An early reminder
"Vote Blue. Perfection is not the goal. Avoiding Republican plunder and fascism is the goal. A third party candidate will never appoint a Supreme Court Justice. A third party vote is giving Republicans the courts and the judges. That's the reality."
"Americans have a choice and it is Donald Trump, or not Donald Trump. We are fighting to save our country and ourselves from the most dangerous administration in history, and a vote for anyone who is not the Democratic nominee is a vote for ignoring climate change, tearing immigrant families apart, putting children in cages, and fascism. If I have to keep going to help you understand why this election is about setting aside your purity tests and voting to save America for our children and ourselves, I don't know what else to do."
posted by Infidel753 at 5:14 PM
12 Comments:
Correct.
Last time people protest voted we got Cheeto. That should not happen again.
XOXO
I guess the question I have is whether the purity people and the not voting people will realize we are all in an existential crisis including them. I assume the Russians will be back at it it (GOP and Trump will be on board with this again) and that red states will be engaging in voter suppression and denial of early voting.) It's got to be all hands on deck...er voting booth.
Good luck with this mission, I hope it turns out for the best. I, for one, WILL be voting.
Sometimes you just have to be a stone cold pragmatist.
Job One: Remove the current occupant.
Job Two: See Job One.
Well said!
The ONLY sane position for a liberal/Democrat/progressive is a vote AGAINST Trump. We cannot allow the tyranny of the minority to continue.
I wish I could vote in the U.S. All I can do is hope and cheer on posts like these.
The time for idealism is the primaries. Fight like Hell for your preferred candidate. Then in the general, you vote Blue no matter who. To do otherwise is criminally stupid.
If only I were able to cast a "protest vote" in a presidential election! I live in Connecticut, which at the moment is the bluest of all blue states. It's virtually a one-party state. It won't matter which presidential candidate I vote for in 2020, all 7 of my state's electoral votes are going to the Democratic nominee, not the Groper-in-Chief. "Protest votes" won't hurt whoever that is, not in the Nutmeg State, anyway.
Sixpence: If that didn't wise people up, it's hard to see what will.
Jimbo: I think more and more of them get it each time -- first 2000 and then 2016. There's always a few that don't but it's fewer each time.
Dellgirl: And I'm very glad you will be!
Bluzdude: That's the size of it. If we don't get him out, not much else matters.
Shaw: Thanks for the reminder that this is minority rule. Hillary won the people's vote. Our nominee this time must win by enough to swing the Electoral College.
Jenny_o: I wish Canadians could vote here too. Things would be a lot saner.
Professor: That's it. I'll support the candidate(s) I prefer, but if a different one gets the nomination -- the bottom line is that any of the Democrats would be a thousand times better than Trump.
PsiCop: It still matters, because the popular vote matters, psychologically. Look at the enormous turnout of black voters for Obama in the South in 2008 and 2012. They knew he wasn't going to carry their states. But they also knew it was important that he have the legitimacy of winning the national popular vote by as much as possible. And note the meat of the quote -- a protest vote is a message that nobody is listening to or cares about. Nobody knows or cares what "message" Nader voters in 2000 or Stein voters in 2016 were trying to send. The practical effect was that they helped elect Bush and Trump. That's all that matters. Those who were in non-swing states and didn't affect the outcome don't get even that much notice.
PS The Democratic nominee is pretty much guaranteed to carry my state (Oregon) as well, but I'll still vote for him or her to add what tiny weight I can to the popular-vote margin, even if the candidate isn't my favorite. Because the message I want to help send to the racists and Bible-thumpers and gay-bashers is -- there's more of us than there is of you.
To be honest with you, I couldn't possibly care less about the "psychological effects" of my vote. They're far too subjective to concern myself with. Everyone will take away from the national vote tallies whatever they want to take away from them.* I'm as uninterested in other people's subjective determinations as I can possibly be.
I understand your point about protest votes. But it simply does not apply to me. The cold fact, though, is that I live in a state where my vote does not matter. Literally! My vote carries no weight at all, and as I explained, even the option of casting a "protest vote" does not exist for me.
If I lived in a state where my vote mattered, it'd be a different matter altogether. Sadly, that's just not the case.
* One can see this phenomenon in the reactions to the Mueller report. The country's ideologues are responding to it in precisely the way they've been primed to respond, based on their subjective evaluations. And their reactions are backed up by over two years of sanctimony and rage. Neither side is actually interested in the report's content. The same goes for presidential vote tallies; people see what they wish to in the numbers, and won't actually pay attention to what the numbers may actually be telling them.
Whatevs. Luckily, many others do care.
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