Voting 3rd party or not voting at all helps the person you want the least to be in office.
The issue is the 2 party system that is designed this way. Change the system if you want more choices (ideally by pressuring your party to do it while they are in power)
Edit: to be clear 2 parties is a mathematical certainty under first past the post voting. There are countless other voting systems that don’t suffer from the spoiler effect.
The issue is the 2 party system that is designed this way. Change the system if you want more choices (ideally by pressuring your party to do it while they are in power)
And before anyone comes in and says “THE DUOPOLY WOULD NEVER LET IT HAPPEN”, consider treating political parties more like alliances of like-minded politicians who will absolutely screw each other over for one more term in office rather than some united monolith which acts only in its own interests.
The duopoly makes things harder. It does not make things impossible. Fucking vote. It’s literally the least you can do.
Voting 3rd party or not voting at all helps the person you want the least to be in office.
The way I say it: voting 3rd party for progressivism is the biggest self own in history.
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So I just want to toss another layer on that onion…the working class doesn’t always have the time or energy to dig into political nuance. People don’t vote for fascism; people vote for relatable promise of additional opportunity.
I feel olde grimy in my bones tho
Yeah. Nonvoting has a lot of factors, and this meme is just kvetching about one of them.
I can’t tell if these people are real or just trying to justify their laziness. Don’t respond to people who call you a radical. Think about every issue and make the choice for yourself. We had two candidates. Vote TODAY, protest tomorrow. I HATE that we’re picking our poison, but we’re all on the same ship. For some reason, 50% of the country wants to sink that ship, but what do I know?
They’re real. Some of them try a utilitarian argument of a long-term “The Dems will never understand if you just keep GIVING them your vote!” which ignores the realities on the ground of what message politicians get from non-voting, and also the difference between the importance of a message and the importance of preventing a literal fascist. Like, this isn’t 2008 or 2012. It’s not even 2000 or 2004, gruesome and murderous as Bush was. This will significantly hinder our ability to influence the polity going forward - assuming we don’t end up in camps or graves.
Others are just viewing voting as they’ve been taught to by American society, which does not place especially emphasis on civic duty - they view it as a spiritual exercise, a kind of personal prayer to democracy, something that is an expression of their soul rather than an attempt to use the political power generations fought and died over to achieve what you can in, and against, other political coalitions. For them, if there is something offensive to their morality in the practical choices, that’s enough to not vote.
If they don’t vote, they tell themselves, they aren’t responsible. And I’d agree that they aren’t responsible, but in a different meaning of the phrase.
Harris got more votes than Biden in most of the swing states, the ones that actually matter.
Unfortunately, those states still did not go to Harris, and large numbers of people in those states sat out the election because they didn’t see fascism as enough of a threat to take seriously.
I know they still didn’t go to Harris but my point is that the story being told that people didn’t turn out for Harris just kinda doesn’t add up when you look at the only states that actually matter. Popular vote doesn’t mean shit. It’s just that people turned out more for Trump.
If you have some kind of study that shows every eligible voter in the swing states (or any state, frankly) that didn’t vote, would have voted for Harris and not Trump, I’d be happy to see it.
The dull, sad reality is that America, as a whole, wanted this.
If you have some kind of study that shows every eligible voter in the swing states (or any state, frankly) that didn’t vote, would have voted for Harris and not Trump, I’d be happy to see it.
Wouldn’t need to be every one. If Dems were more disillusioned at a rate of 4-3 (ie for every 4 more [non]votes Harris gets, Trump gets 3 more votes), only 10% more of the electorate turning out would’ve been enough to shift Pennsylvania. Considering the extensive efforts at demoralizing left-leaning voters, I don’t think a 4-3 ratio is absurd.
But nothing is entirely clear. You are correct that if you’re looking for facts, we’re still waiting for others to compile and analyze the data. God help us all.
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I don’t think that this is the correct usage of this meme format given that Frank Grimes (in the case of the meme, I presume he’s representing the Democrat voters) was making a point that Homer (in the case of the meme, the "protest non-voters) is able to live a cushy and easy life despite, being lazy, constantly making stupid and careless mistakes, and being inconsiderate of others (in the case of the meme, that would be the “protest non-voters”, well, not voting and having a good life despite it). Frank goes crazy and ends up electrocuting himself, in the exact scene that the meme is showing, when he has a meltdown and starts impersonating homer, but the message that the meme is trying to convey, that the “protest non-voters” will “get what’s coming to them” doesn’t fit, as it shows the people that voted Democrat getting shafted, by the project 2025 logo being on the cables where Frank gets electrocuted, rather than the people that didn’t vote. The meme just twists the intended message around, imo.
