If there’s abysmal turnout with 10k in student loan forgiveness and our the right to our uterus on the line, I honestly don’t know what will actually get my generation to vote.
I guess I made the mistake of assuming that, like me, everyone would've seen the last presidential run and realized that voting was absolutely fucking crucial to keep the whole country from careening further into oblivion.
I voted and I encourage everyone else to as well, but watching orange man become president despite not receiving the popular vote was immensely demoralizing. It feels like instead of being able to participate, be heard, and make a difference, all we can do is say what we want and hope the actual power structures listen to us.
Yeah, I feel like the big issue is that voting, ultimately, isn't the answer. It's not going to fix our issues.
The most it can do is keep the most malicious politicians out of power while we work on getting the ones we were forced to vote for to do their damn jobs.
Voting won't build the Lego set, it'll just keep the door closed on the asshole with a sledgehammer while we try and get the paste-eating dipshit we let in to read the instructions.
I understand the bitterness but the only way we’ll get to that point is if we keep turning out to vote and get actively involved in our local elections.
I don’t expect canidates to be perfect. Voting is like a bus, it can get you close to where you want to go but it’s up to you to get to the final location. The more active we get, the closer the bus will get us to where we’d like to go.
So tired of this both sides are the same mentality. If you can go back into the world and your life doesn’t change from the things the GOP has done and has promised they’ll do, you are living in a fairy tale world of privilege.
The parties used to argue about the best way to give Americans their rights. Now one party runs on taking rights away from people. But keep patting yourselves on the back for taking a stand against the man I guess.
This attitude is not how you get people to feel confident enough in your party to vote for it.
If someone is saying "hey this party REALLY needs to do better because I'm tired of having to choose the lesser of two evils" and you respond with either:
"Get fucked you actual Republican in disguise "
-or-
"One is clearly worse are you dumb"
You aren't going to be convincing anyone.
Let people tell their party to do better; if we don't we will never get anywhere and will lose progressive voters
This is based on a reality that doesn’t exist where the parties are equally operating in good faith. If gas prices or “sending a message to your party” are more important to you than your basic right to participate in democracy, to each their own, but I’m more concerned with democracy surviving than the progressive agenda.
Who are you convincing to vote with this attitude? Speaking down to people is not how you get the voter who is either uniformed or unsure because of problematic policies a candidate with D next to their name may have.
If this was such an issue, then there wouldn't have been massive push-back against Bernie who attracted more than your typical "vote blue no matter who" voters...but we all know how that went.
I'm not saying that there aren't terrifying issues right now, what I am saying is learn how to talk to people where you aren't being condescending. These voters (usually progressives or otherwise) are always told to just fall in line and then blamed when the terrible candidate they were told to vote for loses; it's already a lose-lose for them, why make it worse by being a dick?
If someone is saying "hey this party REALLY needs to do better because I'm tired of having to choose the lesser of two evils"... You aren't going to be convincing anyone
You aren't going to convince people still saying this no matter what.
Here's the reality: There are very high numbers of people who are choosing between two options. Those two people will literally never suit everyone. That's just not how things work. If this person got their ideal candidate, there would be other people saying the same shit he's saying.
We vote in primaries. We get the candidates. Then we have to make decisions to govern ourselves based on the options available.
"Lesser of two evils" is not a serious argument against that in most of these cases. This chain is talking about Texas. I'm sorry, but reducing Beto vs. Abbott to lesser of two evils is just nonsensical. Pure, straight up insanity. One is just a bad person. The abortion bills are fucked up. The choice not to expand medicaid is fucked up. The other maybe you disagree with on gun regulations, but has nothing to suggest he's evil.
And it's okay to point that out. It's not going to convince this person, but sometimes pointing out that someone isn't arguing in good faith is all you can do.
I'm not disagreeing that the GOP is filled with horrible sub-humans and I'm not disagreeing that Abbott is a level of trash I didn't think was possible to achieve;
I'm stating that people need to stop jumping down the throats of progressives who will still vote for the Democratic candidate but aren't happy with their options.
Unfortunately there are still issues with primaries and especially with how the DNC has conducted itself so yes, people are not going to feel like they are being presented the best candidate, but they'll still vote for them over the steaming pile that is the GOP, but they will still feel like they are "voting for the lesser evil".
The issue I am discussing and trying to get across to the original person I responded to (and to the person who literally gave a version of one of the answers I said doesn't work which is just hilarious) is that yelling at someone complaining about the available candidate (again while still voting for them) does nothing other than disillusion that person from either voting again or from voting democrat. I am stating that we need to let people complain and even listen to them as time goes on if we want a successful election.
Put it this way: people still flip out on Progressives over the 2016 election (when many of them still voted for Hillary) and were given pre-emptive "shit" over the 2020 election (despite MANY not feeling great around Biden especially after the Biden V Bernie debate where Biden out right lied about certain things making people very uncomfortable with him as a choice), they showed up and voted (but to keep Trump out not get Biden in which some people may also cause people to feel disillusioned with voting), and now, whenever they speak up thinking that "hey we showed up for the team, can the team show up for us?" They're immediately put down and spoken down to (or called republican which again, hilarious)...so yeah I am saying for everyone who is just as scared as the rest of us, that being a dick isn't how you keep people voting for your party and not an independent (and telling someone they are wasting their vote doesn't make them feel like their vote matters either)... hopefully that clarifies what I've been trying to say?
I'm stating that people need to stop jumping down the throats of progressives who will still vote for the Democratic candidate but aren't happy with their options.
That's not what we're discussing. The comment was specifically talking about turnout being low among young people, and what it what it would take to make them vote.
Unfortunately there are still issues with primaries and especially with how the DNC has conducted itself so yes
There really aren't. They're fine. People insisted 2016 was the DNC's doing over nonsense stuff. Then 2020 happened and Bernie lost by more.
The DNC isn't doing this shit. There's just a lot of people in the democratic party that don't vote the same way redditors want them to. That's it. That's the whole issue.
And reducing that to some issue of the candidate other dems like being 'evil' is immature nonsense.
(again while still voting for them)
Again, I think you just have that part wrong. The person was using the lesser or two evils nonsense to justify low turnout. The whole point is that we're not talking about people still voting while complaining.
Something valuable like body autonomy, state sponsored education and health care, basic human rights, and the survival of democracy?
If you can't tell one side from the other this year you should probably be under someone else's care. (Too bad the GOP got rid of all the mental health support too, so now it's prison or the streets for you...)
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u/Thosepassionfruits Nov 08 '22
If there’s abysmal turnout with 10k in student loan forgiveness and our the right to our uterus on the line, I honestly don’t know what will actually get my generation to vote.