Ask Lemmygrad

I voted blue no matter who to stop fascism in 2020 and now the guy I voted for is enabling a genocide. What was the fucking point?

both parties are fascist -- the only real difference is rhetoric -- so you shouldn't support them in any way (and voting in USian presidential elections is a complete waste of time, anyway)

No - voting for the ‘lesser’ fascist is still supporting fascism.

We shouldn't focus on the "should you vote" but rather on the "should you spend energy and time convincing people to vote" and that's a clear NO

Elections are demoralising and confusing, trying to get people to vote is excruciating because nothing about voting in bourgeois regimes is about real politics.

Let liberals do their shit, treat those elections as vacations from real organising if you can't escape electoralism, and if your org is based enough keep doing real solidarity and ideological work!

Nope. Fuck 'em. Buy a tool, get certified with it, get concealed carry with it, spend at least an hour a week at your local range learning it. That chrome will save you a whole lot sooner and a whole lot more often than the Genocider Blue party.

Doing that is how we got here in the first place

Even if you wanted to mitigate fascist policies, it has become very obvious, especially recently, that the tactic of voting "the lesser of two evils" is total bullshit. Even if you voted for PSL or some other third party, you are making a statement, which still does more power to make the ruling class shake in their boots. It's like how more people using Linux makes Microsoft more worried (just an analogy, maybe not completely accurate, given their history of E.E.E.) than people asking for change within Windows. Even if you wanted to vote blue, what anti-war, anti-imperialist option even exists? Every single last one of those fuckers have betrayed us. Do you want to be covertly stabbed in the back or overtly stabbed in the face?

If you want to actually create change, organize with your local socialist party and volunteer/participate. Try to unionize your workplace. Help with mutual aid. Interact with people and help them join or even just support our cause. The reason PSL is running in the election (Claudia & Karina) is not with the expectation to win, but to utilize the most optimal time--once in every four years, when most people are paying attention in politics--to build class consciousness among the working class. This is the current stage we are in, and we are working hard to build a movement for the long term. We won't win through elections, but through revolution. The ruling class will not allow it any other way.

"A freedom fighter learns the hard way that it is the oppressor who defines the nature of the struggle, and the oppressed is often left no recourse but to use methods that mirror those of the oppressor. At a point, one can only fight fire with fire."

• Nelson Mandela, Long Walk to Freedom

Do not expect your local socialist party to be perfect. Do not wait for the perfect party. It will never come. To see change, we must organize now!

Solidarity forever!

We have nothing to lose but our chains!

I'm going to be honest about this topic. I think the Democrats are actually better at passing the worst of the Republican legislation, but without getting caught or protested against as badly.

What was some of the biggest things that people were complaining about under Republican leadership? Building the wall.. Anit-Abortion.. Both of these things are coming true under Democratic leadership and with far less public outcry than under the Republican leadership.

Make no mistake, Trump is a moron and a fascist and deserves to be treated as such. However, the more competent Democrats have been able to bring forward the worst of the Republican policies and effectively become Democratic policies of their own.

Something else to consider though, is all of the stuff that was not publicized that happened under the Trump leadership. continued deregulation of corporations, continued corporate welfare and a myriad of other anti-democracy policies. Trump made so many presidential declarations that the news just couldn't even handle every stupid thing he was doing.

And the vast majority of those stupid things have not been rolled back, have not been touched since Biden has been in office.

So long as things aren't publicized, so they aren't criticized so heavily, the Democrats are very willing to let the fascist policies of the Republican Party pass and even help push them along if they can convince their body of constituents that it's only because they're compromising.

After all of that, you may be surprised to hear that I still think that a Republican president would be worse. After all, they are the ones that are creating these policies. The Democrats just help soften the blows when they come into office and don't undo them, or even push them along further.

But all of the insane liberals out there that believe that if you don't vote Democrat, that that means that you're voting for Republicans, are just blinded to the fact that there really is no democracy in the United States. If you have to vote for one of the two parties, and both parties basically have the same policies, then there really isn't a choice. This is the illusion of choice. And in reality, we have a one-party system that disagrees on only a few aspects of governance. And they only disagree in so far as the Democrats have to save face a little bit more often than the Republicans do, since at this point in time, the Republicans are basically masks off about being fascists.

A third party vote is symbolic. And it also pisses off the liberals. Revolution is the only thing that will change anything in this fucking country anyway.

No.

I personally don’t want to vote for Democrats because A.) They haven’t earned my vote. The only Dem who did was Bernie, and even then, I was making concessions by doing that. Biden or Buttigieg or whoever tf all support Israel, Ukraine, Taiwan and whatever other garbage Neoliberal opposition to working class solidarity there is. B.) To vote for the Dem means to support them. End of the day, nobody’s forcing you to vote. It’s optional to vote, and if every candidate sucks, why choose to personally give a platform to that one “lesser of two evils” candidate? They sucked just as much 2 minutes ago before you learned that the Republican is a bit worse. C.)(similar to point A) To a certain extent it doesn’t matter what you vote for. Biden is a SPECTACULAR example. Trump stood for building the Southern Border Wall, not giving A FUCK about Covid-19 and was very very Pro-Israel and anti-anything to do with AES. Look at Biden, he didn’t do much more drastic measures to deal with Covid, he still fear-mongers about AES, even after he JUST met with Xi Jinping. And Idk if I even have to outline his support for open genocide that’s happening in Palestine by IDF. He tries to bullshit us every second. It’s infuriating and I refuse to personally support him. He’s also supporting building the Southern border wall. WTF?!I really love politics tho, so I may just waste my time for shits and giggles and do a write in vote as a joke for myself. I’m 80% sure that the Ghost of Pee Wee Herman could lead this country better than all 46 administrations so far

No, because then what happens in the next election? You just do the same thing again? Then again? Then again? You aren't going to solve a problem by just twiddling your thumbs and hoping it solves itself. The best solution at the moment is to vote for a third party. I won't lie and pretend it's a perfect solution but it at least has a better chance of making some type of progress than just doing the same thing the libs have been attempting for decades with absolutely nothing to show for it

The Dems often fund the campaigns of the worst of the worst Republicans because they believe them to be easier to beat in elections. Their whole plan is to be just slightly less bad than the worst that the Republicans have to offer. The modern Dems need the Republican party. This means, of course, that they will strongly defend the Republican party rather than defeat it. http://archive.today/xRPOo

No. Democrats are basically woke "Republicans"

Never stopped US Republicans

Voting third party is more of a statement

You could get a bunch of people to run smear campaigns against the red and blue candidates (stickers/posters everywhere) and then vote for whatever third party candidate might exist.

No, its useless. By voting you will simply change the colour of the genocide-machine from red to blue or vise-versa. It doesn't matter if Genocide Joe finances Israel to bomb babies or if Trump does, the babies will be blown up into pieces either way.

Honestly my issue is one of them will win, and it stands to reason that one will be even if very slightly less worse then the other, then it is worth it to pick the less bad, how I like to think is if someone offered me at choice between and kick in crotch and a shot in the knee, I would like to choose, even if both sucks I wouldn't close my eyes and say pick for me I don't care.

And if the choice is trump vs someone I would strongly consider the someone, not because trump is in practice that much worse in terms of policy or political decisions, but what scares me in trump is the way he galvanizes American people behind fascism and violence towards anything and anyone that stands in their way and how hard he makes for any reasonable debate to be had, so yeah I would vote against trump, and I think that everyone should vote because one way or the other one will win and they are not exactly alike and if in one point you care about one is less worse even if you disagree with me, vote steer the ship to the least menacing rocks. The point is not to ignore elections(even Lenin said so in state and revolution he said that social Democrats are awful but less awful in work conditions and such and such so its something) but to know that at the very best we are picking a less toxic poison but poison still and the solution lies elsewhere, so vote but know that it's never a victory no matter who wins but might be lesser defeat.