#Democrats are not *owed* our votes for the sheer grace of not being Republicans

[messengerhermes]

Look, I've spent my entire adult life advocating for voting as harm reduction, that candidates will never be perfect and most democrats are really just centrists who we have to scream at to get them to do damn near anything, but that's still preferable to the outright violence of the republican party. I get the point of voting as not the only step but the first step. But. But. But is in the middle of a genocide really the time to be hollering in people's faces about how they cannot vote third party in this coming presidential election? About how they *have* to vote for Biden, because at least he's not Trump? There is a time and place for the discussion about avoiding putting a dictator in the Whitehouse when we have a broken two party system where the electoral college does not adequately represent the will of the people. I would politely argue that time and place is *not* in the middle of the sitting president endlessly doubling down on supporting an active genocide. People have the right to be furious with the democratic party. People have the right to not trust the democratic party, or agree about them being "the better of two evils." The Clinton administration escalated the War on Drugs, gave us the deeply anti-Black "super predator" concept, and are the origins of today's ICE and the deterrence strategy that has led thousands of migrants to die in the desert. The Obama administration broke records when it came to drone strikes over Syria and when it came to deportations. Continuously using the threat of the Republican party as a stick to pressure folks into voting Democrat grows less and less effective every time the Democratic party makes concessions that move it farther center. Which they have been doing since the Reagan administration as a strategy to capture centrists and maintain power. The Biden administration has done good on a number of policy fronts. But it's also caved to pressure to end the public health emergency, ended eviction moratoriums and been slow on a number of fronts to address people's rising unrest at the soaring costs of inflation. Our current Congress has been a shitshow rife with in-fighting that has stalled out key policies, and yes, has seen Democrats make concessions to Republican extremists in ways that weaken bills that could have gone farther in providing relief and boosting our failing infrastructure. Then we hit October, and the US federal government throws its weight behind a genocide, ignoring the swelling outcry and condemnation from its citizens. The US government is continuing to fund Israel's genocide of Palestine and federal staffers are having to walk out on the goddamn job to get their bosses to acknowledge the calls coming through. Biden has been caught multiple times spreading misinformation regarding the genocide in Palestine. Representative Rashida Tlaib, the one Palestinian American in Congress, has been censured for daring to speak up on behalf of her constituents and condemn this violence. Funders of the democratic party are angling to force out Progressive members of the party like Rashida Tlaib, Cori Bush, Ilhan Omar, and others in the upcoming elections. Hollering at people to "Vote Blue no matter who" right now is profoundly callous and ill timed. It is also a remarkably ineffective strategy to try and ensure we don't have a red wave in the coming election. This is not a matter of "holding your nose and voting" this time. There is a 12,000 person body count in the last month. Americans are watching live on Twitter as Palestinians are slaughtered with our tax dollars. We are witnessing a Democratically controlled government still choose to fund imperialism over feeding, clothing, and housing its citizens. I beg you to consider how callous you sound throwing a fit about folks who no longer see supporting the democratic party as a valid strategy to fight Republican conservatism as we witness three genocides at once.