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I am reminded of two quotes from Fear And Loathing On The Campaign Trail '72 by Hunter S. Thompson:
How many more of these stinking, double-downer sideshows will we have to go through before we can get ourselves straight enough to put together some kind of national election that will give me and the at least 20 million people I tend to agree with a chance to vote FOR something, instead of always being faced with that old familiar choice between the lesser of two evils?
Jesus! Where will it end? How low do you have to stoop in this country to be President?
How low? Now, I guess we know. Voting for the lesser evil for 50 years has got you Trump. Twice. How much lower are you going to go?
I have no solutions. Things will probably have to break completely before the mending can begin.
Compulsory voting would solve so many issues. HST’s take really falls apart when you consider the amount of people not participating in their democracy.
Delusional
0·17 hours agohttps://www.thenation.com/article/archive/i-wont-vote/
Since I was twenty-one in 1889, I have in theory followed the voting plan strongly advocated by Sidney Lens in The Nation of August 4, i.e., voting for a third party even when its chances were hopeless, if the main parties were unsatisfactory; or, in absence of a third choice, voting for the lesser of two evils
Well that’s a depressing read. The American rot runs deep. It’s frankly disturbing how accurate that article still is.
The writer drops some great lines though.
Thanks.
How the fuck would the dnc generate a lefty candidate? Thats like asking the circus to generate something other than a clown.
Man, you really just have to post “I refuse to support genocide” to bring the blue maga nazis out of the woodwork.
It’s very simple: I refuse to support genocide.
And genocide marches on, entirely unaffected by your lack of support. Good thing there weren’t any other policies “blue maga” differed on, right?
sure, they only massively deported brown people, started wars, helped genociders etc…
As long as none of those democratic ‘other policies’ targeted white americans you kept your mouth shut. you deserve this, and more.
fuck all you scumbagsWorks every time
Prefacing a statement deserving of valid criticism with an assertion that critics are bad does not make the criticism invalid.
Oh no, your empire, the one with the “other policies”, just attacked iran bipartisanly
What was bipartisan about it? It’s actually a perfect example of my point.
You both are right but one is more consequential. Let’s dive in:
Bombing Iran does not have bipartisan support, many Dems are voicing their opposition. The Dems even advanced a bill where the president would need congressional review to specifically bomb Iran in this instance.
The President making unilateral military decisions like bombing Iran does have bipartisan support. The Dems have not challenged it’s constitutionality or proposed significant changes on this front and instead go for a case by case congressional veto. This policy also aides in our genocidal program of Gaza…
Of course you don’t give a shit about other countries. Defending the holy DNC while they are mass murdering.
Who is the DNC mass murdering right now? The government is controlled by Republicans right now. The Democrats losing the election did not end the genocide in Gaza, in many ways it’s gotten even worse. And now Republicans are doing additional terrible things that the Democrats would not have done.
You care more about posturing and virtue signaling your purity than you care about other countries. Everything is worse now but at least you didn’t compromise.
After working for the DNC for free for years and most of my calls being right, they can suck my fucking dick never again the amount of fucking consulting fees other people squeezed out of those pricks meanwhile I’m basically unemployable because of my politics, I’m not even a fucking american.
Rhetorical: Omg again? With same exact picture? In not really political comm?
(Disclaimer: not US citizen)
Go and vote in primaries for candidates you want, so maybe you get someone decent (so “no matter who” part is eliminated), apply pressure to them right now. Until you have enough power and support to create new party from scratch (and have it catch third of population instantly somehow, including republicans) or overthrow current system altogether, you have to work within it.
Also: in famous thought experiment, named Trolley problem, do you call yourself murderer (genocider) if you decide to push the lever?
I myself had different and conflicted opinions during those years, arguments for voting blue and third party (or abstaining) both look quite convincing, at least for not well versed in politics me. Ugh.
Looking forward to mod award on this post.
in famous thought experiment, named Trolley problem, do you call yourself murderer (genocider) if you decide to push the lever?
Yes, even if it’s “justified” or “the most moral choice” or “the lesser evil” knowingly killing someone is still murder.
Incidentally, the trolley problem is a poorly made though experiment. The fact that the only way it has to deal with “troll answers” that refuse its attempt to impose a false dichotomy is to say “that’s not allowed” or “just answer the question” should be proof enough that it doesn’t apply to real world “dilemmas” even as a metaphor.
There are people inside too, though. Damned if you do, damned if you don’t, damned even if trying to sidestep. Paraphrasing, it’s just another trolley.
The “people” inside:
Did you ever, in your whole time of thinking whether you should vote, realize, that you can’t actually vote, or does bluemaga logic not bother with those unimportant details?
The Democratic National Committee (DNC) has admitted that it can choose whoever it wants regardless of the primaries, as evidenced by the decision to endorse Vice President Kamala Harris as the Democratic nominee.
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2026-election/david-hogg-disrupts-democratic-party-rcna202202
And when they did it for hilldog
Well, that’s shitty
It’s not common knowledge but there is no legal requirement for either party to run democratic primary elections. They used to just pick candidates with no public input. They opened up voting as a concession to their supporters. However, they did so in a way that allows party officials to tip the scales in their favor.
The cruel irony is that the democrats actually have a less democratic primary than republicans simply because their voters interests are not aligned with the interests of party officials. Of course republicans party officials don’t care about democracy either but neither do their voters.
The left should protest democrats until they put up good candidates
They will gaslight themselves into believing they have the most progressive war criminal ever.
‘Lol but everyone knows midterms and primaries arent important!’
(Proceeds to complain about quality of candidates during the presidential)
‘Lol but everyone knows midterms and primaries arent important!’
You sure beat the shit out of that strawman. If you’d had primaries in 2024, we might not be in this mess.
It’s less that the midterms and primaries aren’t important, and more that the candidates allowed in them are not even passable.
If the electoral system only lets you choose leaders who don’t align with the majority, it’s not a democracy. It’s a dictatorship with extra steps.
Maybe even a
Dictatorship of the bourgeoise
At this point staying home helps Trump. It’s the fucking reason he’s there. Trump votes stayed consistent with 2020 but Dems votes dropped by millions. You saying Harris would be just as bad? This view is pushed by billionaires to help get fascists elected.
Maybe the people wouldn’t stay at home if there was someone worth voting for.
approximately 10 million and the dems still refuses to change their game, but it’ll be worse next time because of epstein and iran… in addition to gaza.
Yeah. That’ll show em!
They will be shown as many times as it takes for you to demand better than blue hitler
Ok. Enjoy your trump then. All of it. All were saying is right the boat first, then fix the problem. Guess hitting the iceberg is an ‘acceptable loss’.
You think genocide of the Other is an acceptable price to pay to delay having to fight fascism. You have rolled over and collaborated with the nazis because resistance is unfathomable to you. You are a nazi collaborator, and no amount of projecting that guilt will change what you signed your name to.
Iike i said: enjoy all your trump then.
Electorally lobotomized
it’s not about retribution, it’s about complicity w genocides; wars for profit; and baby raping/killing/eating.
people are slowly becoming disaffected and now there’s so many who won’t participate that aren’t enough 3rd party voters to make up the difference.
Dont tell me mate. Tell those stupid voters!
they’re not stupid, they’re disaffected and ignoring why they’re disaffected will lead to more people not voting.
And more trump. But somehow its not their problem.
You’re so devoted to genocide that you long ago learned that it’s a losing issue, but refuse to abandon it anyway.
You’re not going to make genocide popular. What we might be able to do is make the DNC run a candidate that people will vote for.
Then the Democrats shouldn’t run candidates that will cause millions of people to stay home.
Top Democratic officials who worked on the party’s still-secret autopsy of the 2024 election concluded that Kamala Harris lost significant support because of the Biden administration’s approach to the war in Gaza, Axios has https://web.archive.org/web/20260223002443/https://www.axios.com/2026/02/22/dnc-2024-autopsy-harris-gaza
Wow, maybe dont run pro-genocide candidates if you want your base to Vote for you? Or do you think the cult-like devotion of the republicans is a positive democrats should follow?
i fear that they tried to suppress it because they planned on trying the same strategy again in 2028.
Then again what is the other Option? Not vote for either candidate like in 2024 and let Trump win?
I’m not a US citizen but I still act similar in my local elections - vote for the candidate that will do less evil when they’re in office, if there is no better option. And I gotta hand it to the DNC they’re really amazing at just cutting off their own legs. Because shooting themselves in the knee can’t describe this.
Then again what is the other Option? Not vote for either candidate like in 2024 and let Trump win?
You’re the guy in the meme. So devoted to genocide that you can’t imagine a better option.
Not devoted to genocide - but rather when wanting better candidate (a real socialist candidate that does not support the war machine) but instead getting a sock puppet I’d rather try to have the sock puppet instead of letting worse people win.
You have two years to get a candidate that doesn’t support the genocide you totally aren’t devoted to.
Try not to be the guy in the meme in your reply.
Then again what is the other Option?
Insane levels of Stockholm syndrome on display. “It puts the genocide on the skin, or else it gets the Trump again.”
What should the German people have done when Hitler rose to power? Knowing what we know now, what would have been the best “option” for them?
Then again what is the other Option? Not vote for either candidate like in 2024 and let Trump win?
you should always vote and only vote for the most progressive candidate available; do not settle for the lesser evil.
we’ve been voting for the lesser evil for decades and here we are w trump in the white house and so many liberals disaffected by the system that there aren’t even enough 3rd party voters to make up for the difference.
Then again what is the other Option? Not vote for either candidate like in 2024 and let Trump win?
Or, just run a non-genocidal candidate. For God’s sake, the election is years away, and you just take it as obvious that Democrats will choose a monster
vote for the candidate that will do less evil when they’re in office, if there is no better option.
Im sorry but thats just a losing strategy, if you dont demand better, you will never get better as a choice
It’s not even generate a candidate that doesn’t support genocide, it’s literally just not stand in the way of or conspire against such a candidate, but naturally the DNC and their controlled opposition functionaries can’t even manage to do the right thing by doing nothing at all.
Mamdani: “Hey, people really seem to resonate with this message and will hand you an easy, landslide win.”
DNC, publicly: “How about you go fuck yourself?”
new dnc chair totally promises they won’t this time, please pay no attention to their constant and immediate attacks on anyone in dnc trying to move the party left or learn from 2024
“C’mon Charlie, just kick the stupid football blockhead!”
This meme sums up the US in a big way. No responsibility.
I’m not that sure that history will give a shit about US American Democrats or US American Republicans.
Those labels will be lost. “US American” concentration camps, disappearing citizens, ignoring court orders, death squads … there will be no “oh that was just the Republicans”; it will be “oh that was just the Americans”.
And they will be right to do so. The Dems are fully complicit in enabling this.
Maybe we don’t deserve a country if we can’t elect a non corrupt person (from either side).
Maybe you deserve a better system
@Salamence 100% accurate
I mean, the DNC supports genocide. Trump is worse, which is really a testament to how phenomally bad he is for just about everyone on the planet. I want progressive democrats on the ballot, but I’m not holding my breath. I’m still going to vote, and I’m going to vote for the least bad option.
Thats precisely what the DNC counts on when they ratfuck progressives. The only reason we got Biden to step down and Kamala to pick Walz was the DNC couldn’t delude themselves into thinking they could win. Once Kamala’s popularity spiked and they told themselves the left, black people, and/or women would do as they are told, they went back to business as usual.
We need to be screaming from now to 2028 that any candidate who does not support free healthcare, abolition of ICE, and zero weapons for Israel is unelectable.
We need to be screaming from now to 2028 that any candidate who does not support free healthcare, abolition of ICE, and zero weapons for Israel is unelectable.
The DNC does not care if their candidate is electable. They only care that their candidate is not a progressive.
The only reason Biden stepped down when he did was that the DNC wanted to avoid a primary they knew Kamala wouldn’t win. They waited until she was the only viable candidate. It wasn’t delusion, it was strategy. It was terrible strategy, but I also think that’s part of the strategy. We didn’t “get” Biden to step down. We failed to get rid of him soon enough for it to matter.
The problem is that there aren’t enough voters who support free healthcare, abolition of ICE, and zero weapons for Israel. We need leadership to make the argument for those policies, and those leaders are simply lacking. There are more every day, and I will fight with everything I have to support them, but they are going to keep losing for a while. Our fight is long, and we plant the trees that will shade our decendents when we are long buried. And in the meantime, there will be an election, and you will make a choice. Choose something you can live with, because it will have an impact on the world. If you choose not to participate, you are still equally responsible for the outcome.
there aren’t enough voters who support free healthcare, abolition of ICE, and zero weapons for Israel
Nah, that requires intentionally misleading polls. Ask someone on the street “Do you think healthcare should be free” or even “should every single american have healthcare” and you will get overwhelming agreement. To get people to disagree you have to do bullshit like “Do you want the government to take away your health insurance” or something. Same with abolition of ICE and weapons for Israel. The only people who want ICE coming to their neighborhood and dragging off their neighbors or Israel bombing brown people are never going to vote dem.
There are no voters who will vote for means-tested subsidies for insurance companies that you buy through 1 of 50 online marketplaces or through your employer, but won’t vote for free healthcare.
There is a shitton of voters who will vote for free healthcare, but will assume whatever compromised centrist solution the neolibs come up with will not help them.
“Do you think healthcare should be free?” is not the same question as “Do you care enough about free healthcare to vote for a candidate who supports it?” Voters are largely uninformed, unengaged, and only rarely do more than show up to vote if they bother to do that.
The number of people who will show up for free healthcare is greater than the number who will show up for complicated tax credits for PEL grant recipients who operate a business in an under-served neighborhood for 5 years and were born on a prime numbered date, and make between 20 and 40K/year and submit 12 pages of paperwork.
Hell when I was phone-banking for Biden in 2020, half the people I was contacted listed free healthcare and freeing the ICE camps as reasons they were going to vote.
They thought they were voting for progressive policy, the opposite of that happened. Further disengagement is expected result of not doing everything in your power to help your base.
Further disengagement is expected result of not doing everything in your power to help your base.
The DNC thinks its base is netanyahu and two cheneys. Well, one cheney now.
be sure to remember that you always have more than 2 options.
With our current voting system, you really don’t, and the third option is rarely a significant upgrade. Ironically, third party candidates have a better chance during midterms because of low voter turnout, especially in local elections. The focus on this particular midterm means it is even harder for downballot third party or independent candidates, because the rank and file are going to show up to the polls.
our voting system is a false dichotomy that’s been manufactured by both the republicans and democrats legally squeezing out alternatives as much as possible and socially manipulating our perceptions of a third option for decades.
As the US Empire continues to decay, and neither party is capable of rescuing it, support for abandoning the system altogether and adopting a new one will rise.
I would have thought you were right, but we’re eyebrow deep in this shit. The human capacity for ignoring a problem in favor of remaining comfortable has shaken my faith in humanity. I hope you’re right.
I feel like so many people aren’t necessarily ignorant to the problems, we just don’t know what to do about it. I keep seeing posts suggesting Americans are supposed to be uprising but by doing exactly what? I don’t want to be defeatist, but I legit don’t know what the plan is supposed to be. Voting doesn’t seem to be working, and apparently it’s going to be even less effective soon.
In order for an uprising to be long-lasting and survivable, it needs to be supplied, sustained and coordinated by dense mutual aid networks. Every participant needs to be clothed, fed, sheltered, trained, cared for and organized. The supplies and knowledge you need to do that, the institutionalized capacity, are the products of relationships. The big reason we currently have such a hard time helping each other is that all the relationships of production that have traditionally sustained human life, have been parisitized by capital. Rather than going down to see the medicine woman, we sell our labor to a boss for a wage, and use that wage to purchase medicine made by people who are doing the same thing to afford food and housing.
Essentially, the web of productive human relationships that make up society have been broken and reformed into a one-way connection between individuals and capital. Rather than a resilient web, we are each points on a wheel, with spokes that go inwards to capital and touch nothing else. All relationships have been subsumed in this way, all goods and services have been monetized, which makes it terrifyingly easy to cut off anyone by cutting off their relationships to capital (which is what every homeless person has experienced: banishment by lack of money).
The first necessary step in creating a movement capable of overthrowing capitlaism is to re-establish these old relationships, no matter how small or casual they may be at first. These tentative connections are like neurons that can later direct and support the development of true muscle. Start socialist groups in your community based around causes and/or skills, make connections with other groups, agitate for causes together, weave your organization into the greater musculature of proletarian power and self-suffieciency. The gardening/foraging club you start today will teach the revolutionaries of tomorrow how to feed themselves without a grocery store, and when you repeat that with everything, when you couple it with strong unions in a position to seize control of more complex production, you have something massive and organic that is beginning to detach itself from capitalist control.
And definitely learn to defend yourself. You don’t need to be John Wick, but if every member of a 10 person group becomes 5% less fuckwtihable, the whole group is 50% less fuckwithable.
Americans on average are far better off than is necessary for people to risk trying to overthrow their government. Most of them still have a place to sleep and food to eat. There’s no guarantee that will remain the case indefinitely.
Water boils when you keep heating it. Quantity changes into quality.
voting for any non-progressive candidate perpetuates this system that’s controlled by baby raping/eating/killing oligarchic billionaires.
Not voting for any candidate because none of them are progressive enough perpetuates the same system. How are you helping by not voting for the lesser evil?
“Those who choose the lesser evil are all too quick to forget that they chose evil”
No, I remember, and I’m fighting to remove evil from the next ballot. But I also know I’m not going to be successful, and I’m not naive enough to think that I can fix everything by myself. You can be mad about the choices and still choose.
There’s always actual progressives on the ballot. It’s just too many have fallen for the “lesser evil” brainwashing that they fail to see it. It’s no different than the red scare crap we’re still trying to kill.
As a lifelong progressive who has voted in every election in the past 26 years, no there are not always actual progressives on the ballot. But your point that we should support them when there is one progressive, even when they cannot hope to win, is also fallacious. Sometimes they could win with our support, and sometimes they could not. Vote accordingly.
Explicitly describing genocide as “not progressive enough”
Politics is a spectrum, and theoretically there is a candidate even for you that would still support genocide and also be progressive enough to earn your vote.
Edit: Yes, downvote me, but tell me who you voted for in the most recent election at any level, and I’ll point to the genocide they supported.
Edit 2: Lot of people telling me progressive candidates are on every ballot, but nobody has yet to name a single candidate. One person mentioned a party that fielded three total candidates nationwide in all races in the 2024 election, one of whom was a Presidential candidate that could not mathematically win because she wasn’t on enough ballots. Most Americans were unable to find her name on their ballot, and the overwhelming majority of Americans did not have any PSL representation on their ballots at any level.
Politics is a spectrum, and theoretically there is a candidate even for you that would still support genocide and also be progressive enough to earn your vote.
Theoretically there’s a progressive who supports genocide hard enough to get your vote.
What the fuck are you talking about?
No, there isn’t. What a fucking horrific thing to say.
You’re telling me you’ve never voted for a candidate that supports the current Israeli genocide? Are you not an American?
That is a wild self-report
Scratch a liberal…
Who did you vote for in the last election? Do you honestly believe you never voted for a candidate that has supported genocide?
Seriously
I believe you can make the case for either option (lesser evil or third party) and either is definitely better than not voting, but I’m of the view that voting is a negligible part of our political involvement that gets too much attention, organizing is a lot more necessary and effective, otherwise things will never improve
Absolutely this is a critical point. If you want better candidates, create them. Forge them and support them. Attend townhalls and demand answers from candidates. That’s the time to shape the race. Once you enter the voting booth, it’s far too late to try to fix everything with one choice.
I like the quote from Gandhi, “Whatever you do in life will be insignificant but it is very important that you do it…” I think that applies to voting. One vote may be insignificant, or it may be everything. You won’t know, and you may never know for sure. But if you don’t vote, it is definitely nothing.
there’s always a progressive candidate and you should always vote; just be aware that both the republican and democratic parties are actively perpetuating this system.
There is not always a progressive candidate.
there always is; it’s just that you’re not made aware of the progressive candidate’s existence.
in cases where it doesn’t seem like there’s one, you have to search for him/her/them yourself.
I’m not just searching for them, I’m canvassing and donating to them, but there simply aren’t progressive options in every race in every district. And even some nominally progressive candidates will support genocide if it is politically expedient. Politics is the slow boring of hard boards, and one of those boards right now is global human rights, and we’re not even halfway through it. You get through with constant pressure and effort. You can’t always get what you want.
@themeatbridge yep
voting is not a marriage proposal, it’s a chess move towards a better future.
I still want everyone at the DNC leadership to choke and die, soonest.
it’s a chess move towards a better future.
The expected move from progressives is always “forfeit.”
chess moves implies control and voting for the lesser evil isn’t a strategic move; it’s just hoping that the piece you think you’re forced to move does the least amount of damage.
@eldavi you likely don’t understand chess. Or what “strategic” means.
Stop gaslighting anyone who doesn’t immediately accept your pro-genocide-and-nothing-else-ever bullshit.
the majority have been employing your chess strategy for decades and here we with so many people not voting that there aren’t enough 3rd party voters to make up the difference anymore.
end the game while there’s still time before climate change to fucks everyone.
Given the last few decades, you clearly suck at chess
@BrainInABox do is all a favor go fuck yourself, shithead
Least deranged BlueMAGA
