1849

I considered it a bad, irresponsible politician vs evil. I voted for the bad an irresponsible over the evil.

1850

I voted for Clinton because I liked her, more or less. There were a lot of things I didn’t like about her, and the business as usual shit was really starting to get to me. But I felt like she really did want to do the right thing and was willing to listen to people to get things done, and she knew her shit inside and out. I really think it’s a tragedy that she wasn’t elected, as much because of Trump as the lack of good things she would do. Although I don’t think she could practically have gotten anything done given the Republican resistance she would have faced. Plus, first female president, woot!

But two things happened… First, all the cool kiddies and older folks too who said they voted for Bernie but they couldn’t vote for Clinton, I told them those same things. Trumpster fire is a real piece of work and he’s going to be very bad for the country. Do your duty. Etc. But they didn’t. They voted third party or stayed home. And I was mad. If they’d just all voted for Hillary we wouldn’t be in this mess. I stopped talking to a number of them for a while. But you know what, these are excited voters who didn’t vote because of their principles, not because they are lazy (which, by the way, it’s not like you take for granted the vote of those 45% of people who don’t vote at all, only the people who are engaged… that’s smart?)

And no one listened to them! I certainly didn’t. They are out there saying, “Hey, look, I’ll never vote for Clinton. Never ever ever. I want somebody saying they want real change!” Often these people were millenials who just got completely shit on by student loans and expectations that college is required coupled with the highest tuition ever and they got through it only to have zero real job propsects. I mean, sucks to be them! And there were candidates out there saying that they actually want to solve these problems and they believed. Maybe they shouldn’t have, whatever. But they were mostly ignored*. And you know what? They stayed true to what they were saying and didn’t vote while holding their noses. If the party and the primary voters had listened to them, who knows where we’d be now. Pie in the sky? Sure, maybe, but ignoring them means you don’t get their vote. Now I’m WITH THEM. I don’t blame them. Fuck it, I don’t owe you anything.

Second, Trump won. A slight majority of the country decided to say “Fuck it, let’s burn it down.” Is our government or electoral process working? Obviously not. Am I going to keep doing everything the same as I’ve always done? No, I’m not. Is this a privileged position? Absolutely. But you know what? Everyone else votes their own interests, and I’m tired of voting for everyone else. I’m personally going to be completely fine with Trump as president. Before and after him being president my chances of ruin are the same as my chances of getting completely fucked by illness. The same problem almost everyone in America has. Big medical bills lead to bankruptcy. Otherwise, I’m good. Stable job, good pay, wife/family/house. If the people who need help the most can’t be arsed to figure it out and vote for the person who wants to help them, then fuck it, why should I? This whole planet is going to die soon enough anyways.

Basically, the same coping mechanism I used to be ok with Trump winning (like, actually able to get out of bed) means I’m not going to vote against my conscience anymore. And a Democratic party that’s trying to hang out as the lesser of two evils instead of trying to lead us in a positive direction does not deserve my vote. And I actually don’t even owe you this explanation, but I did sort of start it and we’re all friends here more or less.

*when something as fundamental as “We all deserve health care” is not being taken seriously by Dems, then they aren’t listening.

Edit: And the only reason I’m bothering now is I hope you’ll listen now, unlike what happened in 2016.

1851

Some Dems are listening. That’s way the primary’s important.

I can’t think of any legitimate candidate right now who doesn’t want some form of real universal healthcare now.

That said, 2020 is going to be about doing triage to America before anything else right now. Stop the bleeding, then punish the folks responsible.

1852

Let me try to explain the flaw in your line of thinking here.

The idea that they should have been listened to, and if not, then it’s totally rational to not vote, totally falls apart when you extend that same notion of bowing to their demands to everyone else in the electorate.

For instance, if that notion of ideological purity is valid, then certainly it’d be just as valid for the millions of people who voted for Clinton too, right? So if it’s rationally correct to withhold your vote from a candidate who is the best option, based on the belief they are not exactly what you want, then all the other democratic voters should do the same thing.

Which means that unless you somehow find a candidate who appeals to all of the democratic voters (which you will not, given they have ideological differences within the party), the result is that you will never achieve good turnout, as some portion of your voting base will just nope the hell out and stay home, because the candidate is not ideal.

And the result is that you will continue to elect people like Donald Trump, even though he is worse than EITHER of the democratic options.

Again, this is not some sort of academic thought experiment at this point. You are currently living with the direct result of what you are now advocating. This is what happens when you choose that course of action. This is not some subjective opinion. This is an objective statement of fact. In the final stage of our current political electoral environment, one of the two major candidates are going to be the president. It’s your duty to pick the one you think is best.

1853

Hey man, I want nothing more than the Dems to embrace things like universal health care, addressing the student loan crisis, fixing income inequality, making taxation sane again. I would be happy to keep voting for them if they want to be progressive.

But the move in the article posted that this all stems from makes me seriously suspicious that that is what they want.

1854

Yep. I understand lesser of two evils as an argument. I just DISAGREE now.

Oh, and saying it’s a fucking purity test is super reductive and I feel like you didn’t read a word I wrote.

To make it more clear:

It’s nothing like “exactly what they want”. It’s not a 90% match thing. They fundamentally disagreed with the whole idea.

1855

If you want real change, what needs to change is the electoral system. No more two-party strangehold, no more first-past-the-post. I don’t see the two-party system producing anything good for the long term.

Having said that, I still intend to vote for Democrats as long as they’re even marginally better than Republicans. I have yet to reach @arrendek’s level of dissatisfaction.

1856

There is nothing that you can rationally disagree with though. It’s not a matter of opinion.

At that stage in the electoral process, one of those two people is going to be president. If you fail to vote, then you are saying that you find those two options equal, and you do not care which one becomes elected.

That’s fine to think that, but you need to own it. You are saying that neither is the lesser of two evils. You’re saying that you believe them to be equal.

1857

The electoral system is undeniably fucked, and responsible for the shit system we have. Gerrymandering, primaries pushing parties towards the extremes (mostly GOP due to aforementioned gerrymandering), two party lock in.

Really fixing our political problems almost undeniably includes changing the system fundamentally.

1858

Cool a false dichotomy now. You’re really on a roll.

1859

Yeah, you guys are right. I need to add electoral reform to the list of things.

1860

There is nothing false about it.
It’s an ACTUAL dichotomy.

In the current state of our electoral system, on election day for major elections, you have two options. One of them is guaranteed to win.

No action you take is going to result in some other unicorn candidate to win. It’s going to be one of them. You are choosing between them.

1861

Timex is far more charitable than I would be. It’s like it take some sort of herculean effort to vote. Beyond that though the screed just posted is not that different from a red hat cultist.

If that kind of (ill)logic, selfishness and attitude becomes prevalent across the spectrum then I think I’m joining Armando’s Church of the Meteor Strike because humanity doesn’t deserve to be a sentient species. (/s, just in case.)

1862

You guys don’t know how I vote and I don’t have to explain or defend myself to you. But I will loudly argue for progressive policies and personally put what I have on the line for it. And I’m going to “take my ball and go home” now, because I don’t really need this stress ATM. That’s on me, as I said before I sort of started it by making myself a target. So I apologize, and you all can argue with anyone else who wants to take up this mantle, because I need to mute (again) and move on. I’m clearly still too incensed personally to talk about politics.

Although I will sneak back in to see what trig has to say because I love em so much, even if he is about to give me a browbeating.

1863

There’s probably no way to have a calm discussion about this. Maybe ten or twenty years after the Trump presidency has drawn to a close we can get into such things without a flame war but I think everyone is too close, too emotionally invested.

Anyway arrendek, you’re right, we don’t know you. We aren’t really what you’d call friends. If we were I’d do everything in my power to dissuade you from your chosen action, because I think nonvoters are going to be key in 2018 and 2020. But it is your right to sit this out.

1864

No, you only need to live with your actions.

The reason to vote against Trump isn’t to win praise from other folks. It’s to make it so that Trump doesn’t get elected, because you don’t want him to be president.

This isn’t really a question of your morality, merely your rationality.

1865

  1. We’re not going to reform a whole lot of our voting processes without tearing up a big piece of the Constitution and starting over. That’s not happening, so come on outta the clouds on that, everyone.

  2. One of the biggest dummy notions I’ve seen propagated on reddit and youtube and everywhere else is that “first past the post” voting is the sole culprit that created our two party system. It isn’t. At least equally liable, if not moreso, is our three-pronged checks and balances government. Wanna change that? Good luck.

  3. Bernie Sanders is a political genius, and his most ingenious thing is to back off his “I am a Democrat now” stuff–and not get called on it. Instead he gets to steer a whole lot of the party, while not being a member of it. So if you’re in the party, and you’re trying to steer things and something doesn’t go your way, you’ve gotta make deals and talk policy and write position papers and defend them and it still might go nowhere. If you’re outside the party and have Sanders’ influence, you tilt against an enemy like the DNC–which, Chris says for the umpteenth time, really has not a lot of power–and you’re able to steer it without getting caught up in intra-party crap.

And so by doing that, he manages to convince people who don’t know better that somehow Tom Perez isn’t a progressive, and that Perez, who leads an organization that wields only a fraction of the power that is often attributed to it, somehow has motives that run contrary to progressivism. And by fighting that out now, you bet Sanders and his friends within the party are going to win the next fight–probably a bigger one–fairly easily.

And that might be a very good thing, frankly.

But to see this as anything but policy sausages being made within the left is kind of naive.

1866

Arguing about Arrendek’s vote or view is pointless. The much bigger issue is that the level of frustration that arrendek describes, although I do not agree or endorse it, is a very real thing for a substantial number of left-leaning voters. If the Democratic party continues to ignore this frustration then the Dems are in fact going to suffer at the voting both, as they did in 2016.

The Dems must put forward a broad enough positive message that they can appeal both to the left and the center. I’m strongly of the opinion that this is not just possible but necessary. For example, a strong commitment in the Dem platform to truly universal health care, with a public option to the ACA with automatic enrollment and increased subsidies funded by increasing the 3.8% ACA surtax on incomes over $400K to 6% or 7%. This is an example of the kind of thing that can appeal both to the left (it is functionally in the long term a path to single payer) and to the center (as it does not disrupt ongoing employer provided health care and does not cost the middle or working class anything.) There are similar “broad based” (by which I mean including BOTH center and left) proposals that would work for infrastructure, taxes, a whole bunch of things. That’s what the Dems have to do. If the Dems continue to only focus on one aspect, they will never recover.

1867

Thank you for putting it so succinctly. I’ve been trying to say as much. I’m trying to represent the people I heard in 2016 as best I can by voting along with them. When they’re happy, I’ll be happy. Not because they are the people who are “right”, but because we need to stop ignoring them.

1868

Hey, I hear the right is laying seeds for a Constitutional Convention! :)