Polls don’t mean dick. Please don’t repeat 2016.

He won by 4.5%, seven million votes, and 70 delegates.

And Trump’s base is dying off.

LoL how many times has Bibi been outted but only for them to realize they had no replacement or structure on how to do anything about it and had to take him back now? What like 3 times now? Great government for the worlds largest museum for Abrahamic religions with guns.

I don’t see the harm in it, fair enough. Even if it’s politically unwise to take action against Democrats who vote for it, in my opinion, it’s still worthwhile to know where they stand. Down the road, when we aren’t fighting an existential christofascist threat, we know who to vote out. Or, we can see who suddenly feels very strongly for it, after having voted against it.

That’s not what they said in 2012 (a year when Bush wasn’t even on the ballot, by the way). I’ve been alive for ten presidential cycles, and I’ve never seen it this bad before. I’ve never seen a candidate with such blatant disregard for democracy, or voters who are so blithe about tossing away their voting rights.

But even if they said it then, it doesn’t preclude it from being true now. Things can get worse over time. A threat narrowly defeated in one year doesn’t prevent that threat from gaining power and causing more problems a decade later, and the GOP has undoubtedly gotten worse over the last thirty years.

Ad hominem nonsense aside, your comment would’ve sounded somewhat reasonable in 1996, but in 2023 I don’t think it is. If you see the danger but run the other way, aren’t you treating the many more lives that would be lost as a result of a second Trump presidency with the same clinical disconnection that the Democrats are treating the Palestinian lives lost with each shipment of arms?

It’s literally the trolley problem. You want to not be the one pulling the lever. That’s fine. But the point of the trolley problem is that there’s not a morally correct answer. It’s a terrible situation, and there’s no right way to respond; but lambasting others on the internet for their choice is definitely the wrong way.

Thinking that abstaining to vote washes your hands of association is not correct. Your abstention counts as a vote for the winning party, whether you like it or not.

Choosing to continue to participate in the social fabric is supporting the choices made much the same as casting a vote. You’re paying taxes, you’re collecting incentives, you’re participating in the economy, you’re enabling the growth of GDP.

By your own logic, assuming you’re an American citizen and not just a troll, you’re also a genocide apologist who’s enabling whatever party wins.

I will vote for a candidate that has a platform I can support and nothing else.

And in doing so you’ll waste your vote, allowing the worst possible option (Trump) to get voted in.

The dems continue to get elected because of the Two party system. They aren’t going to change it.

Establishment democrats won’t let it happen, but they can’t do shit if they don’t get elected, and actually good candidates get elected instead.

Which means all levels of government are involved. And this issue needs to be fought in the primaries as well.

You vote blue you will still have red on your hands.

There will be red on everyone’s hands no matter what. No matter who we choose, our tax dollars are going to genocide.

The least we can do, the bare fucking minimum is to reduce the amount of red.

You’ll have just as much red on your hands as I do. But the difference is that you’re willing to let it be more red.

The GOP also continues to get elected because of the two party system. There’s a much better shot at taking over the Democratic party to force reform through than will ever happen with the GOP. I want to vote third party, but I’m not going to pretend that it’s safe to do so yet at the level of president.

Oh get the fuck outta here, that’s not the only issue at stake

The presidential race is the LAST place you should be making your stand. It’s like you want to skip all the early levels of the game (local and state elections) and jump straight to the final boss without realising you won’t win this game by doing that.

Not sure if this is enlightened centrism or not but avoiding voting all together doesn’t solve anything either because one of the 2 will be elected regardless.

In the US there are only 2 possible winners, a democrat or a republican. Not voting or voting 3rd party is the same as throwing your vote in the trash because of the way the US system works.

So your choice if you want to change something is to vote for the one that has the highest chance of working towards your goals, and that is a democrat, even if almost everything they currently do is awful. Because if a republican wins, your concerns aren’t even going to get into ear reach of them.

Either participate and vote to try to change something or accept that you’re discarding your already limited political power by taking this moral stance, and in the process also making the problems you’re concerned about worse.

By voting for either of them you support both parties.

Voting for one of them is our only choice if we wish to influence the course of our country.

This will be my 7th Presidential, and I have voted in every eligible local/state election.

You offer harsh criticism but no actual solutions, like you’re still 20 years old and thinking the world will change if you just talk about it enough.

Republicans will always lie cheat and steal with zero concern for ethics or scrupulous moral considerations when it comes to undermining principles of democracy if it increases their wealth and power projections. Always.

Democrats will also do that, sometimes, but not always. Don’t vote for evil, but don’t let guaranteed evil ever get unfettered control of a flawed constitutional system built where evil cannot be stopped other than by extreme means involving violence and bloodshed. See slavery and what we had to go thru to ultimately eliminate it.

These two groups have a stranglehold on our politics and no amount of bullshitting is going to work around it. If people weren’t smart enough to pick Sanders over Clinton in 2016, if people were’nt cognizant enough of the idea behind not supporting Clinton in the primary simply based on not allowing a few ‘royal’ styled families to maintain a grasp on the reigns of power, if We the People aren’t rioting in the streets to maintain an open, independent, liberal democracy, why would you expect people be smart enough to engage a third party candidate?

You have to plan ahead instead of yelling about it the last goddamn minute (in terms of election timing, this is the last minute) if you ever plan to side step D vs R, you have to look ahead 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 12 years and laser focus on all elections on all positions including packing the court with ethical judges that aren’t beholden to ludicrous legal think tank fronts acting as formal legal society clubs. But nobody has time for that much less the will to create a set of policies that will garner support of a large enough swath of voters that it could affect the sweeping change you want so bad (and yes, that we all probably need).

At this point, unfortunately, you’re a chump for thinking things will change by playing into the same trap of voting third party against the two parties holding all the cards.

The greater of two evils won in 2016. If you saw no difference between the Trump and Biden presidency, you’re a privileged person with the luxury to worry about genocide in another country more than what will happen to you.

It’s because of people like you letting them get away with being the lesser of the evils. If Dems were an overwhelming majority they couldn’t campaign on how close they are to losing everything.

I was a Republican and have voted the same number of times you have. Republicans fucking joke about people like you allowing them to win.

I wouldn’t say some of them are a pittance. The Inflation Reduction Act was so much investment into green energy that European countries had to pass similar bills to stay competitive. I work for a green energy company, and I heard that there were grumblings in European leadership about how much the US was spending.

Likewise, there’s been a ton of money forgiven in student loans, over $100 billion. And you’ve also got the price cap on insulin, or at least some formulations. That change came directly from Biden I think.

It’s significant changes, and it’s what we’re looking for, but I agree it isn’t enough and we need more. We can still appreciate though that we’re moving in the correct direction instead of being stuck. I’ll happily vote for Biden if it gives us more things like this.

I directly listed what Democrats have to offer, and you haven’t argued against a single one of them. Infrastructure, Inflation Reduction Act, $100B+ in student loan forgiveness. None of these strike you as better offers than getting snarky comments?

I’m sorry, but I stopped caring about political rivals’ feelings after 2016. I’ll sugarcoat things to people I actually know, but on Lemmy I’m going to say it how it is.

That does include admitting fault if I’m wrong. Show why you think the things I mentioned above aren’t notable, and I’ll happily recant my statements and call myself an idiot if they’re sensible.

You clutch your pearls but you can’t deny it’s true. All that war is to you is recreational reading. And if that’s what earns your vote then you live a charmed life. Even if you are a bloodthirsty psychopath.

President specifically, nothing. Government and a political party as a whole? Fix the problem.

There’s lots of ideas as to how to fix the problem, and though I have my own and have preferences, all that ultimately matters is that every single person in the country has a good place to live, food, and healthcare, and generally speaking, the ability to participate in society as much or as little as they choose.

I expect someone running for president to sound like they give a fuck about that, and (once elected) to use their position as the party leader to constantly marshal their forces towards real solutions to those problems.

Ya that one was on Biden. No idea why he chose that way to remove student loan debt.

Biden ran on debt cancellation, not a debt forgiveness of loams already eligable for debt relief.

This did nothing for me and thus I will give biden nothing.

You said it was zero but it wasn’t.

Do you? Your only argument is better than trump.

On basically ever single issues Biden is better than Trump I’m at least some way. That’s about as good as it can get in our two party system.

You deserved to be mocked, your playing into the same lesser of Two evils logic they were using with George W bush.

You’re just using ad hominems. And it shows how dogshit your arguments are.

This has nothing to do with your previous point, I’m just saying that it’s ridiculous to judge a politician’s performance based on how you personally as an individual benefitted from their policies. Like, we can take the labor wins, and the child tax credit, and the infrastructure bill, and appreciate that even though some of us didn’t directly benefit from these it’s better for society overall.

Pretty on point for a genocide supporter

I didn’t mention the conflict at all, where did you get this from? Would you like to be an adult and maybe ask what my position is before making such a bold assertion that has nothing to do with my previous statement? You’re too mad to see the forest for the trees, dude.

How about women then? Because guess who isn’t trying to end reproductive rights? One guess.

This isn’t even on the national level. We just voted here in Ohio to enshrine them into the state constitution, and wouldn’t you know it, the state legislature immediately responded by openly expressing their intent not to abide by the will of the people. Who makes up the majority (~70%) of the legislature here? Again, one guess.

By the way, I also had a choice on the ballot for who is on the board of education. One was a right-winger. The other was… also a right-winger, and an avowed member of Moms For Liberty. Maybe anyone on the left who was qualified for the position thinks like you, that nothing important gets done at the local level. [I voted for neither because, unlike you, I literally had no choice, it was a one-party vote] So now we have two more people on the school board who can and will work to ensure that kids learn the virtues of slavery, “traditional” family roles at the exclusion of all others, the nonexistence of people who are not 100% straight, and so on. But I’m sure that you’re cool with that because none of this pertains to genocide, the most important one solitary issue that matters in our lives. Guess we should stop caring about all that.

If someday my daughter is consigned to be a brood mare in the Dominionist Theocracy of America, don’t expect me to salute you because you “don’t support genocide”, you fucking hero.

I could ask you the same question.

Fewer Palestinians are going to die under Biden than Trump. Do I wish the number was 0? Yes, absolutely. And I’m really disappointed it isn’t. But there’s still a choice to make here that’ll save Palestinians who would be otherwise killed.

If 10,000 more Palestinians would die under Trump than Biden, and you don’t see that as enough reason to vote for Biden, what does that say about how you feel about those 10,000 people?

There’s a very easy way to tell the difference between someone paying lip service or using a tragedy as a weapon, and someone who actually cares about the issue. The person who cares doesn’t stop when 0 deaths isn’t achievable – they keep working to make the number as close to 0 as possible. And with this context, when the options are to vote for Trump, Biden, or neither, I think the choice is fairly clear.