Reminder...

If the Dems keep winning the Republicans will have to slide left. It happened in the UK with Labour (unfortunately in the opposite direction).

When that happens, and Trump is not literally attempting to end democracy using project 2025, the plan of strong-arming the dem candidate into being more left is plenty feasible, and the risks are less dire.

You acknowledge that you're voting for a slightly slower descent into fascism but that you'll continue to do so?

How the hell did you come to that idiotic conclusion?

Says the person who doesn't understand how the US election system works.

It's unfortunately a bipartisan system with the shitty electoral system that needs reformation. It's barely a democracy, but there is a clear option out of the two, and for now, ensuring Trump is not president again is a step in a better direction.

You are not in Europe my friend. Why do Americans not even understand their own voting system.

Unfortunately, that would effectively be a vote for Trump.

Why drive to a polling location to throw your vote away then?

I think in my country that's called "Stemmespild"

which basically means wasted-vote.

if a political party wants to enter the parliament, they gotta get at least 2% of the votes. so if you vote for one of the very unpopular parties and they only get ~1.5% you've effectively wasted your vote completely (This is how it works in my country - of course things are different in the US)

lol, you're so free in the freedom land that you taking an un-awful option from the trainwreck gets you hate from the cult on both sides of the mainstream political parties.

Good on you for having a conscience.

Muricah!!!

I don't like the green party, they basically go away except for a publicity campaign once every 4 years.

PSL is constantly putting in work and has been at nearly every student protest.

if more had also done that, we wouldn't be here now

Asserting this is obtusely ignoring the context that conservative voters have no qualms about voting for someone grossly immoral.

There aren't conservatives out there saying "Yeah well I was gonna vote for Trump but he supports genociding Palestinians".

The fact that conservatives don't have this problem and everyone else does means that, yes, you are enabling Trump by not voting Biden. The "logic" necessarily does not work the other way around, even if you say it like some sort of clever gotcha with a complex emoji.

Trump is leading the polls.

so if you currently think "im not gonna vote", then you're giving trump a head start

A majority of the non-voters are more likely to vote for the democrats. thats also why the republicans are making it as difficult as possible to vote. coz they know, the more who vote, the less likely they are at winning

Were you predisposed to vote for Trump? Then yes.

We can't get through to these idiots. They are the fools that use literally to mean figuratively.

You mean you threw your ballot in the trash?

I don't get this attitude. Obama was literally against gay marriage. Biden's policies have been so much more progressive than Obama's and yet nobody I know likes him more. I'm not a "fan" of Biden but that's because it's weird and creepy to be a "fan" of government officials. He does a lot I don't like but if you literally hate Biden I don't forsee any president ever meeting your criteria.

This precise sentiment has gotten me told off a few times now.

This precise sentiment is based on the assumption that disliking Biden means not voting for him anyway.

The people yelling genocide over and over have an agenda, not an opinion.

Putlers troll farms are maximally amplifying the Gaza tragedy in order to divide the west. The tragedy that his Iranian friends probably started for him.

The largest current of leftists aren't saying you cannot vote for Biden, and that you should vote third party, but that ultimately change comes from outside the electoral system.

I'm not American dawg. I hate biden as much as I want. Let me hate.

This is ignorant fear mongering. If thats the way the system works as you say? Then its our duty as citizens to destroy the system entirely. If thats America then this is not a democracy and its certainly not a democracy worthy of being preserved. IF that is the system you claim Joe biden stands to preserve? Then we SHOULD let trump come in and tear the whole thing down.

I think trump is a fundamentally morally detestable character. Butt iv lived thru 1 trump presidency. Hes backwards, hes an ass. Hes not a good leader. But hes not the end of everything as we know it. And I'm not giving more power to a corrupt party of beaurocrats who continue to lie to my fucking face while selling me out to corporate interests behind my back and completely hollowing out our countries economic capability all the while refusing to make good on any of their promises and funneling all my tax money to foreign wars while we bleed for healthcare. Fuck this countries "democracy" the fact you even believe we live in a democracy is hilarious. Congress has a 14% approval rating. Our representatives do not represent the will of the america people. They represent the will of their largest financial donors.

Your point? If you have conservative values, then not supporting Trump does indeed help Biden to win.

Nope, because, and this will shock you, they are not the same

Did you just call me a centrist? That's hurtful.

Not voting doesn’t mean you support Trump.

You're saying that if you did vote, it would be for Trump? Because that's the only case in which not voting wouldn't help Trump.

RFK 2024. Hes the only one who could truly challenge trump. And if the democrats dont realize this. He will end up making trump president. The democrats have the power to stop trump by putting down their pride and getting behind a real true common sense democratic candidate. And that is RFK Jr. Their refusal to acknowledge that and their blatant cancelling of our democratic process is what will make Donald trump victorious. Pride and hubris.

it seems quite straightforward really. What are you having issues making sense?

You have two options:

• Ok with genocide. Otherwise relatively progressive. Has passed major important legislation.
• Ok with genocide. Wants to be a dictator. Appointed half of the Supreme Court majority that took away women’s right to abortion. Will probably strip more rights if elected. Cut taxes on the wealthy and will probably do it again.

You can throw away your vote, but come inauguration, you will have a president who is ok with genocide.

If you're not ok with genocide you should vote against Donald "just nuke them" Trump.

I'd say the changes from voting for Trump are pretty big.

Pretty big changes have resulted from the previous Trump presidency. Any reason why you think this one will be ineffectual?

Sorry, you will get big changes voting for Trump. becasue too much is already in place to make those types of changes happen. I dont agree with these changes, but to say they are the "same" is a dangerous opinion.

The person at the top is needed to green light policy.. those lower down present such policy.. While this can seem boring it is important, since while by definition the president will be at the center of their party. If the party you vote for is most interested in vetoing everything of the other party.. even if they agree with the law in general, there is no progress.

Of course you must do more than just vote for the least bad president to make the change happen.. However if you can't at least do that you own the results os the OP said.

Are you familiar with Project 2025?

Roe v Wade being overturned was not "more of the same"

The system protects itself. There is no path for a third party straight to the top. Split the vote sufficiently and the House decides.

You clearly haven't seen any of the replies from OP in the comments.

A large part of Lemmy including OP encourage political protest of the Democrats shortcomings by not voting.

It's not, it's discouraging voting for the guy that counters the "boof bleach" incest loving fell who "only will be a dictator for a day". You know, the unified Reich vibe that you totally are against lmao.

You misunderstand me, you should be allowed not to vote but encouraging it as a form of protest is misguided.

Most of what you said is spot on but you originally quoted about choosing between bad and worse.

I get what you're saying about the primary system, but even that is broken. Incumbents are almost never primaried. Typically the party will not allow it. There also needs to be consideration of what primarying an incumbent could mean. It's unlikely any of the challengers would win and in the process they would burn through campaign money and highlight weaknesses in the winner's record and character that could be used by the opposing party.

We do have a primary, but it may not always give the best candidate. If argue only a portion of people who vote in a general even vote in the primary.

Primaries exist

Unless your state votes for a progressive in the previous presidential primary, like New Hampshire did.

It doesn’t lead us to the same place but slower, at least not everywhere. One party has rolled back abortion protections, equal rights protections, bans books, and a host of other regressive policies. Democrats didn’t do that. Democrats might keep status quo, but the Republican agenda is literally to move us backwards to a worse place (though if they wanna move us back to when the highest marginal tax rate was 90% I could be onboard with that part at least).

There is action happening, and there is hope

And there are some pretty cool things happening under the surface

I see it as damage control while these grassroots attempts at major system changes take hold. We're holding off the assault while we wait for the calvary to come, but they are coming. We just have to not blow their chance.

Or what you can do is what you're supposed to do: work from the ground up. Presidential vote is not the place to drastically change things. As long as we have fptp, the vote for president is always going to have to be a strategic "vote for the candidate that sucks less."

Face the facts, if everything falls apart you're not going to end up on top of you're on the bottom now. It's just going to be even more shitty for you, and you'll then end up in another shitty system.

The idea is to implement the change locally and work up. That takes time and effort tho. If you want the system to work better, vote strategically federally and then work locally to get the people you want elected.

I appreciate the sentiment but I think my regret is more tied to the fact that I very much fell for the white supremacist men’s rights activism and homophobic rhetoric of the time, and me voting for Gary Johnson over Hillary feels like a symptom of that fact as well, and I deeply regret falling for that bullshit.

Like it or not, Clinton destroyed sanders. The DNC definitely showed a bias for her, but by no stretch of the imagination was he sabotaged. This narrative is the same BS that trump supporters spew that the media was unfair to trump which is part of the reason he lost.

The reality is that sanders just doesn't (unfortunately) represent the average Democrat. People like Clinton and Biden do.

Taking the risk because you think you know something you can't know is what's absurd

Maybe. A lot of folks only know him for his good environmental stance and see him as the rightful Democrat candidate.

They don't see his antivax bullshit and leaky brain from WiFi.

A different way to think about it - most of the intended audience on Lemmy, and especially in this community, would've voted democrat instead of republican. So from the frame of reference of this post, most folks here claiming to vote third party did in fact have their vote "taken" from Biden.

That’s how it is in a highly polarised country where every vote is needed to avoid the end of democracy and possibly domestic genocide on POC and immigrants.

Good gets lazy. It has too much hope in others also being good.

Ehhhh, things are looking a little dicey...

Telling the DNC that you and most people will vote for him unconditionally is sabotaging his chances; the dems need to understand they cannot win if they continue the path they're on, and telling them otherwise is counterproductive.

Silencing criticism of millions isn't gonna win an election. Doing the things the people whose votes you need are telling you to do will.

Gaza situation

Sorry, call it how it is, the Palestinian genocide

Well, you are useless if you can't manage to do the one thing to prevent America from becoming an authoritarian state. But go ahead and keep complaining about how mean people are to you.

Anyone that needs me to 'get them to vote' for Biden in 2024 is already a lost cause. I'm just talking about reality. Sorry if that triggers you, but not really though.

So you think Trump would oppose the genocide?

Yep- sorry nobody cares what you think deep down inside, snowflake. Only matters how you vote. Biden or Trump- plus all the downballot stuff you don't care enough to think about. Pitch a hissy fit if you want but that's your reality.

Right on - don't vote. I'll decide if or which genocide(s) your taxes pay for. Just keep paying taxes and not voting- thanks.

Then don't pay taxes anymore if you actually mean it.

Or I dont wanna vote for someone who committed genocide.

It's funny and sad to me how little thought seems to be put into comments like this. It's like you're taking this position to be cool and fit in. It's more of a personal branding exercise than a principled position.

I wasn't able to speak 30 years ago. 10 years ago, I was warning people about how AI was going to pose a problem unless we restructured society so automation benefited everyone. Almost 20 years ago I realized private insurance was a scam. Guess what? None of that shit matters. Playing the blame game won't help anyone fix it, but voting can buy us time.

Well you are in a shitty situation.

Biden should maybe, talk about that.

The logic is sound, it doesn’t get more authoritarian than a genocide.

I stand by what I said

Just because we dislike Starmer doesn't mean we support Sunak.