’t it better for the long term to show Dems that you will vote a candidate for what their policies are instead of just because they aren’t the other guy, thus making them choose candidates that at least pretend to listen to what the people want?
Voting for “not-Trump” just enables them and allows them to keep moving to the right, as long as the other guy is worse, like it’s being happening the last 20+ years. “You need to vote for the eating-babies candidate! The other one is advocating for eating babies AND puppies!”.
The problem comes when you’re weighing a protest vote/no-vote against milquetoast corporate centrism, and the outcome should that protest vote sway the election is that the Slavering Fascist Apocalypse-Makers sweep into power, turn any future elections into tightly-controlled farces, and then begin a sweeping range of internal and external pogroms. Voting for the corporate centrists sucks, but from a standpoint of harm reduction it’s the only viable choice. A bunch of people stayed home in 2024 on the logic that by doing so they’d send a message to the Democrats, and as a result America might lose its democracy entirely.
Voting for the corporate centrist is viable harm reduction in the short term, but in the long term it’s a harm multiplier. Trump winning 2020 absolutely would have been worse than Biden winning, but Biden’s win and subsequent failure to do anything whatsoever to prevent future harm made Trump’s 2024 win even worse. If Harris had won 2024, she would have continued to fail to hold republicans accountable for their treason, and the next republican would be even worse. The only way this method of harm reduction functions in the long term is if a republican is never elected again. Republicans will be elected again, and we need an opposing party that’s willing and able to oppose them, not delay them.