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Comment by _heimdall | Hacker News Reader

Assuming the Democrats go with Harris, I can say whole heartedly that I won't be voting this year. I view voting as a responsibility to pick a candidate I want to lead rather than a vote to block someone I don't want to lead. This time around I have seen no candidate I could feel even mildly comfortable with.

I'm not happy about it, but given my view on why I should vote I don't feel comfortable voting for Trump, Harris, or Biden. Voting for one to spite another would require me first to change my mind on what a vote means or cave on my principles.

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You should reevaluate what a vote means. In a country of millions of people, a vote is in absolutely no way a means for you to voice exactly what you want, or even for most people for you to voice an option you would actually like. In FPTP, a vote is for the most preferable option of the top two parties. Anything else is depriving yourself of your say. Other voting systems aren't actually that much different, they just make the information more available (you don't need to guess how others are going to vote beforehand, which can matter even though it's usually fairly predictable) and give people a bit more of a warm fuzzy feeling because they can give a vote for their most preferred option, even if still the outcome is which of top two options is more preferred.

This isn't strictly true. Parties definitely care about motivating their base and arguably the stay-at-home vote has pushed the US away from visible centrism in Presidential candidates.

I would suggest that this kind of thing is contributing to the problem as opposed to solving it, even as someone who is not particularly near the center.

A drop in voter participation creates an opportunity for an alternative party to fill the void. That market opportunity simply wouldn't exist if always accept that we have to eat whatever crap the two major parties decide to serve us.

How low do you think participation would have to be for another party to step in?

I really don't know, it would depend on a lot if factors. More important to me though is that I think it's st least a possibility in that scenario, as long as a vast majority of voters believe they only have two options we won't have a third party step in.

If the two main parties were to drift well away from the opinion of the voters, and the voters all picked the closer option of the two, then one party would become dominant, the other irrelevant, and then there would be an option for an alternative party to fill the void closer to the voters. Note that this would be the case in any other voting system as well: whatever your preferred party is only gets to power at the expense of one of the others. The main reason this doesn't happen often is that the politics of those parties tends to shift to try to win those votes.

(IMO, the sad fact of most democracies nowadays is that the government does in fact tend to reasonably well represent the average of what the voters want, in terms of method if not results. Given the state of them, I think it reflects poorly on the voters, but there's not really any better way to align government and populace)

> In FPTP, a vote is for the most preferable option of the top two parties.

I wholeheartedly disagree with this take. I owe nothing to the two parties and I don't agree that they get to control everything to the point that I can only pick between two bad options they offer me.

Allowing parties to take this power leaves the door wide open for both parties to end up providing options that want to go in directions fundamentally bad for the country and I have to vote for one of them. To be clear I'm not saying that is the case today, but your view on voting makes that possible.

If one doesn't vote when they feel strongly that both party candidates are harmful, voter participation goes down and it opens the door for a new party to step up and have a legitimate chance. Said another way, refusing to vote when I absolutely disagree with both candidates creates a market for an alternative that wouldn't exist if I gave in and accepted choosing between two bad options.

> I wholeheartedly disagree with this take. I owe nothing to the two parties and I don't agree that they get to control everything to the point that I can only pick between two bad options they offer me.

I don't think he's saying it's desirable, but is an outcome of the FPTP system. If you don't want to pick between only two bad options, then you'll need to eliminate the spoiler effect by switching to something like STV.

I'd be happy for us to switch to an STV model, I'd also be happy with a majority rules vote without the electoral college.

Neither option is helpful this time around though. That said, I'd vote for congressional representatives that I believe actually will push for such a change if that option was available to me.

Wait, how does lack of voter participation open any new party doors? There’s third party candidates on the ballot, which sometimes get a little traction, and then there’s write-ins, which don’t get traction. Not voting avoids both of those possibilities. Ranked-choice voting would enable other parties in a real way. I don’t see how not voting opens any doors. A third party has no legitimate chance in this election or for the foreseeable future unless voting breaks down completely. Neither party is going to let that happen if they can help it. The last third-party candidate to make it to 2nd place was more than 100 years ago (Teddy Roosevelt, 1912).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_third-party_and_indepe...

Third party candidates have effectively no chance as long as a majority of the country falls into the view that voting for anyone other than a Democrat or Republican is a wasted vote. For the third parties, gaining support and more importantly funding is extremely difficult when we all fall into the D/R categories.

Decreased voter participation would signal a growing lack of faith or trust in the two major parties. That can open doors for fund raising for third parties, because they now can point to a percent of the population that historically did vote and stopped. Similarly, it would open doors for gaining support and votes because they can make the same argument to voters - 20% (or whatever the decrease is) of voters gave up on both parties. Join our party if you lost faith in the others, and in a 3 way race that puts us very much in the hunt for fundamentally shaking up the system we have today.

> Third party candidates have effectively no chance as long as a majority of the country falls into the view that voting for anyone other than a Democrat or Republican is a wasted vote.

This isn't just an opinion certain voters have, it's the truth. A vote for anyone other than one of the two parties with the best odds of winning is a "wasted vote" in the sense that when the third party candidate voted for doesn't win (and they almost certainly wont) that vote can't go to support anyone else. Our voting system makes that true.

The only way a third party could ever win in under our current system would be if they managed to get a massive majority of the voters to vote for them, and a massive majority of the voters knew that the third part was going to be getting a massive majority of the votes before anyone voted.

It's extremely unlikely that a third party could gain that much support. Especially because elections in the US tend to be pretty close. The best any president has ever managed was something like 60% of the popular vote.

FPTP systematically prevents third-party candidates from becoming viable. Literally, unless FPTP changes, voting for anyone other than D or R is factually a wasted vote.

The way our system is structured what would actually happen is any sufficiently electable third party would just "take over" one of the two major parties, at the primary stage.

Trump basically did just that and Bernie Sanders came close.

Most countries with presidential systems and FPTP have third party runs to such an extent that it's impossible to decide who the first, second, third... party is. It's more than such and such a famous politician runs for the presidency and sets up a party if they can find one to support their bid.

The US does not have successful third party runs because of the uncertainty and difficulty of getting onto the ballot, the possibility of getting onto enough ballots that you will harm your allies but not enough ballots to win, and the fact that the electoral college means you can't rely on running up the vote in your home regions in order to get yourself into the running on a national level. It's not FPTP that prevents third party presidential runs in the US, but state electoral administration, state primaries, and the electoral college.

In any case, the effect is the same. It doesn't matter why the US only has two major candidates at this presidential election and the last presidential election and the next presidential election. It just matters that the US only has two major candidates at this presidential election and the last presidential election and the next presidential election. Abstention is nothing more than half a vote against the candidate closest to you. It's not a motivator for an extra candidate to run next time.

In this reading, the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact will probably have a bigger consequence than Ranked Choice Voting, because it will allow candidates to run up the vote in home regions, which will create new paths to the White House. Ranked Choice Voting just allows voters of the least favored candidate to make a protest and then come home. If you had had Bernie, Biden and Trump running at the last election with RCV, then Biden would have won if Bernie voters had preferenced him, and Trump would have won if they didn't. There's no actual alternative in which Bernie wins. So why would you stand if you're guaranteed to lose? It costs money and burns bridges. The extra candidates want a lower hurdle to winning (for instance, 38% in a field of four), not a higher hurdle (like 50%+1 in a field of four).

The consequences are different at the level of an individual district, because a member of Congress is a very different role than a national president.

> So why would you stand if you're guaranteed to lose?

From a country with Preferential Voting: you run to make preferencing deals that benefit the people that vote for your particular ideals.

It's on the record that X% of the popuation support the stance you take.

Further, it goes all the way to the houses and breaks the party stranglehold; Australia has 10 Independents, more than Canda, the US, and the UK combined.

Politics shoud be about more than "a little king" as POTUS, it should be about the house reflecting the proportional views of the population and weight being given to views represented and the deals that aligned views can make together.

The US FPTP system was doomed (from an iterative dynamic system perspective) to devolve into a two party non representative end game despite the express opposition of many Founders to Party Politics. It's what happens when a poort voting system is scaled up over centuries.

> I owe nothing to the two parties

You are free to do that but then dont complain if your rights are taken away.

The 1st Amendment doesn't say anything about proving I voted before I complain.

If you want it to, you are free try to change the Constitution.

I can do more than complain when rights are taken away. That was the entire point of the second amendment, the populace needed to be able to defend itself from tyrants.

I hope to never see that day come to pass and will do whatever I can to avoid it, but we aren't left with only complaining if fundamental rights truly are being taken away.

in FPTP, if you aren't voting tactically, you are in fact not doing whatever you can to avoid it.

There's nothing to disagree with, here. FPTP has proven equilibrium states, and proven effective voting strategies.

The status quo of where the top parties go is a consequence of the voter's attitudes, because of the vote they don't actually have the power to just force an unpopular option. The reason they are presenting policies you don't like is because they think (probably accurately) that they will win them more votes than they lose. If a top party were to not do this, they would quickly lose relevance, ceding dominance to the other party and then setting the stage for another party to gain power. A third option doesn't actually reasonably exist, in any voting system, unless the electorate and parties reach this state, it's just FPTP needs tactical voting to reach accurate representation (even in systems which result in many parties in government, you will have coalitions which form compromises and you get voters who did not get much at all of what they voted for).

> Anything else is depriving yourself of your say.

As much as plurality voting sucks, that's not true unless you assume there is only one election ever.

In reality the game-theory is iterative: What happens this time influences players next time. If X is concerned about losing to Y, they have an incentive to court voters that previously went for Z.

That tends not to work very well. In most countries, the third-party options are usually more extreme, and courting their voters may get them, but at the expense of even more votes in the center. In FPTP, third parties and their votes (as well as voters staying home), tend to disadvantage their own goals much more than advance them.

I may very well just be out of touch today, but I find both major parties in the US to be extreme. The policies they say they support and the rhetoric used to demonize the other party are both much to extreme for me.

At the end of the day the average person is just trying to live a decent life where they and their loved ones can be happy. We all have different ideas of what that takes, but we don't need to liken those we disagree with to Nazis out to destroy democracy.

In Canada, I've voted for the fifth place party in the past. I simply wanted them to get enough popular vote to qualify for official party status. Felt like I helped make a difference to get another voice in the fray.

I can never understand Americans who say this sort of thing.

The US does not have a reasonable voting system. It’s not compulsory, it’s not ranked choice, and you vote for persons not parties.

You have a duopoly that’s more or less set up so that a third choice will never be available.

You aren’t here to pick an ideal candidate. You are here to pick the one that aligns most with your view that can win. Otherwise you get someone you definitely don’t want.

I agree with this to an extent and so far hav e voted in every election I have been eligible for, including when I lived overseas.

The problem I have today is that I fundamentally disagree with both options and think we will be worse off with either one.

I am totally fine accepting and supporting a candidate that I generally agree with, or even just agree with on a few key policies. I'm not okay with having to pick between one candidate who I view to be a sociopathic narcisist or another who I view has being well on his way to serious cognitive issues. Assuming Harris is the new candidate, I'm now left with the narcisist and a candidate who I view as unfit for duty, and an ineffective candidate who fell into this position thanks to a combination of DEI and a white house that refused to accept the limitations of the president.

If, on the other hand, voter participation goes down noticeably it can drive change. Both parties will know they lost support and, more importantly for them, have voters to win over. It also opens the door for creating a real chance for a third party that doesn't exist when we all continue to accept the unofficial duopoly that started way back when Hamilton and Jefferson were tearing the union in two.

>If, on the other hand, voter participation goes down noticeably it can drive change

I'm not American so system and the dynamic might be different there, but this comes off as wishful thinking driving a car down a cliff.

Voter participation among young is painfully low in Japan (a country I follow election results and politics), and almost every young ones reasons for this, as far as I know essentially boggles down to "it's useless for me to vote, older generation out vote our concerns and politics always favours the elder. Not voting at least sends my dissociation and discontentment to it all".

But decades of "not voting" have only told the politicians ONE message: the young voting bloc don't matter, because they don't vote, and our resources are better spent to favor the older bloc.

It's a circular logic, a self fulfilling prophecy, a local suboptimum with steep gradients.

Not voting because I fundamentally disagree with both options is a "break glass in case of emergency" situation in my opinion. I've never pilled that rip cord before, but for me that's where it is today with this presidential election.

Do I like it? Absolutely not. Do I expect to feel this way again in future elections? Also no, I honestly don't know how both parties allowed such bad candidates to be considered the best we have to offer as a country.

That said, I view not voting more akin to jury nullification than driving a car off a cliff. Not acting is different than doing something insane. I'm not sure how well known jury nullification is outside the US (or even in the US), but effectively it boils down to a juror voting not guilty despite the evidence, usually because they either disagree with the law or don't think the person on trial should be punished.

I'm aware of jury nullification (thank you cgp gray [1]) but afaik I don't think jury nullification can be equated to "doing nothing rather than doing the insane".

Jury nullification have a lot of uncomfortable implications to the legal system and that's one of the reasons it's not shared to potential juries, but implicit asked. The systematic implication can be pararelled to politician's in the long run deciding nonvoters concern can be ignored.

Jury nullification comparisons comes with a bit of a blind faith in the other juries (because in this situation you're not replaced, the resting juries just have more votes) are sane.

That said I know you're not advocating for nonvoting as a viable long term strategy but just for this one occasion. I'm not faulting that and can understand it. Advocating for it to others is a bit more problematic and the point I'm contending on in a public forum, in case many agrees to that stance.

[1] https://youtu.be/uqH_Y1TupoQ?si=m4YQbveBf7yC-cFE

My comparison was meant mainly in the light of going against the system that is in place because one has a problem with the system itself.

On a jury the expectstion is that you will vote based solely on the logic of the facts and legal interpretations presented. Jury nullification is a choice to go against this, going outside what the system wants you to believe is your duty because you disagree with that premise.

Here, not voting is going against this unwritten rule that we must pick between the two options and that is our civic duty to vote for one or the other no matter what. Sitting out for a specific election is ignoring what the system wants us to do when we disagree with the assumption that we must choose between the two options given.

> If, on the other hand, voter participation goes down noticeably it can drive change. Both parties will know they lost support and, more importantly for them, have voters to win over. It also opens the door for creating a real chance for a third party that doesn't exist when we all continue to accept the unofficial duopoly that started way back when Hamilton and Jefferson were tearing the union in two.

Is there a minimum turnout needed? I'm pretty sure there isn't. All the diehards will always vote for the Dems or Reps. And everyone else is not voting, not voting for an alternate candidate.

Sounds like the fewer swing voters there are, the better.

No there isn't a minimum turnout. Sitting out for an election means that whoever does still vote gets to decide the winner. St scale, though, a decrease in voter turnout would signal discontent with the system and the parties in charge. Those parties would likely respond to try to capture more voters and a third party may finally see a window that they could use to raise funds for a legitimate challenge to the two party system.

I have not seen that's happening anywhere. What actually happens is that parties will just focus on whoever votes and ignore the rest.

Sure, maybe if participation dropped suddenly to 20% there would be comments and reactions, but anything over 40% would barely get a few curious articles and no real difference.

In my view, a vote means more than a vote for a leader. It determines the direction of your country. Just look at how a single president has tipped the balance of the Supreme Court, where the judges will remain for decades, and that is only a part of a much larger political picture. The President will only stay for 4-8 years, but the choices they make can have impacts for generations.

You need to play the long game and vote for the best interests of your country, even if that means voting for someone you don't like.

> I view voting as a responsibility to pick a candidate I want to lead rather than a vote to block someone I don't want to lead.

You can view it however you want, it doesn’t make it true. Perhaps it would help to consider that one of the two candidates will be leading after the election, and make your decision based off of which of the two outcomes you would prefer.

Voting is using a share of power borne of your citizenship to express a political preference. I too used to think of voting as more of an obligation, but it really isn’t. It is a choice. If you’re staring down two candidates you don’t want to vote for and nobody in the 3rd parties is worth registering even a protest vote through, it is entirely reasonable to choose not to vote at all.

All the rhetoric that exists to try and drive/guilt people into the ballot box exists for the purpose of trying to get more people to turn out for their preferred candidate.

I’m not stating this as a treatise on political science or theory or the rights and obligations of the citizenry or any other high-minded ideal: come November 6th, one of either Donald Trump or whoever the democrats pick to run will be the president elect, and for the next 4 years, they will be president. What you decide to do with that fact is up to you, and your justifications are your own, but come November 6th, Donald Trump will be the president elect or Kamala or whoever the democrats pick. Those are the two potential outcomes. Talk yourself into whatever you want, just don’t convince yourself there’s a third choice.

I'd like to see RFK get enough support to get into debates officially. Supporting him might be considered by most to be a wasted vote, but is it if it changes the discourse? I'm Canadian btw, no horse in this race.

I really want to like RFK but find myself only agreeing with him on a few topics. That said, I also really want to see more people viewing a third party as a legitimate option that isn't a wasted vote.

I'd argue that most votes are wasred given that most states are solidly aligned with one party or another. I happen to live in a strongly Republican state, making every ballot I've cast for Democrats effectively meaningless.

> Talk yourself into whatever you want, just don’t convince yourself there’s a third choice.

Literally nobody here is doing that.

From the context of a voter, I would argue that your scensrio ignores the actual choice to be made. I can choose to support Trump, Harris (if that's who they pick), or neither. The third option is absolutely a choice if you view your vote as a vote of support rather than a vote for the lesser of two evils.

I think by third choice he meant an outcome other than Trump or the Democratic nominee (presumed Harris, I guess?) winning this election. One of them will definitely win and the other will definitely lose; I’m with you that they don’t have to do it with our votes specifically.

As a voter, you have an infinite choice of actions. There's a "write in" line - you can cast your vote for literally anyone who's ever lived, any fictional character, anyone or anything you want. You can cast no vote, you can write a treatise on the ballot about voter choice, you can tear the ballot in half dramatically in front of all nearby. You can choose to do whatever you want. Whatever action you choose to take and however you view it, there will be one of two outcomes the day after.

Voting is absolutely an obligation for any democratic society. Abstaining provides no kind of signal or message to the body politic.

Elections occurring and people voting in them is necessary for the continuance of a democratic society. The actions of individuals who are qualified to vote within said democratic society choosing not to vote does not nullify this.

> Abstaining provides no kind of signal or message to the body politic.

This is true and irrelevant. Not wanting to spend the (rounding up) 10 seconds to glance at and fill out the Presidential portion of a ballot nor waste the ink from your pen to do so before dropping it in the post simply because you do not like any of the viable candidates enough to do so (or for any other reason) is a personal affair.

> Not wanting to spend the (rounding up) 10 seconds to glance at and fill out the Presidential portion of a ballot nor waste the ink from your pen to do so before dropping it in the post simply because you do not like any of the viable candidates enough to do so (or for any other reason) is a personal affair.

In the same way that not helping at the scene of an automobile accident is a personal affair, I suppose, yes.

I mean if you fail a logic check and treat equally an automobile accident with a cavalcade of knuckleheads running to acquire power, you are absolutely correct.

Just not in this reality.

This is an infantile perspective on society and government. Be better.

You have yet to make an actual argument, only gesticulate in the general direction that you think it is problematic for people to choose not to vote in every election on every ticket. This is not a well developed position, only one that is reinforced by bad rhetoric and dogma.

Abstaining can show the lack of faith in the limited options given. If a meaningful number of voters stay home it can signal that (a) there are voters to be won if the existing parties change and (b) voters are fed up with the status quo and may be open to a third party option.

Abstaining does not demonstrate what you think it does in the electoral system we have in place in the US.

And yet it's exactly this fear of voters abstaining which just ousted Biden as nominee.

I have no idea how you came to this conclusion. It's incoherent.

Read some other comments in this large thread, maybe it will click for you.

Taken to the extreme, if the two candidates were Adolf Hitler and Heinrich Himmler would you still feel that every voter must accept that litation and vote in support of one of them?

By no means am I saying that is our situation today, but your view of how voters must decide leaves absolutely no room for voters to decide that neither option is acceptable.

If neither option is acceptable, you should be doing a lot more than boycotting the vote. Anyway, extreme hypotheticals are distractions.

I'm not arguing that voters must do anything. I'm saying that there are two possible outcomes on November 6th, and that to pretend otherwise - to pretend that your vote, or lack of vote, or protest vote, or whatever else leads to anything but one of those two possible outcomes is a fantasy. All of the work to change the options happens before the vote, not during it.

And no, your ludicrous example doesn't change that.

The example isn't ludicrous, it's playing out the worst case and asking whether you still believe that voters must choose to support what they see as the least bad option.

You literally said that voters should pick which of the two options seem best. So again, if given the choice of Hitler and Himmler should voters be held to that standard? If not, is it reasonable for voters to disagree with the vote and choose not to be party to it?

The correct answer is that responsible voters should work to change a broken voting system.

Such an dilemma doesn't occur in a Washminster system with preferential voting, that it does in the antiquated US election system is damning.

I totally agree with you here. I would support almost any Congressional candidate that I believe to honestly want to push through a change in this direction to our electoral system. For now I just don't see Congress actually considering such a fundamental change to our electoral system, its rare enough that they pass a budget on time.

I have sometimes voted write-in for fictional characters, in races where all the candidates really are just that bad.

For president specifically, I usually vote for the least obnoxious or most amusing third party.

I'm not totally familiar with Himmler's exact beliefs and plans - but if say, he was almost as bad but not quite as bad as Hitler, then I would certainly be voting for him instead of Hitler. I would hope every other voter did the same. I can understand if someone wasn't able to actually tell the difference between such awful candidates - but aside from that, it seems illogical not to vote in the lesser of two evils.

I used to see it more like that. But the reality is that one of those candidates is going to get elected whether you vote or not. So not voting is basically just letting other people decide for you. Which is rational if you genuinely believe that will make no difference.

I generally agree with this. I personally feel like this is an extreme scenario that was so easy to avoid. I have voted in every election I was eligible to vote in, including when I lived overseas.

I don't expect to agree 100% with a candidate, heck I'm happy when I agree with two or three policies that I find important. But I just can't accept having to pick between two directions that I think are both fundamentally bad and dangerous.

I guess the question is if they are equally bad.

If one side will cause significantly more damage than the other, why would you not want to limit the damage?

If you have examined the political agendas of both candidates and think they will cause equal harm, then I see your point. But I don't see how it can apply to this election.

Is it really possible to quantify the level of bad each side will lead to in the future? And can it be quantified with such accuracy that it can be compared fairly?

In this election I only see bad outcomes from either candidate (I'm mainly thinking Biden and Trump, though the same for Harris if she is picked).

I can't quantify the bad and I don't know what metrics I would even use. Lets say I thought one would likely lead to economic problems on the scale of the housing crisis and the other would commit a number of troops to die fighting in a foreign war. How would I weigh the damage of those scenarios?

You see your responsibility as wrong. We are caretakers of the country, we should vote for the best person to lead it, but barring that, we should vote against someone destructive taking power. If the country goes to heck in the next 4 years (and it hasn’t yet, the last 3.5 years have been pretty peaceful) because you decided voting against someone wasn’t moral, then you have to blame yourself.

Of course, if you don’t live in a swing state, then you can pretty much not vote and not feel any responsibility for the outcome, since we have so little influence anyways.

> we should vote against someone destructive taking power

What do we do if we believe both options to be destructive in different ways? I believed that re-electing Biden in his current state would be destructive, potentially because he isn't fit today not certainly because he won't be in 4.5 years. I believe Trump to be a sociopathic narcissist. And, if Harris is selected, I view her to be unfit for the job and an incompetent leader that would be walking into the Oval Office at one of the most important times we've seen since the 40s.

I don't live in a swing state so I do agree my vote is ignored anyway, but I have voted every presidential election until now anyway. I want my voice heard, I just don't want to align my voice with any of these options and don't see how they could possibly be the best our country has to offer.

Whatever you think about him, Biden has been a boring adult, not a petulant 5 year old. He makes boring adult decisions, he never complained when the fed raised interest rates because inflation took off (like Trump did), I don't have to worry about him going off and nationalizing the fed, or replacing income taxes with a tariff that will make life much harder for everyone. Basically, he is a boring guy who doesn't even entertain doing crazy stuff. Trump is a pure populist, narcissist, and really, every thing he proposes is nuts.

I get you view Harris as unfit for no particular reason other than you think she is a DEI hire or something. But I bet she is just like other adult politicians, who isn't going to be very interesting, but isn't going to do anything crazy either. Anyways, the bar is low since I don't think Democrats could run anyone that would make me consider Trump's insanity. Heck, I'm probably splitting my vote this year, since I don't like Bob Ferguson for governor of WA, I'm a moderate who isn't happy with the decriminalization that has happened in my city/county/state over the last four years. BUT I value stability over anything else, I at least will vote for adults and not 5 year olds (I never thought we would get here, but Romney, McCain, and even Bush were grown ups that I could stomach).

I view her as unfit because I haven't seen her do anything meaningful. She was put in charge of fixing the immigration crisis, for example, and I have seen no action from her there. When in Congress I also didn't see anything important come out of her office, and any public hearings I did see her in were unimpressive at best and she seemed to stick to lazy arguments toeing the party line.

I consider a DEI hire because Biden made his intentions clear. He specifically said he was going to pick a woman, and I thought he specifically said a black woman but may I'm misremembering that. Saying you are reducing the pool of candidates specifically for a diversity factor makes that person a DEI hire, I'm not really sure how else to see it.

Its also worth noting that being a DEI hire doesn't say anything about the person's ability to do the role. Though I don't view her as being effective in her role, that is because of her experience and what she has accomplished and isn't because she was a DEI hire.

Interesting, I didn't read that as a DEI hire at all. I interpreted it as though he was just hinting at or throwing out a clue as to who he had already selected.

Yeah, if that were the case I'd agree it wasn't a DEI pick. My memory is that he phraser it very much as a "I will find someone who is..." rather than "I picked someone and she is...", but memory is far from perfect!

> She was put in charge of fixing the immigration crisis, for example, and I have seen no action from her there

It's fair to say that Donald Trump is to blame for this one. See https://edition.cnn.com/2024/01/25/politics/gop-senators-ang...:

"Senior Senate Republicans are furious that Donald Trump may have killed an emerging bipartisan deal over the southern border, depriving them of a key legislative achievement on a pressing national priority and offering a preview of what’s to come with Trump as their likely presidential nominee.

In recent weeks, Trump has been lobbying Republicans both in private conversations and in public statements on social media to oppose the border compromise being delicately hashed out in the Senate, according to GOP sources familiar with the conversations – in part because he wants to campaign on the issue this November and doesn’t want President Joe Biden to score a victory in an area where he is politically vulnerable."

Respectfully, I don't think you're framing the problem correctly. You're not merely voting for the President -- you're also voting for his/her administration. Biden, despite his cognitive decline, has a very long track record of appointing competent people to get things done (e.g., the American Rescue Plan, Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, CHIPS and Science Act, and the Inflation Reduction Act, just to name a few). Kamala, if she receives her party's nomination, will very likely be keeping most of the same staff. Additionally, if you object to Project 2025, that's another good reason to keep Trump out of the White House.

You're not merely voting for the President. You're voting for the full package.

Notably, Trump plans to overhaul federal laws, granting the executive branch unprecedented power to fire federal employees who were previously protected from political whims and executive turnover.

I also mean this respectfully, this is an interesting discussion and it's easy to lose intent in text.

I don't think your view is quite right here either. I'm not voting for an administration, I am actually only voting for the President. I would agree that I'm voting for a person who I trust to make executive decisions, including hiring and outsourcing, but voting for a person and their judgement is still different than voting for the administration comprised of unelected officials. Candidates generally don't announce their cabinet and department appointments until after the election, and it is fairly common for a second term President to shake things up after a reelection.

There's an interesting caveat to competence in getting things done. I definitely agree the Biden administration has gotten projects done, I just don't agree with quite a few of them.

I think we're worse off for the debt racked up by said programs, and the Inflation Reduction Act was a horribly named and fundamental misguided program that printed and spent new money in an attempt to reduce inflation. Whether you use the old definition of inflation, increasing the money supply, or the new definition, consumer price increases, adding new money into the system isn't a sound approach.

I also dislike much (all?) of what is in Project 2025, though I haven't personally seen Trump stand behind it or allude to any intentions of implementing it. Happy to be wrong there if I've missed something, I have a habit of tuning out when he starts talking.

Trump's Vice President candidate, JD Vance, is a huge proponent of Project 2025: https://www.theguardian.com/books/article/2024/jul/24/jd-van...

Excerpt from the Wikipedia page about Project 2025:

"Although Project 2025 cannot legally promote a specific presidential candidate, many contributors are associated with Trump and his 2024 presidential campaign.[43][44][45] The Heritage Foundation employs numerous people closely aligned with Trump,[46][47][48] and coordinates the initiative with various conservative groups run by Trump allies.[49] In 2023, Trump campaign officials acknowledged the project aligned well with their Agenda 47 program.[50] Trump campaign advisers have had regular contact with Project 2025,[51] though the project's controversial proposals have also caused the Trump campaign to view it as an annoyance.[52][53]"

Make of that what you will.

>> don't live in a swing state

Your impact extends beyond your location. Donations, online engagement, and grassroots efforts in swing states can all make a difference, even if you don't live in one. For those seeking an alternative, Harris, for better or worse, has emerged as the only viable non-Trump option.

> I view voting as a responsibility to pick a candidate I want to lead rather than a vote to block someone I don't want to lead

My viewing water as a non-liquid doesn’t make it less wet. Not voting is a delegated vote for the status quo, i.e. whoever wins.

Not voting can also be a principled stance when I view both candidstes as a fundamentally bad option.

Where will we be if we all agree that the two parties have full control and we have no choice but to accept whatever they offer us? To me that sounds like a way to ensure that our democracy isn't sustainable.

If someone puts a gun in your hand and says you have no choice but to shoot your spouse or your child, would you actually accept that you must do one or the other? I'm well aware that's an extreme example and I'm not arguing that we are at that level politically today, but accepting one of the two parties no matter what the options are does allow for that scenario later.

> Not voting can also be a principled stance when I view both candidstes as a fundamentally bad option

Sure. And I agree someone thinking that way shouldn't vote. None of that changes the effects of not voting when one has the right to.

> Where will we be if we all agree that the two parties have full control and we have no choice but to accept whatever they offer us?

Most people seeking to justify civic nonparticipation ignore primaries and early campaign work. Or the fact that ballots have more than one line item.

> accepting one of the two parties no matter what the options are does allow for that scenario later

Not voting cedes control. There are zero historic examples of civic nonparticipation resulting in a more responsive government. Someone who doesn't vote functionally accepts the status quo. That they don't understand what they're doing isn't relevant.

Put another way: there were hundreds of elections in 2023 [1]. A non-voter had precisely the same impact on each of them as they do where they live.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_elections_in_2023

> Most people seeking to justify civic nonparticipation ignore primaries and early campaign work. Or the fact that ballots have more than one line item

At least for the Democratic Presidential candidate, we weren't offered a primary or early campaign work for anyone that may actually be the candidate.

I will almost certainly vote for down ballot races this year though. I should have been more clear in earlier posts, my issue is with the presidential ballot specifically and not down ballot races.

The US has a first-past-the-post electoral system, and in that particular system, the way the game theory plays out is that it always stabilizes to a two-party situation, and, very literally, your responsibility as a voter is in fact to vote for the candidate with which you are most closely aligned. Anything else is self-subverting.

That model fails when I align with neither candidate. It also fails if both parties were to collude and offer us a false choice (hypothetical, I'm not proposing that's what we have today).

Maybe I'm not communicating clearly. The model is about the game theoretics of the electoral system, it has nothing to do with the preferences of any individual voter.

I’m curious: Why do you view voting this way? As opposed to simply taking responsibility for voting in a way you believe is the least bad outcome for you and your country?

I don't consider myself to owe anything to the parties. They need to earn my vote. If I accept one of the two options no matter how bad I think they both are, that allows for very bad scenarios to be possible and also allows for our political duopoly to continue to dominate.

If I don't vote, and if many others also stay home, both parties would scramble to gain support and third parties that previously had no chance at least have a potential market opportunity to break the two party system.

Am I allowing my voice to go silent and accepting everyone else to pick my president? Sure, and I don't prefer that, though in a representative democracy I also recognize that my vote doesn't matter anyway if I live in a state that swings the other way. As it so happens, I generally vote Democrat and live in a very Republican state.

Hmm interesting take. If I understand you correctly, your theory of change is that by not voting in this election (since you see either candidate as similarly good/bad), you might have a long term impact where, in the next election, parties will need to make more of an effort to appeal to their voter bases to increase turnout, resulting in better candidates in the future, correct? Possibly breaking into a multi party system instead of the current dual party system?

Also do you think the next 4 years will be similarly good/bad under either candidate? Or do you think one would bring the country more in line with your preference, but don't want to vote in the hopes of bringing about change to the dual party system, or to make the parties try harder to meet the needs of voters like you in future elections?

Correct, thats generally my hope of how things may change for the better if enough voters feel so poorly represented that they don't vote for President.

> Also do you think the next 4 years will be similarly good/bad under either candidate?

With Biden and Trump, yes I felt both would put us in similarly bad positions going forward. Their policies overlap in some surprising ways, from wanting to lock down our southern border to printing money like it's going out of style. They also differ in some ways, where Biden has seemed to have very little ability to keep the peace globally (I personally don't think many leaders respect or desr who he is today), Trump is a loose canon and I could see him playing a very dangerous game of chicken.

With Harris, I just don't see her as competent at all. At a good time maybe that doesn't matter too much, but there are quite a few situations in the world that require careful, decisive, reasoned responses and I simply don't see her doing that well or even taking it seriously.

> If I don't vote, and if many others also stay home, both parties would scramble to gain support and third parties that previously had no chance at least have a potential market opportunity to break the two party system.

That won't work. A non-vote says absolutely nothing about what needs to be done to get that vote. A vast quantity of non-votes are, in fact, not gettable: most non-voters are apathetic and they will never vote, full stop. Many others are, for lack of a better term, snowflakes who will refuse to vote for anyone who does not implement every bullet point of the program that they have in their head, and will therefore never vote, because their standards are impossible to meet.

Basically, most non-voters are either lost causes, really fickle, or have demands that rebuff a larger number of reliable voters and are incompatible with each other -- go and try to figure out who wants what. It's impossible. Parties can't read your mind, if you want better candidates you have to communicate your demands explicitly, and not voting communicates effectively nothing. It's like refusing to choose between spaghetti and curry and secretly hoping they offer you a hamburger instead. They won't. They'll cycle through a dozen other dishes you hate until, perhaps, they randomly stumble upon something you like, (or something you think you like, but ultimately don't.) It's not their fault: you're not telling them what to do! A better methodology is to vote in local races or primaries: that will show up in their statistics, letting them know what it is that you do like.

If you live in a red state but usually vote democrat, a futile vote for a democrat is the only signal they can use to prioritize winning your vote in future. If you can’t make your state winnable, you can’t make your withheld vote mean anything.

Which I fine, I was just genuinely curious. I don’t have a vote in the US so I’m not worried about how I spend mine.

this take is bad for one simple reason: if you stay home and trump wins, we don’t have a country or democracy anymore, and you contributed directly to the destruction of social norms and systems that ensure peace, stability, and the rule of law. you can feel smug as the republican party destroys democracy and slides into fascism, but it won’t really get you anywhere.

He already had one term. The world didn't end. I don't understand this line of doom.

Because he undermined the election process in a serious way. If he loses, it sends a signal that siding with someone who does that is risky. If he wins, it opens the door to someone much more cunning than him, to do the same thing, but better. Its a brilliant way to short-circuit the entire political system which has let the US enjoy such a brilliant stretch of stability.

Let's put Trump aside for a moment. What do you see a Harris presidency looking like? Do you think she is our country's best option to solve the problems we face today, or is her role to fill the chair so Trump can't sit in it?

Harris will be fine but unremarkable. Middle of the road economic policy, with slightly more protectionism for high tech. Immigration policy continues as-is, with a slight increase in preventing illegal immigration. An Obama-like foreign policy, with good intentions, but bumbling in execution.

Compare that to Trump's recorded: Exploded deficits due to tax cuts. Banning abortion. More power given to corporations over people. Harming our alliances. Maybe you disagree with this characterization, but so many people that he chose for his administration came out and said how terrible of a President he was.

I'm not a Kamala fan, but the choice is so easy.

Sounds like we just have a different expectation a Harris presidency, nothing wrong with that.

I don't actually know what her economic policy would be, a primary sure would have been helpful there. If it's a continuation of the current policy, I'm not sure how long they can kick a can down the road though so far it hasn't exploded.

Immigration is a really bad mark for her in my book. She was put in charge of fixing our immigration issues and she has don't nothing from what I've seen. She went to the border once for a speech and photo op, but that doesn't really fix much. I only expect that to get worse when she has all issues of the Oval Office on her plate.

Foreign policy is where she very much concerns me. Obama fumbled through and made mistakes like drawing red lines with invisible ink. He had the fortune of doing that when we were still primarily dealing with terrorist actors globally, the only state actors directly in play were smaller. Today we have Russia still in Ukraine, NATO both moving away from the US and sabre rattling with Russia, and Israel continuing a bombardment if Gaza with the goal of completely annihilating a terrorist organization while simultaneously fending off threats and attacks Lebanon, Yemen, and Iran. Harris bumbling through similar to Obama will be extremely dangerous in my opinion.

That said, we largely agree on Trump's record. I don't understand claims made that he is an immediate threat to democracy or implement some kind of fascist takeover. He is a bad leader though, and a loose cannon which is dangerous given global problems today, albeit a different risk than incompetence.

This is an extreme take on what will happen should Trump win. Your claim implies that the mere act of Trump winning a democratically run election means that we no longer have a democracy. How does that work exactly?

If the Republican party poses a legitimate threat on democracy or attempts to turn us into a fascist state I'm not above fighting to the death to stop that. That isn't what we have going on today though, and to claim a Trump victory will mean democracy is over and we are now fascist is itself dangerous fear mongering with absolutely no proof to back that claim.

> if you stay home and trump wins, we don’t have a country or democracy anymore

If the Democratic party really believed the apocalyptic rhetoric that they're spreading about the end of democracy, they would take this chance to nominate a candidate who can appeal to moderate voters. Compromise today to save democracy for tomorrow. It should be a total no-brainer to pick someone from the center of their party who even a disenfranchised Republican voter could support over Trump.

Today they have a chance to prove that they haven't just been cynically riling up their base with lines about democracy's imminent demise. They have a chance to nominate someone who stands a chance of beating Trump. If they don't do that and nominate Harris instead, then they've shown their cards and proven that they don't believe democracy is at risk.

As Jack Aubrey said, one must always pick the lesser of two weevils.

Two counter points… - there are down-ballot races that might have people they want your vote. And they’re likely more influential over your day to day than POTUS.

- staying home strongly implies your ok with Trump winning and the GOP platform being implemented completely.

That's fair enough. I may very well cast votes for local elections and should have clarified here.

When I reference not voting I mean specifically for President. Thanks for calling that out.

100% getting deja vu back to 2016 with this comment

I was very unhappy with the options in 2016 and 2020 as well. Both times I bit my lip and voted for a candidate I didn't believe in because I at least believed they could do the job and they weren't Trump. I just can't do it again, and even if I wanted to I didn't have faith that Biden could do the job any longer and I don't think Harris is qualified at all (if that's who they pick).

Don’t you think Trump will dismantle our rights (see project 2025) and that it is our duty to vote to make sure he doesn’t get into power and turn this country into an autocracy?

did he turn this country into an autocracy from 2016-2020? k

He tried to overturn the election in 2020, but he didn’t really have his ducks in a row. If he is in power in 2028, he will likely be more successful.

Can you provide any evidence that Trump supports project 2025?

In April 2022, at a dinner with the Heritage foundation, he said that the Heritage foundation was going to "lay the groundwork for what our movement will do."

https://x.com/VaughnHillyard/status/1811402883604050216

"Our country is going to hell. The critical job of institutions such as Heritage is to lay the groundwork, and Heritage does such an incredible job at that. [...] But this is a great group. They're going to lay the groundwork and detail plans for exactly what our movement will do and what your movement will do, when the American people give us a colossal mandate to save America, and that's coming."

Here's the whole transcript: https://www.rev.com/blog/transcripts/donald-trump-delivers-k...

At the same time, Trump has been saying "I know nothing about Project 2025" and "I have no idea who is behind it."

Edit:

Also, CNN says 140 people from the Trump administration worked on Project 2025: https://www.cnn.com/2024/07/11/politics/trump-allies-project...

I think Trump, not really being into policy at all, just populism, really does have no idea what it’s project 2025, but he is still going to pick many of the writers and supporters of it to run his government, he doesn’t really have better choices.

Trump is the kind of guy who will say he is against abortion while asking and paying for his mistress to get one. He has a great sense on how to work populism, but doesn’t really have ideals/policies of his own.

Yeah, I agree with you. He's not super focused on policy, and he likely skimmed Project 2025, or never read it himself. But like you said, he'll still pick many people who worked on it or who will follow it while serving as part of his administration, and that's what's worrying. I have no reason to assume his administration won't try to implement it.

The guy has no intellectual curiosity, he thrives on the attention of being president but doesn’t bother with briefings, instead calling into FoxNews to complain about one vanity thing or another. That’s the problem really: the people who will work for him in a second term by now have learned how to manage him by stroking his ego, there will be much less chaos than term 1, and a lot more damage.

I think Biden was too far down the path of cognitive decline, and I think Harris is incompetent and only fell into this opportunity as a combination of DEI and a political party completely blind to the obvious truth that Biden is dealing with health issues and allowing him to serve another four years is both dangerous for the country and borderline elder abuse in my opinion.

I won't vote for whoever the Democrats propose simply because I dislike Trump. I can't vote for anyone I think will make our country worse, and if Harris is selected I do feel that way about her as well.

You don’t have to like Harris - it’s very understandable - but she is not a “DEI” hire as you’re claiming. Look into her record.

A hire is a DEI hire based on the intwnt and process they were chosen. Biden made it clear he was going to select a woman, and unless I'm mistaken I thought he specified a black woman.

A person being a DEI hire doesn't say anything about their ability. You could be a DEI hire that is also good for the job, but you're a DEI hire because the pool of candidates was purposely limited based on certain diversity factors.

> A person being a DEI hire doesn't say anything about their ability.

You literally just used it as a way to disqualify her as a valid candidate. You said nothing about her skills or accomplishments, merely that she had certain demographic characteristics and therefor wasn't a good candidate.

If that's not what you actually meant, I suggest thinking about what you're trying to say in the future and phrasing it differently.

I reread my comments and don't see how it reads that way, but that wasn't my intent regardless.

I don't view Harris as competent or fit for duty. We have quite a few issues coming to a head, from economic problems we keep sweeping under the rug to geopolitical challenges not seen in decades. I have no faith that she will be able to steer us through without making things worse. None of those concerns have anything to do with her being a DEI hire, I just view it as fact that she was.

If you don't have any concerns, if it's not an issue, why bring it up in the first place?

Also, of course, if she's the democratic nominee then you're going to get either her or trump, so, dunno, make choices based on this decision? Do you really think trump and the republicans are ever going to care about people refusing to vote?

> If you don't have any concerns, if it's not an issue, why bring it up in the first place?

I don't have any concerns with being a DEI hire alone, it really doesn't say anything about the candidate. In the context of a person I already view to be a bad fit for the role, the fact that the person is in the role partly due to the DEI model of selecting candidates is important in my opinion. Its important not because she was a DEI hire, its important because a DEI approach out her in a role she isn't fit for and she's now potentially being offered a promotion.

> Do you really think trump and the republicans are ever going to care about people refusing to vote?

I don't have any expectation of either party actually caring how I vote. I'm just one voter living in a non-swing state. I have effectively no say what happens at the federal level, and my whole point at the beginning is this comment chain was simply that I won't be voting for President if the choices were Trump/Biden or Trump/Harris. I don't expect that to have any meaningful impact unless I'm part of a much larger group of voters who feel their best choice is to opt out.

How did the last years with Biden and Harris made the country worse? What about the CHIP act or the infrastructure bill and many other examples. Those things made the country worse?

How is Harris the same as Trump? Trump a convicted felon and rapist and god knows what he did on Epstein's Island. Trump said he will be a dictator for one day (hint: it won't be just a day) vs Harris a criminal prosecutor who understands the importance for upholding law & order.

How is Harris going to be bad for the country?

This is not about voting for Harris or whoever will be nominated. This is about voting against a wanna be dictator who wants to dismantle our democracy and constitution.

Both the CHIP act and the infrastructure bill spent money we don't have. I am of the opinion that the federal government should be required to run a balanced budget just like local governments are. So yes, I do view both of those as having made us worse off.

I didn't say Trump and Harris are the same. I think both will be bad for our country, but for very different reasons.

I haven't seen anything from Harris that makes me believe she is competent or fit for office. While in Congress I was never impressed by her public hearings, she either stayed silent or meandered through very lazy arguments that were often illogical and surprising coming from a lawyer. As VP she has either been completely absent or ineffective. She was tapped to be in charge of correcting our immigration issues for example, other than a single photo of at the border I haven't seen anything come of it.

I don't expect I need to lay out why Trump is dangerous for our country. We may disagree on details like whether his felony conviction was unbiased or if you can be labeled a rapist without a conviction, but functionally we're very much on the same page of who he is as a person and why he shouldn't represent the country.

> This is not about voting for Harris or whoever will be nominated. This is about voting against a wanna be dictator who wants to dismantle our democracy and constitution.

This is where we really have different opinions. My while point in starting this comment thread is that I am sick of having to pick between the least shitty option. It isn't sustainable and ultimately there are very bad scenarios that can play out if voters allow two parties to offer whatever choices they want us to pick between. If Trump wishes to dismantle democracy and our constitution I'll never see that day anyway, I'll either be dead in a battlefield or on the other end of an absolutely terrible, horrific war that never should have happened.

> balanced budget

Governmental budget shouldn't be treated as your household budget.

It's different. It allows us to invest in the economy, create jobs, create new innovations etc. [0]

> If Trump wishes to dismantle democracy and our constitution I'll never see that day anyway'

This is what the MAGAs / Heritage Foundation have achieved so far:

- Take away woman's reproductive rights

- SCOTUS undid a 40 year old law that now makes it harder for federal governments to regulate, this includes clean air, water etc. So corporations can focus on increasing profits and screw the little guy.

- SCOTUS reduced the scope of the anti-bribery law - weakening democracy.

Just some examples.

Some things that will happen when Trump gets into power again:

- Women's reproductive will be further decimated

- Schedule F will be reintroduced - making it easier for Trump to replace administrative employees with Trump loyalists.

- Higher taxes for the working class - more tax cuts for the rich. That's why Elon and other Billionaires are donating heavily to Trump's campaign. Selling out the little people.

Look up Project 2025 for more.

Are you willing to gamble our rights and the rights of future generations?

What if everything or most of it comes to pass outlined in Project 2025?

Would you be OK with that?

[0] See this book: https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/economics-and-philos...

> see project 2025

Did you actually read the project 2025 doc or are you just parroting back what you were told to think?

https://www.politifact.com/article/2024/jul/12/project-2025-...

The link you provided seems to list several rights which would be harmed

I read all 920 pages.

Did you miss the part that says that Trump had nothing to do with it?

> Did you miss the part that says that Trump had nothing to do with it?

Which page number was that?

In any case of course Trump had nothing to do with it, it was written for him not by him (as if).

Trump also didn't plan and participate in the decade+ Federalist overthrow of SCOTUS .. that was handed to him on a plate. Like Project 2025.

> Which page number was that?

The first sentence of the first paragraph:

This work, Mandate for Leadership 2025: The Conservative Promise, is a collective effort of hundreds of volunteers who have banded together in the spirit of advancing positive change for America. Our work is by no means the comprehensive compendium of conservative policies, nor is our group the exclusive cadre of conservative thinkers. The ideas expressed in this volume are not necessarily shared by all. What unites us is the drive to make our country better

> In any case of course Trump had nothing to do with it, it was written for him not by him (as if).

Ok great, so he's free to read it or ignore it. Let's not treat the document as if it's Trump's own stated/promised policy then.

> The first sentence of the first paragraph:

does not state that Trump had nothing to do with the document.

Which part explicity and clearly states Trump was not involved?

You know, the part that you claimed existed in your comment above.

> Which part explicity and clearly states Trump was not involved? You know, the part that you claimed existed in your comment above.

You're right I should have said that the document *shows* that he had nothing to do with it rather than *says* he had nothing to do with it. It's implicit not explicit.

The doc includes 7 pages worth of contributor names (starting page xxv) and Trump is not one of them.

So either way, it's careless to say that "Trump will dismantle our rights (see project 2025)" when he is not actually affiliated with Project 2025, as the document *shows*.

That's fine but you don't get to complain about the outcome for the next four years.

Well the first amendment begs to differ, but beyond that I absolutely get to complain about the situation. I wouldn't complain about whoever wins because I already don't like either of them. But I may very well complain that the two parties offered candidates that I so strongly felt were bad options that I couldn't vote for either one.

I'm not saying I need to agree with everything a candidate says, or even most of it. I need to at least believe that we won't be worse off as a country with the candidate I vote for. I can't sat that for Trump, couldn't say that for Biden, and wouldnt say that for Harris if she is selected.

I don’t vote, I’m a proud non-voter.

People frequently make this statement and I think it’s wrong at face value.

If you vote you are giving legitimacy to the beltway uniparty. If the election is “free and fair” why does voting give you the right to complain?

You are welcome to vote for Batman or submit an empty ballot. You aren't proving anything through abstinence.

Voting gives you the right to complain because you tried to accomplish something. Giving up without trying is generally viewed as a bad thing.

But talking about "beltway uniparty" is indicative of a level of lacking intellectual curiosity that's genuinely sad. You can do better than that.

Maybe if this was twitter or a dinner party and you're just going for cheap laughs, sure, whatever, but I dunno, I guess this place isn't much different? Maybe it could be though?

People sadly value feelings of (totally unearned) intellectual superiority and sense of identity over actual ability to make changes to the world. Thus the stupid subset of mostly young people who think not voting is making some sort of statement other than that they are fools.

That's exactly how we got 4 years of Trump, people in the critical swing states weren't motivated to go vote for Hillary. He then attempted to disenfranchise millions of Americans in the 2020 election, coming surrealistically close to achieving that goal, and incited an insurrection. So please don't make this mistake.

Do you really think it was an insurrection? Trump supporters are definitely in the gun owning demographics. Yet basically zero guns were present in the whole event, especially inside the capital.

To me that screams not an insurrection.

I think you might be a bit misinformed there. I’d suggest you give this a read: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trump_fake_electors_plot

So this certificate thing was the insurrection?

It’s a shame this is getting downvoted to death, as it illustrates the biggest real problem with our voting system, and also illustrates the biggest reason that Dems are at a disadvantage: principles over party. Republicans are much better at voting together for their party and not fretting about whether individual candidates meet their principles, which in turn (maybe ironically) gets them much better support for their principles.

Before deciding not to vote, here’s one thing to maybe consider: which vote is more likely to get us any closer to ranked-choice voting, so that you can vote without caving on your principles in the future, and/or maybe getting rid of the electoral college? Conservatives are benefitting massively from the electoral college, gerrymandering, and strong collective party action. Both voting right, and not voting, delays the possibility of an outcome where we can vote on our principles. Dems are losing the vote often, and losing support for their shared principles as a result, despite having an actual majority, due to the party being splintered over principles and being less willing to vote collectively.

(Note I’m in favor of voting on principles and not blindly on party. I wish we had a voting system that enabled it. Just pointing out the realities of the different party strategies as I see them.)

> Republicans are much better at voting together for their party and not fretting about whether individual candidates meet their principles,

I've seen a lot of "vote blue no matter who", to the point that it seems a lot of people don't care at all who the specific person is, as long as they aren't on the wrong team.

Yep true, that is happening - and mostly because people are recognizing it’s what the GOP is doing and it’s working, and trying to emulate it.

I was kind of hoping my original comment here would lead to more meaningful conversation like this. I have to assume there are others here that feel similar to me, but it's an opinion that many may not raise for exactly like many of the ones I got here (down votes and arguments for why I'm wrong and must vote).

I'm not opposed to ranked choice voting or straight majority rules voting. I could see voting for congressional representatives that I believe to be serious about such a change, but the president really doesn't have any say in it.

I'm also totally open to other potentials the Democrats could pick. The bar is really low in my opinion, I just need to see someone that I don't expect to be actively harmful to the country, especially with so many different challenging scenarios playing out globally right now.

Don’t let perfect be the enemy of good.

Thats the problem, I don't see either option as event adjacent to "good".

A bit beside the point, but I also don't appreciate the Democratic Party putting us in this position to begin with. It has been clear for over a year, even with limited public events, that Biden's health and cognitive ability was declining. We now are left with an unprecedented scenario of the party having to figure out how to pick a candidate in record time with zero voter input.

Yeah, same. Honestly I’m flabbergasted at the state of things.

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