#2016 Politics

[qqueenofhades]

I try my best not to be a doomer but dear lord if today’s SC decision didn’t bring my mental state right back to 2020

I completely 200% feel you, but I'm trying to think of it like this. Since all of the most awful people in the world are doing their utmost to help Trump win, think of how incredibly satisfying it will be if we all put in the work and make him fucking lose anyway. So many truly horrible people, especially Trump himself, are going to have a Real Bad Time if he loses this election again, with work and effort on our part this is still completely possible, and I for one vote we give it to them without delay. So. Yeah.

[blujane]

"Voting third party does no harm—"

If we lose so much as 11% of the votes to third party votes, Trump wins and Project 2025 plays out.

Source.

In case you didn't know, Project 2025 is the Republican Party's nightmarish dystopian and genocidal 920-page plan for the first 180 days of Trump's second term reign (the Supreme Court has now granted absolute immunity to presidents; Trump will be effectively a tyrannical monarch).

Note: Read Project 2025 here.

Third votes are doubly useless for another reason: there are too many third party candidates and none of them are known well enough to have a chance in hell to win.

Voting third party as things are helps no one but the Republicans.

It is as helpful as abstaining from voting, which is to say not at all.

Please, for the love of god and democracy, vote blue up and down the ballot!

[sheisraging]

[skinnyscottishbloke]

Trump literally said this tonight. At this point I don’t give a flying fuck how you feel about VP Harris, we all need to get up off our asses and vote to stave off fascism cause it’s fucking here. HE DOESN’T WANT US TO VOTE ANYMORE. EVER.

PS this doesn’t mean we can’t have fun organizing and canvassing for her, I just want us to stay laser focused and determined and know what we’re up against. One of the Kamala Harris for the People campaign slogans in 2019 was #joyfulwarrior and I just feel like that sums up her and us so well. So let’s fucking go WIN this thing and send orange shitler into hiding once and for all.

[sophies-junkyard]

Change is incremental, but something CHANGED today. You weren’t sure about voting for Biden? You don’t have to anymore! And now is the time to RALLY. The world is fucked up, but letting Trump win will not lead to the political revolution we’re waiting for. Wake up.

Im gonna vote for Kamala Harris in November because I don’t want a wannabe dictator running our country. Simple as that.

[irenespring]

Really I think nothing shouts "my first Presidential election as a politically active person was 2016" more than the fact that when I feel hope and excitement for the future (possible President Harris) for more than five minutes I immediately get a crushing, all-consuming anxiety of "feeling this positive emotion now is going to make it so much worse when the worst thing possible happens" to the extent that I'll probably need my break-glass-in-case-of-emergency anxiety medication.

[mediocreclementine]

[c-rowlesdraws]

(Note: I’m writing this in good faith and not trying to come across confrontational)

Have u forgotten u can vote 3rd party? I know there will likely not be enough people voting independant party for a non red or blue president to be elected THIS voting cycle. But. If enough people vote independent maybe america will wake up and realize there are more than 2 shitty options. (It takes time to change, and change for the better)

Look the problem with the blue no matter who mindset is that these people know you are going to vote for them no matter what. Not because you necessarily like them but because at least they aren’t the other guy. Which gives dems absolutely no incentive to not be a piece of shit. Like do you get it? They will be awful and endorse genocides and all other terror because they know you will let them get away with it. Maybe biden isn’t as bad as a republican would have been but he is still pretty fucking bad. Personally, morally, I cannot in any way justify voting for him again.

voting for someone as damage control in an election does not mean you can't heckle the shit out of them once they are in office. You elect the officials you think you and groups you belong to have the better chance of pressuring into better policies, and who will do the least amount of damage in the meantime.

Democrats are relentless towards their elected officials-- at least the ones I know who are actually politically active are. They call, they protest, they campaign. Plus, as you're demonstrating, people on the left do not blindly vote (that's the other guys). It's totally unrealistic to say that elected Democratic officials just think they have an easy ride.

people can and should vote for whoever they want to in local elections, primaries, etc. But in the big one, the president one, the one in the fall, voting third party is like drawing up plans for a nice new extension on a house that is actively being set on fire. Voting for president is damage control. Voting is your hard-fucking-won civil right. Voting in smaller elections can also be damage control; when there is no-one to feel "good" about voting for, you vote for the less-worse one, because maybe that one is more receptive to the idea of climate change being real than the other one, and you can work with that.

Sometimes you get to vote for the option you align with the most. But sometimes voting is about picking the option with the cracks that you can dig your fingers into and pull open. Or at least the one who won't start taking a sledgehammer to civil rights and environmental protections (and, and) with all his buddies while you work to build support behind a candidate you can feel good about voting for in four years.

Biden has shown he can change his policies over time, with pressure. Democrats can be swayed in ways Republicans cannot. One major party can be pushed more left. The other one will drag us into a darkness that I don't even want to think about. The presidency is about so much more than just the individual sitting in the Oval Office.

Voting is strategic. It is strategic. It is not negative moral karma to vote strategically. It is one action amidst all the other actions you can take to fight for the future you want.

[hazel2468]

You know, to get political for a second.

It hasn't escaped my notice that every time someone brings up the presidential election. There is ALWAYS an early 20-somethings queer person in the comments or replies going on and on about how Biden won't help Palestine, about how Biden is doing a genocide, about how "Israel this and that" and like...

You're all fucking idiots for falling for this. You are. Because those people saying that shit are either the morons we see protesting who can't answer which river and which sea they're screaming about or who don't know what Hamas' charter says, OR they're the same fucking bots who appeared all over tumblr back before the 2016 election to try and convince all of us, using the hot political topics at the time, not to vote Dem. Because they had a vested interest in us not voting Dem.

And just to speak on the whole Palestine thing here... Do you really thing. That Trump. The racist fascist who openly wants to be a dictator. Who is buddy-buddy with Netanyahu, the other racist fascist who wants to be a dictator. Is going to do anything other than give Bibi the fucking green light to do anything he wants? If you think that Trump is going to be better for your "Pro-Palestine" movement (which, btw, is in quotes because the vast majority of the idiots supporting it don't know jack shit about what's going on and don't actually care about the Palestinian people, seeing as they have a habit of cheering for the terrorist organization that uses them as human shields, steals their money and aid for their own devices, and they have a lovely habit of attacking actual Palestinian peace activists who call them on it and ignoring what they say they actually need so...) than Biden? You're out of your fucking mind.

Holy shit I am not going to sit here and watch people fall for the same BS they did back in 2016. Israel and Palestine is the hot-button topic right now. Every time you see someone talking about how Trump has promised to roll back all the protections that the Biden/Harris admin has put in place, every time you see someone pointing out that the Republicans LITERALLY have a plan to fucking turn our country into an Evangelical hellscape, there is some fucking numbnuts in the notes, probably with a pride flag in their bio, wailing about "Genocide Joe".

And you all need to ask yourself why the hell there are all of these nearly-identical blogs. All doing the exact same thing every time someone tries to point out that another Trump term would see people literally dead and our country fucking torn apart, possibly forever. Use your fucking brains.

[batboyblog]

idk, feels like it should be slightly bigger news that a shady dictatorship with a crappy human rights record tried to illegally give Trump $10 million dollars to help win the 2016 election and then the Trump controlled Justice department stopped that from being fully investigated, that seems like a big fucking deal, but what do I know?

[genderqueerpositivity]

I know that 2016 wasn't yesterday, but even so it seems like our collective memory is shorter with each passing year. The 2016 election and the Internet Research Agency were news a long time ago in media years...and there are bad-faith actors and agents out there who are counting on us forgetting.

As we get closer to Election Day, I encourage everyone to be more cautious of the information that you come across online. Fact check info that you come across in random social media posts, use reputable and reliable sources, get your news from more than one TV channel or website.

Be wary of anyone or anything online designed to manipulate your actions or influence your emotions, whether it's tumblr posts or advertisements or tiktoks. Do not allow propaganda and/or misinformation to sway you into voting against your personal values, your best interests, your personal safety, or the well-being of your neighbors and community in November.

I've already seen things that are concerning online within the past few months, and I expect to see an increase in this the closer we get to November.

Think critically and pay attention.

[cleophantom]

To anyone who refuses to vote for Biden in the US elections because of what he's done in Palestine: I'd like to hear the plan to get America to stop aiding Israel in the event of a Trump victory you must have to act so belligerently confident in your stance.

[qqueenofhades]

Normally, this whole "the entire Republican Party from Trump on down is now a willing Russian asset/actively working to regurgitate Russian disinformation to hurt Biden" thing would be a huge scandal. However, because we live in the worst timeline, I expect it will get 3-4 days of coverage max, the media will largely shrug and give the GOP a pass, and go back to writing 248402935 concern-trolling pieces about Biden's age.

[beggars-opera]

I still find it really, really horrifying funny how many people think that they are going to magic a universally beloved third-party presidential candidate out of thin air and that their revolution is going to sway both the democratic and undecided voters to change their political alliances and vote for this nonexistent mystery person in in *checks watch* the next five months, thus overriding the republican base who has nearly 100% rallied around their one guy for the past decade and show no signs of wavering and, by the way, is also 100% behind funding genocide and various other crimes against humanity along with undoing every single decent thing the other guy has done. But sure. Vive la revolution

[taibhsearachd]

I've been fucking haunted by shit going on in Darfur for months now, and it seems like no one is really paying attention to it.

The most recent news stories involve children being "piled up and shot", massive displacement of people, and basically no humanitarian aid given. This is a very statistics-based analysis of what is going on in Darfur. When you get to the actual human stories, they're actual nightmares.

Important quotes from the UN website:

The UN says it is particularly worried about conditions in Darfur, where babies are dying in hospitals, children and mothers are suffering from severe malnutrition and camps for displaced people have been burned to the ground. The UN’s Martha Ama Akyaa Pobee told the Security Council, that “sexual and gender-based violence continues, with accusations of sexual violence by Rapid Support Forces personnel, and rape and sexual harassment implicating the Sudanese Armed Forces.”

And recently....

UN humanitarian agencies left Darfur when the April 2023 conflict broke out and many of their facilities were looted or destroyed. Some have returned on an occasional basis to provide humanitarian relief when the security situation has allowed.. Many aid workers have been killed in Darfur, while others are working under extremely challenging conditions to support the civilians there.

It's genuinely hard to find out what to do about this, a lot of it is down to governmental support for humanitarian aid, so... call your representatives about aid to Sudan, I am begging you. There is one donation portal I think might be a useful place to put your money if you can (if there are more, I would love to spread that info).

People are dying. Children are dying. I know so much else is going on in the world but there is ethnic cleansing going on in Sudan and it feels like no one is even noticing that it's happening.

[originalleftist]

The thing about "protest votes" that makes them, in this of all elections, so mind-bogglingly intellectually and morally bankrupt, is that the potential consequences now are NOT A HYPOTHETICAL.

We don't need to speculate on what could happen if a bunch of people decide to stay home or vote third party, because they did that in 2016 against THIS EXACT REPUBLICAN CANDIDATE, and we all enjoyed four years of hell culminating in an attempted coup as a consequence. And three years and counting of the aftermath since, including the destruction of abortion rights across much of the country. To say nothing of the ones who didn't make it through, like the migrants who died in detention, or the HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS of preventable Covid deaths.

And now fuckers are saying, "Well, we better do it again just to make sure we get every last bit of the world we haven't burned down yet".

How many real, actual, living people are you prepared to throw under the bus for your "protest vote"?