this post was submitted on 09 Mar 2024
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Actually, write-ins are a thing, so you literally can vote for anyone else than him and Trump.
This rhetoric that a vote for someone who represents you is a waste if they do not have a realistic chance to win, would equally apply to an unequal match-up of Dem vs Rep, but it's never deployed that way; it's only used to argue against smaller candidates. You never see people arguing that Democrats should have voted for a Reagan because a vote for Mondale, who had a 0% chance to win (he only won one state- his home state of Minnesota), was "a waste".
Voting has to be about political representation, otherwise Democracy is just a veneer for selecting a plutocrat or oligarch to be the new figurehead for a while. Half of Trump's appeal was his (fake) rhetoric that he wasn't that, which Republican voters actually acknowledged they'd been selecting for years. Too many Democrats have yet to admit this to themselves about our party-preferred candidates. Obama won with record numbers, both terms, because he wasn't this.
Obama was one of those '0% chance' candidates early in the primaries according to political pundits in 2008, too.
No one has a chance to win until people actually vote for them.
I think you misunderstood the author. You can literally vote for anyone, but the winner of the next US presidential election is only going to be Biden or Trump (barring a crazy twist, e.g. death or criminal conviction). I think the author's point is that, in any given election, you should probably vote strategically, but getting better options takes a lot of work for a long time to make it happen, so get working if you can.
I understand that's what the author thinks, but they're wrong. We literally could collectively elect anyone else.
It's only going to be Biden or Trump, because everyone is going to think, "well, the winner of the next US presidential election is only going to be Biden or Trump (barring a crazy twist, e.g. death or criminal conviction)", and vote one of them into power.
Well, right, you're dealing with statistics. It's not impossible that Trump will quantum-teleport into the sun, physics allows for that possibility. It's just incredibly unlikely. And the odds of some other person getting elected with no actual effort to make it happen before now is similarly basically zero. Theoretically possible is all very well, but we live in the real world.
Obviously, which is why my real problem is the DNC, who actively quashes any attempt to run other candidates in primaries against their preordained candidates. They lost us 2016. This time 'round they actively pressured other candidates not to run against Biden. Pray that hasn't already lost us 2024.
Who is this 'we' you speak of? I live in New York, and most of the people I talk to about politics consider Obama to be a Left candidate. Biden got 10 million more primary votes than Bernie, and he had four years to mobilize people.
This is America, and there are plenty of Union people voting for Trump and the GOP
The "we" I'm speaking of is every eligible voter, Left, Right, and Center. Voters do not actually have to constrain themselves to the names that the ruling class puts on the ballot.
So, you have no candidate who has an actual chance of beating Trump in the upcoming election. No political party, no ideology, no way of getting your message out, nothing but some nebulous 'pie in the sky.'
You're pretty much exactly what the article warns us about, an ill informed voter with no idea of how they system is set up.
It's not an article, it's some guy's blog post. And where on earth did you get "no political party, no ideology" from? I've been very open about my politics on here. But my personal politics are completely irrelevant to a discussion about the ability of voters to not be led around by the nose by the DNC and RNC.
You're a perfect ambassador of the DNC's "shut up and vote for who we tell you to, you're just idiots if you disagree with us" messaging that worked out so great in 2016! Truly changing hearts and minds.
So name the candidate you're backing who has a great shot of winning in November.