this post was submitted on 18 May 2024
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I'm a disabled single father. I have a daughter. We are an atheist household. I know game theory. I also know about the massive disinfo campaign to try and stop as many democrat votes as possible. To republicans, I'm a satanic enemy of humanity.
I'm voting a straight blue ticket, I have convinced a dozen others to do the same. I am doing the thing I need to do to stop your little hypothetical. What would it take? Democrats would have to act as openly fascist, cruel, and hateful as the Republican party. They do not. They aren't fucking perfect because such a thing will never exist, but they are far from republican filth. A straight blue ticket is the best chance at an admin that will be open to change. Anything else helps republicans win and you know that pretty goddamn well. It's why you're here with that bullshit line of yours.
The democrats candidate is using his executive power to send arms to israel so they can perform war crimes. How much more openly fascist, cruel and hateful does he need to be? How much worse can a candidate get than the alternative when they’re literally doing something terrible that the alternative didn’t?
Voting for the administration that’s encouraging a crackdown on antiwar protests and supplying a genocide because you want to make sure it’ll be open to change.
I don’t have to want trump to win to see the absolute absurdity of that position.
I’m not saying all that to demean or belittle you, but instead to hopefully illustrate that we can’t build a just world by voting for Biden.
Third party candidates are not viable this election. Every poll that can be trusted to any degree is proof of this. Trumps base is going to vote for trump and the Republican party at large will very likely follow. Nearly the entire Republican party is openly fascist at this point and admitting that they plan to disassemble the government to suit their wants. They are open about allowing Israel to finish their genocide.
It is also well known at this point that disinformation campaigns really lean on trying to get any non Republican vote to either not vote at all, or vote third party. You have no logical arguments, no game theory, and no deeper understanding of everything on the table in this election. You mostly just use the appeal to emotion fallacy as if it's some magic gotcha. It is not, it is instead a signpost that you are not arguing in good faith.
Liars screamed "vote third party" last election too. Trump still lost, and we're working to ensure that stupid fuck loses again. Not only am I totally unswayed by your bs, I've ensured others will be voting straight blue as well. Youll maybe whine about it, but it won't change a thing.
If you would prefer a logical, utilitarian argument for voting third party I’ll happily oblige.
What are the prior assumptions your argument for voting for Biden rests upon? It’s easiest for me to work from what you already hold true.
Defend your pont using what was already said in this discussion. No appeal to emotion. Use current polling to help show that third parties stand any chance in hell. Essentially, prove you aren't one of the many many disinfo bots/agents.
I'll be carefully paying attention to any sources so sticking to generally trusted would be best
Okay: if the only vote acceptable to you is one that results in a win for that candidate or could feasibly result in a win for that candidate, you’re discounting a good portion of the outcomes of even the flawed American electoral system and how they effect the future.
Vote tallies are used to determine funding, ballot presence, debate opportunities, media representation and of course, public awareness.
It’s also important to recognize that we are not given the opportunity to vote against one or more candidates. There is no bubble on the scantron form that will indicate “I’m only doing this to keep the other guy out of office” or “I only support your platform on guns”.
We are given only the ability to voice support for candidates, their platforms and actions, with no room for nuance or debate.
Candidates and their teams and administrations aren’t shown weather or not you protested the arms shipments, spoke in defense of abortion or moved resolutions condemning the genocide forward in your local governments.
They will only see your vote.
Your vote for Biden is not a vote against trump, it is a vote of support for Biden and his fascist policy of genocide.
I am not making an appeal to emotion with that last sentence and hopefully the time and text spent to raise it to the level of logical and utilitarian shows that.
If you took all emotion out of your decision in November and purely cast your ballot based entirely upon utility, your analysis could very easily conclude that there is no acceptable option to support between the two major parties and that it’s better to be counted supporting a third party you would like to see more of in 2026, 2028 and beyond.
I’ve talked about red lines over and over in this thread and while I like the phrase because it’s something everyone can understand, I’m afraid it evokes the constantly shifting goalposts of our politicians own red lines and that limits its effectiveness. Instead of describing the hypothetical or real actions of candidates as red lines, I’ll use other phrases here to hopefully get the point across more clearly.
When giving support to either candidates platforms and actions is beyond the pale, a bridge too far, simply unacceptable to you using whatever methodology is appropriate to you, the only reasonable utilitarian, logical choice is to lend your counted and measured support to a party, candidate and platform you want to see next time.
If you can’t support the actions of the current regime or its opponent than this election is lost to you.
Now if we look beyond the actual votes themselves to the effect peoples discourse has on politicians platforms before the elections themselves it becomes even more difficult to defend saying “vote blue no matter who” or that you’ll be marking a straight ticket or whatever.
If we assume the pollsters and political parties are paying attention and using our discourse to modify their own platforms and actions in order to get support then it’s more utilitarian and logical to be posting about how you’ll never vote for the platform of genocide or that the democrats should dump Biden at the convention than it is to be speaking in opposition to those views because an administration that sees lots of people saying they need to change course or lose those votes come November is more likely to actually change course than one who sees lots of opposition to those voices in the form of “voting against trump”, “vote blue no matter who” or “harm reduction”.
That is of course if you’re against the genocide.
You failed to mention that a good chunk of that discourse is fake. There are absolutely people not pleased with Bidens stance, and I'm glad to see him calling for a ceasefire and supporting protester rights; but the truth is no matter what, fake outrage will attack him relentlessly regardless of what he does. That's a simple truth of modern media and it must be factored into any discussion about political discourse.
You never actually let go of the appeal to emotion. You just tried to wrap it up nicer. You even went for a last sentence stinger which doesn't land as well as you think. The simple fact is that one party openly wants to go full fascist dictator. Openly wants to be more cruel, more vengeful, more lethal, and more pro genocide to an insane degree. It is extremely naive to think those people are at all playing fair. We must pull out all the stops to slam the door on them. It's the only logical choice because it leaves us with a government that can be shifted instead of a far right fascist kleptocracy.
Want to get mad? Get fucking mad at the Republicans who consistently force this kind of choice. They're super pro genocide so I would assume you would want to do absolutely anything you could to stop them getting more power, right?
so if you can't trust that your discussion will be heard and believed it's even more important to withhold your vote! if they're not gonna be able to figure out who's a real american disgusted with the administration and who's an op, the only way you can communicate is by not supporting the party doing a genocide using your vote.
my last sentence isn't an appeal to emotion, it's something i added after proofreading to make sure my arguments were all logically sound. in all our comments, you and i never established that part and as silly and pedantic as it is, that's part of making a sound logical argument.
as i said before, neither you nor i can vote against trump. we're not afforded that ability. we can't express through the ballot box that we want anybody but him. we can't have a ballot counted "i'm only doing this to keep trump out". what the american political process does allow us to do is express support for parties and their platforms. if a person votes biden, they're not voting "not trump", they're voting "biden". biden is aiding a genocide. a vote for biden is only interpret-able by the democrats as support for biden's actions. a vote for biden is literally a vote for genocide in that case.
the democrats have not been shifted left in at least forty years. it would be illogical to expect that expressing support for their rightward shift during biden's administration and their fascist crackdown on antiwar protests and aiding of a genocide through your biden ballot would make that change.
I am not saying the following to support republicans, but to build towards a point: republicans didn't force this kind of choice. republicans didn't send billions of aid to israel, enough to implement lots of the social programs and reforms democrats can't ever seem to get done. republicans aren't running a president who literally said he wasn't going to seek a second term. republicans didn't break the rail strike.
at some point if you don't want to have all those failures, if you want to be able to push the democrats left, if you want to have a future that includes the reforms and social programs they promise and never deliver, they have to see that a constant rightward tack isn't gonna win elections.
if no one is able to tell what discourse is real and what discourse is fake, your only choice to push the democrats left is to withhold your vote from them and record it for a party you actually believe in the platform of. there will be a record of votes cast for that party and after the dust settles, democrat strategists can say "gosh, it looks like abandoning the left, arab americans and people of color was a mistake".
on the other hand, if you feel like there is a way to distinguish real flesh and blood americans who won't tolerate this abhorrent administration from the ostensible bots and foreign trolls, join me in yelling at the top of your lungs that biden has to stop the genocide, or that the democrats have to drop him at the convention, or really anything except "we have to oppose trump".
because there's more utility in that, more logic in joining a chorus calling for justice even when it includes people you might see as your enemy than the utility and logic in doubling down and supporting what you know to be wrong.
e: spelling in a few places