Sure, then we can have the republicans and the neo-whigs as the two parties fighting over the presidency. Much better. /s.

We need to change the system, and letting the republicans put their finger on the scale by letting them in office will only solidify and amplify the inequities we have now. Strategic voting is necessary to keep the avenues of change open.

The steel man against my argument (and the actual arguments I’ve heard) is that they do not want to support genocide at all, so they wouldn’t vote for the Democrats.

The problem with that stance is that with only 2 viable candidates on the ballot, there is no option, including abstention, that doesn’t support genocide. Voting Democrat would have let us potentially pressure the government, but staying home has always been a tacit endorsement of the right just due to how the electoral college functions and weights smaller (red) state voters heavier than larger states.

I’d love to hear a steel man from the other side about how not voting was the proper way to go. Especially one that calls out all of the unnecessary loss of life that was caused by the results of that collective choice.

Nah, I’m sick of filling in every possible edge case in your argument. You say you show up, but you’re making a point to point to specific/conditional situations yet ignore the blindingly obvious answers of why you don’t have the representation you want.

Show up and vote consistently and change can happen. As it is, I tire of listening to people complain about lack of representation when they choose not to vote for a viable candidate in the general when they had the opportunity to do so because they didn’t line up 100%.

If that’s not clear enough for you, you’re beyond my help.

Gee, I guess showing up once makes up for the election on either side.

I guess the better statement is you only show up when convenient. Which is the same compliment I hear from the left about the Dems lol

We do though. We’re roughly a third of the voters in primaries.

You don’t show up in the general, so primary participation is a participation trophy. Trump wasn’t on the ballot, so that’s pretty much meaningless in the concept of defensive voting or the actual subject of the conversation. When Trump was in the ballot, the left was comparatively absent. 6.25M fewer people showed up, so objectively they didn’t show up.

I’m not knocking participating in the primary, I do it every time I can. But if that’s the extent of 'showing up, you’re not doing much more than telling yourself you participated so you don’t feel guilty about it.

That’s because you have to show up and show up in numbers. Too many on the left cry about not having a perfect candidate, don’t show up, and then wonder why the Dems keep going right when the left doesn’t show up. Then, surprise, they have no representation and throw away 20 years of progress.

I don’t care for Biden or trump, but I wasn’t dumb enough not to see where we are right now before the vote was cast, so I showed up. So many stayed home that trump got elected with the popular vote despite not getting many more votes than he did last time.

But hey, we didn’t vote in the woman who had some bad policies and could be worked with because one bad policy was worth throwing everything away. So we got the country we collectively voted (or sat out) for

It’s important to note that both Bush and Trump won their initial election by the electoral college and lost the popular vote. So not only do you not have to get >50%, you don’t even have to get a plurality of votes to win.

Also, Roger Stone just happened to participate in both elections, and both had fuckery involved.

Too bad the people who need to hear this aren’t listening. I tried to make the same argument in 24 and constantly got responses that didn’t amount to anything more than

Nope, I’m gonna take my ball and go home, who cares if temu Hitler wins? Both sides blah blah blah