#Voting for anyone else is giving trump a vote

[transsexula]

Really sucks that we have to vote a corpse into office but I would rather have a corpse than a fascist who will do every evil under the sun and unwind global politics as we know it.

[anexperimentallife]

Project 2025 would ban anything the far right considers pornography. The far right considers anything queer-positive to be pornography, and they WILL encode that into law if given just a TINY bit more power.

Have queer fanfic (or trad published literature) or pics of your transition, or of two men kissing, saved to your hard drive? If the GOP get their way, you'd be guilty of possession of pornography. Did you share any of it? You'd be guilty of distribution of pornography. Have a sweet coming of age story with a queer protagonist? That'd be child pornography.

Even now, states are trying to make it a crime to be openly queer in public (by, among other things, classifying dressing as the "wrong gender" anyplace kids might see as a sex crime against children). Oh, and Florida tried (and thankfully failed) to impose the death penalty for the above.

This is just one example of the horrors awaiting us if the project comes to fruition.

And the far right is already screaming that any adult who mentions around kids that queer people exist is "grooming" children. Wear your Pride shirt past a playground? You're now a child groomer. Think they won't put that into law if allowed? You're naive.

The GOP currently controls the Supreme Court (which is how they overturned Roe v. Wade) and has a majority in one branch of congress. Imagine what will happen nationwide with the GOP controlling every branch of government, including supermajoroties in both houses of Congress.

Oh, and top GOP officials have also announced their desire to NUKE Gaza, so don't come at me with, "but I can't vote blue because Biden..." Or tell me how you think Gaza would somehow be better off with Trump and the GOP.

In France, the left and center joined together--even though they disagree vehemently on many issues (get two leftists together and they'll have three positions on any issue)--to stop the far right from totally taking over, because the one thing they ALL agree on is that fascists dictatorships are BAD.

Much the same with the UK finally kicking out their own neo-fascist party, the Torries, to install 400 Labour MPs. Not everyone loves Labour's policies, but virtually everyone with a brain cell recognizes that the Torries are fascists, and that FASCISM BAD.

"Every election, they tell us this is the most important election if our lives!" Yeah, because each election over the past several decades has been more important than the one before, until we are now at a tipping point between remaining a fucked up oligarchy with SOME resemblance to freedom, and an outright neo-fascist military dictatorship.

Trump has literally stated publicly his intent to criminalize dissent, use US armed forces against protesters (Kent State, but multiply it by thousands), purge all agencies and stuff them with those personally loyal to him, and use the DOJ to go after anyone he perceives as a threat to his political power, among other things.

And remember the things he did in office, like pulling the teeth of federal workplace protections for queer folks (which Biden reatored).

I don't care if you don't like Biden or Harris. Neither do I. But the alternative is Trump, and anyone telling you not to vote in 2024, or to vote third party, is rooting for Trump, and for Project 2025. Anyone telling you not to vote does not give one single solitary flying fuck about vulnerable populations in the US or anywhere else in the world.

"You're just being an alarmist!" Right. Like I was being alarmist when I predicted the failed Jan 6 coup attempt. Like I was being alarmist when I said the GOP would try to use control over SCOTUS to overturn Roe v. Wade.

Fucking vote.

[nuadaargetlamh]

One is a convicted criminal that wants to institute a dictatorship “on day one only” (with majority support from his party!), would give a greenlight to Project 2025, use a weakened Schedule F to install THOUSANDS of cronies, was just given immunity for “official acts” (what counts as “official”? whatever his Project 2025-instituted judges want, of course), wants to institute military tribunals for his enemies (and allies!), will 100% support Russia in wiping Ukraine off the map, will use the combo of the removal of the Chevron deference/the Supreme Court allowing people to openly bribe them/Schedule F to extend the far-right’s reach into every government agency and deregulate everything to the benefit of his rich capitalist buddies, has already taken away so many freedoms from racial minorities/queer people/women/anyone-that-isn’t-a-rich-white-man that it would take hours to list them all in this post, and so so so so SO MUCH MORE.

The other is a typical neoliberal politician.

Remember also, you’re not just choosing a president, you’re choosing their cabinet, potential Supreme Court justices, federal employees as well. With Project 2025 ALONE, Trump would do so much more damage than just what he can do himself. That’s not including everything else his Federalist Society Supreme Court would and have given him on a silver platter.

Project 2025 really deserves a part to itself just to list some of what it includes: complete abortion/contraceptive ban (no exceptions), destroying worker’s unions and protections, remove Social Security/Medicare/Affordable Care Act, eliminate the ENTIRE DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION, end civil rights protections in government, ban teaching the history of slavery, remove climate protections while gutting the EPA, end equal marriage and enforce the “traditional family ideal”, use the military to gun down protests, mass deportation of legal immigrants (especially Muslims), ending birthright citizenship, pack the lower courts, and plenty more. The far-right wasn’t able to take full advantage of Trump’s presidency the first time since it was so unexpected. They’re preparing so that they won’t make the same mistake again. THERE ARE OVER 900 PAGES OF POLICIES AND PLANS THAT THEY ABSOLUTELY WILL IMPLEMENT IF THEY WIN. READ IT.

Not to mention, if you care about Palestine (like I do, a lot), Trump would be MUCH WORSE for Palestine than the other candidate, supporting Bibi going “from the river to the sea” and already cut off millions in aid to Palestine in 2018 (which Biden reversed!). If you support a free Palestine and don’t vote blue, you have categorically hurt them more than if you did. There is no quick and bloodless peace deal that both Palestine and Israel would ever agree to. The road to an end of the Palestine-Israel conflict is going to be long and difficult, probably decades of dedicated de-radicalization in both states, and will involve far more than one person’s decisions in the end. Unless Trump takes power, and avoids all that by sending enough bombs to turn the Gaza Strip into dust.

There are a few reasons you would choose to vote third party in a FPTP system (support ranked choice voting btw) or not vote “in protest” while ignoring all the state and local elections that affect your area more than the president. Either you’re privileged enough to not be affected by what Trump would bring, you’re ignorant of the consequences, or you care more about doing nothing perfectly rather than doing something, anything that isn’t 100% ideologically “pure” to fight against the far-right fascist movement.

Every voter that still supports Trump is energized by every cruelty he enacts, while thousands of Democrats care more about purity tests and manifesting socialist revolution tulpas than avoiding a fascist dictatorship.

Have a brain, touch grass, and vote blue all the way down that fucking ballot.

[decolonize-the-everything]

I saw your post about the leopards eating faces and democrats and if you think the us is bad under biden have a good look through project 2025 and please fucking realize that queer people, those that can get pregnant, and people of color are going to be absolutely fucked if trump wins in November.

Sigh

If you ACTUALLY read it then you'd know Biden is ALREADY carrying out the goals outlined in project2025. You'd also know that his administration is even using the SAME exact language that's found in the Mandate for Leadership. Such as "protecting the freedom of navigation in the Suez Canal"

I literally have a post floating around somewhere where I said he was gonna escalate the genocide and smoke out all the rebel groups because guess what? Project2025 outlined that too. Literally listed them as targets that the administration should focus on.

Another part of it says they should continue to protect and support Israel's "right to defend itself" at any cost.

So yeah that thing you're afraid of? It's here. And it's here because you thought the fascist with a blue tie was less scary than a fascist than a red tie so you stopped paying attention when Blue Tie Man was around. And that blue Fascism that's allowing book bans and abortion bans and making trans people illegal is going to stay here and grow because you don't fucking care to address it unless the tie is red.

Maybe fucking read the thing you're trying to fearmonger me about because I guarantee I've read more of it than you.

And it's not that I find the realities in it less scary, it's that I'm not such a privileged shithead that I would prioritize my own comfort over lives being lost in a literal fucking genocide.

Yeah shit sucks for queer people and trans people and trust me, I know that, but we aren't being killed in broad fucking daylight and having people go into denial about it so maybe instead of barking up MY blog about how fucked up everything is you go and send the DNC and your representatives some emails and tell them to give Democrats a candidate that doesnt commit genocide?

How about instead of yelling at me to lower my standards cuz things MIGHT get scarier for you if Blue Tie Man doesn't beat trump (and he won't) you ACCEPT that reality and DO SOMETHING USEFUL about it. How about you and your party just BE BETTER????

There's seven months before the elections and Biden is tanking every poll and Democrats are voting uncommited in swing states and what's Biden doing? Doubling down on every single policy that he's losing voters over (like supporting Israel). If he loses that's not my fault or anyone else's.

Maybe stop asking people to vote for a warmongering white supremacist.

"think of the queers and pregnant people and PoC"

I Am.

They live in Palestine and Sudan and the DRC.

Or did you mean I should prioritize different queers and pregnant people and PoC?

Don't be shy. Did you mean I should prioritize you?

Cuz yeah. Fuck that.

(white) USamerican citizens prioritizing ourselves over everyone else is exactly how the world got so fucked up.

I'm NOT voting for Biden under any fucking circumstances, don't waste my time with another bullshit uninformed scare mongering ask like this again just cuz YOU lack the solidarity to care about any community but your own.

The fuck?

Do you think the queer community only counts Americans? What an ignorant thing to say. "Think of minority communites but only from this specific part of the world"

You wouldn't know community if it hit you in the fucking face.

[wilwheaton]

For some odd reason, moderator Jake Tapper told Trump in the beginning that he didn't need to answer the questions and that he could use the time however he wanted. Trump ran with that, essentially giving a rally speech whenever he had the floor and was unresponsive to the vast majority of the questions. He made faces and insulted Biden to his face, at one point calling him a criminal and a Manchurian candidate. If anyone had said 10 years ago that this would happen at a presidential debate they would have been laughed out of the room. After the debate when most of the country had turned off cable news or gone to bed, CNN aired its fact check. [...] Even had Joe Biden been at the top of his game, he would not have been able to parry all those lies and he shouldn't have been put in the role of being Donald Trump's fact checker. His choice was to either ignore the lies and let them stand so he could use his time to make his own case or spend the entire debate correcting the record. It was not a fair fight. It's obvious that Biden's terrible performance has caused panic among Democrats and liberal pundits and analysts. The calls for him to withdraw are loud and meaningful and it's going to be a very rough period in this campaign whatever happens. For me, this isn't really a question. As long as Donald Trump is on the ballot, I will vote for the Democratic nominee. If it's Biden or someone else, the calculation remains the same. Nothing is worse than another Trump administration and I suspect that at the end of the day Democratic voters will agree with that. So it's still a matter of those undecided voters in swing states, just like it was on Thursday morning.

CNN's debate was no fair fight

CNN, yet again, gave Trump a national stage to vomit an endless stream of unchecked lies, and today, CNN is telling itself and anyone who will listen that the network and its moderators did a great job. That’s just plainly false, and America is paying the price for their failure.

That doesn’t let Biden off the hook. Biden had a terrible night. He was so bad, it’s allowed the political press to completely ignore not just how much Trump lied, but what he lied about: January 6, all his indictments, his Covid response, and on and on. President Biden was a disaster, and his campaign should be at DefCon 1 to try and repair all the damage. I am terrified that his awful performance will obscure his surprisingly good record and leadership in the post-insurrection era, and give the political press an excuse to run with “Biden is old” in the face of Trump’s endless lies, his felony convictions, his pending trials, and all of his criminality. Someone at Salon said that Trump didn’t win, but Biden absolutely lost. I can’t argue with that, even if the facts are all on Biden’s side.

I’ve seen President Biden on TV today, and even last night after the debate, where he didn’t come across as an ancient dude who needs a walker on his way to some Matlock reruns. He looks and sounds like the SOTU Biden we all expected would show up last night. I have no idea why he was so awful for 99% of the debate (the campaign says he has a cold), and I have no idea why the guy who is showing up to speak to supporters today, and who delivered the SOTU didn’t show up last night to save America from Trump, again.

But we have to live with this reality now, and I hope like hell that the Biden campaign, the candidate, and the entire Democratic party apparatus scrambles like fucking crazy to get all hands on deck to fix this, and remind voters that

This isn’t about BIden vs. Trump. This is about America vs. Project 2025.

There will be no second debate where Biden can try to salvage something out of the wreckage of this one. Trump has everything to lose and nothing to gain. Trump will crow about how he won, and declare he has no reason to debate again, and he’s right. Biden had one shot and he absolutely blew it. The moderators did not help, but the campaign had to have known they wouldn’t, and it sure looks like they didn’t prepare Biden for what we all knew was coming. I don’t know how those same people stop the bleeding, and if they can’t, America and the world are in real, real trouble.

But we all have to remember that we have a choice to make in just a few months. Right now, and probably on election day, the choice is between Joe Biden and Democracy, or Donald Trump and Fascism. It’s stark, it’s clear, it’s binary, and I can not believe that it is even a question. I just hope that there are enough voters out there who will understand that we do have a choice. The options suck, but we do have a choice.

Please choose Democracy. Please choose America. Please choose the future world our children will inherit from us.

[fiercynn]

oh my fucking god can people stop coopting the term "harm reduction". i know language can change but i refuse to let this term change into the literal opposite meaning just so people can justify their decision to vote for a genocidaire.

harm reduction is literally, meaningfully, about reducing existing risk of harm. a person who uses drugs is at risk of disease or illness because they only have access to dirty needles? provide them with a needle exchange program to make it safer for them. a teen who is sexually active is at risk of becoming pregnant or contracting a sexually transmitted infection? provide them with sex ed and protective devices like condoms or dental dams to allow them to have safe sex.

and yes, there is a part of harm reduction that is aimed at not moralizing about the behavior that you're trying to reduce harm from. but if you're a progressive - as most of the people lecturing us about "harm reduction" purport to be - you should already understand that these behaviors are not ethically bad in and of themselves. it is not inherently unethical to use drugs or be sexually active as a teen, so the fact that harm reduction efforts could "encourage" that behavior is also not unethical! if you think that it is, then you're actually a conservative!

and, importantly, the people who benefit from harm reduction were only at risk of harming themselves in the first place. so helping someone make those activities safer for themselves is not only reducing the risk of harm to that person, but, in doing so, it is not increasing the risk of harm to anyone else either.

voting is giving your active support to a candidate, and thus to that candidate's platform. so please tell me how giving your vote to a president who is actively driving a genocide, perpetuating a pandemic, funding cop cities and a border wall, and driving up deportations - none of which he has pledged to stop if reelected - is reducing existing risk of harm? because harm reduction also isn't "choosing an option that you believe is better than the hypothetical even worse alternative". and voting for biden is, in fact, increasing the existing risk of the harm that he is currently enacting on other people, and encouraging his despicable behavior!

if coopting the term "harm reduction" is the only thing making you feel okay about your decision to vote for biden despite all the people who are dead, disabled, deported, or destitute because of him, then honestly, that seems like a you problem. STOP COOPTING THE TERM.

(and if you feel the urge to respond with something along the lines of "but biden's just doing his best! i'm just telling people to vote for him because i'm scared of trump!" then please at least read this post as well before you say anything to me about it)

[mythica-ithaca]

the fact that I see some of y'all posting more about how important it is to vote for Biden than you ever have about Palestine just shows that you fucking "vote blue no matter who" people genuinely don't give a fuck about anyone but yourselves.

you only choose to speak up when YOUR hypothetical rights are threatened. you love to fear monger about how much hypothetically worse it would be under trump than acknowledge the actual atrocities that Biden is committing and condoning every single day. how exactly is he the "lesser" of two evils for?

do any of you actually look at the images coming out of gaza, or are you too fucking ~triggered~ to fully acknowledge other peoples suffering rather than your own. have you seen the video that came out recently of the little boy whose brain is exposed, about to be laid next to his dead family members, only to twitch and seize in his fathers arms as he screams and runs in horror to find a doctor, because his son is alive. his brain is literally falling out of his skull but he is still alive. that is one brief example of the most horrific shit you've ever seen in your life coming out daily for almost a year. how on this earth can you watch that and possibly claim that Biden is in any way shape or form "less" evil.

instead of demanding that the dnc force a different candidate, you're trying to guilt trip people who have actually seen the mutilated bodies of children on their timelines every single day and watched the press briefings of bidens administration denying genocide and defending Israel at the expense of literally everything else for the last 8 months, into voting for a man who supports it 100% and has not and will not be convinced otherwise.

this is where allowing them to push widely unpopular and centrist candidates has gotten us. it didn't work with Hillary in 2016. it BARELY worked in 2020. and hate to break it to you, but its probably not going to work again. so congrats. your "vote blue no matter who" rhetoric has got them thinking that they can push the most right leaning liberals on us and think that we'll vote for them just because they're in a blue tie instead of a red one.

if you care about democracy like you say you do, then the Democrats should be fucking TERRIFIED that you won't vote for them if they don't deliver. not constantly reassured that they can commit literal fucking genocide and still get your votes if they dangle abortion rights over your heads. you realize they see those posts too right? the ones that say "Yes! protest vote in the primary but make sure to actually vote for the guy in the general!!" like. you are literally telling them how performative your activism is.

if every election at this point is the one where democracy is on the line then we are already fucked. if they don't get it through their heads now that we will not support this shit, then every election to come will be between a fascist and a fascist who cares slightly less about whether gay people get married or not. but that's all you care about right? as long as your domestic policy is in your favor then the rest of the world can suffer at your tax dollars.

this isn't about morality voting. this is about recognizing that there is not actually a "lesser" of two evils in this situation, just because you think that the causes that you personally care about will be less affected one way or the other. because what if it was abortion rights? what catholic Joe Biden was firmly against abortion and was threatening to ban it completely and throw anyone getting or giving one in prison for murder. what if it was videos of lgbt people being slaughtered coming out every single day for a year. genuinely fucking ask yourself if you'd still be saying "vote blue no matter who" and that he's the "lesser" of two evils.

vote for whoever the fuck you want. and I do genuinely urge you to vote for the most progressive candidate you can for the house and senate and your local elections. but for the love of god, stop trying to convince people that there is, in any sense of the word, a "Lesser" evil in this situation. stop trying to absolve yourselves of the fact that you are CHOOSING evil. it's genuinely sick.

[curioscurio]

Genuine question, if you are voting for Biden why not just vote independent? Biden is not going to win regardless. Why not just skip the vote for genocide and vote for someone that actually cares about Palestinians

Because I live in Florida, which is a powerful swing state. Giving my vote to anyone other than the person who has the best chance at beating Trump is throwing it away. If Trump dies, I'll vote someone else. If Biden dies, I'll vote someone else. If it seems like everyone in the world has finally agreed on a unanimous third party vote by november, I'll vote someone else. Anything can happen before then, and my vote isn't set in stone.

Until then, the majority of undecided voters are going to vote Biden. There's a lot more people in Florida who are tired of the Trump train than you think. They're seeing his trials, his lies, and they're tired. There are a lot of students in Florida who are now eligible to vote. 4 years worth of 18 year olds who all have tik tok and are very much against all the bullshit in the world. And they all understand how the electoral college works. They know their votes could turn Florida blue.

America does not run on Popular vote, it runs on the electoral college. This means that every US state gets a certain number of votes out of 538 total. Some states, like Wyoming, get 3 votes. That means that my state, Florida, effectively gets 30 votes out of the 270 needed to win the presidency. But, here's the catch, ALL of those votes can only go to ONE candidate. (There are exceptions in 2 states, Nebraska and Maine.) If Trump gets more votes than any other single candidate in Florida, all 30 votes go to Trump.

It's called a swing state for a reason, because it can swing the race heavily in one candidates favor. Only Texas and Califorina get more votes at 40 and 54, respectively.

If all the Republicans in Florida vote for Trump, but all the Democrats and Independents are voting for people other than the person on the ballot, Trump will still get 30 votes. Even if some Republicans vote Biden, if everyone else is writing different candidates in, when everything is tallied, Trump could still win.

Imagine you have 270 red delicious apples, 200 Green apples, 38 yellow apples, and 30 macintosh apples. There are still more Red Delicious apples than any other kind, so Red Delicious gets the Presidency. Luckily, people in Florida who liked Red Delicious apples last year are getting tired and might pick Green apples instead this time. They are almost guaranteed to not pick a golden or macintosh apple, though.

This is what happened in 2016 that allowed Trump to win when he LOST to Hillary Clinton for the popular vote. More electoral college votes went to Trump than they did to any other person. From person to person, more Americans as a whole voted for Hillary. It's all about where you live physically.

This is the reason why I'm voting for Biden at the moment. If things change, I'll happily change too!

And Obviously I don't support Genocide. My point is that realistically speaking, Trump has flat out said to just "finish them" already, so it's not out there to assume he will push to accelerate this genocide using nuclear retaliation. I'm not trying to fear monger, I'm saying this system is broken, and they're lying to you about how it works in order to take advantage of your ignorance. Whoever gets the most votes win? Not exactly, but if you don't bother to look any closer, you'll never know you were playing a rigged game from the start.

Vote however you need to for your state. But understand where your vote is going. One vote is the difference between 30 and 3 electoral votes.

[ahaura]

im sure its been said already but as the election draws near more and more liberals will come out of the woodwork to shame people with a conscience to give away their vote to the democrats for free. i'm already seeing posts saying "why aren't people more concerned about a trump presidency?" you want to know why? it's because people already know he's bad. everyone already knows what he is and what he's done and what he'll do. there's nothing to discuss. he's a racist despotic worm of a man. there's nothing else to say.

biden is currently president. the genocide is happening under his watch. he's the one funding isra*l and arming them; he's sidestepped congress more than once to give them weapons. by oct. 27, the biden administration already knew that "Israel was regularly bombing buildings without solid intelligence that they were legitimate military targets." the state department/biden have engaged in atrocity propaganda, cast doubt on the legitimacy of the death toll recorded by the gaza health ministry, and so on. the united states is currently in the process of trying to pin the "war in gaza" on netanyahu (see sen. schumer's speech) after months of backing blatant genocide as a means to act as if they're "doing something" about the genocide (Instead of, say, threatening to cut off all aid to israel with the condition that all hostilities in gaza, the west bank, and occupied jerusalem are halted immediately and permanently, allowing palestinians freedom to travel, allowing aid into gaza, etc etc etc.)

the long and short of it is that liberals view their own lives as being worth more than palestinians'. that's it. they'll vote for another 4 years of the guy ushering in genocide and supporting apartheid + settler colonialism because he isn't outright attacking them (despite various laws and rulings happening both at the supreme court level and at the local level all over the country that will endanger people). they'll settle for the illusion of safety and security and shame anyone with a conscience and accuse them of "supporting the republicans" when in an actual democracy you would be able to use your vote as leverage to extract concessions from those who want to be elected. that's how it's supposed to fucking work.

democrats are not owed people's vote. if biden loses, it will be biden's fault; it will be his campaign's fault; it will be the democrats' fault. trump is bad; the republicans are bad. we already know this. this is not an endorsement of either. but if democrats are too cowardly and feckless and servile to the motivations of the american empire and never do anything for their constituents then why the fuck should anyone vote for them. you want to get mad at someone, why don't you do something useful and stop worrying about team-sports with a purely selfish basis and start hounding the people in power who are supposed to serve you, the voter.

[theconstitutionisgayculture]

Indefinite hiatus

I was toying with writing up a long post about what running this blog has meant to me over the years and why I'm stepping away for the foreseeable future, but that feels too dramatic for what's really just me saying "I'm not going to be on tumblr for at least the rest of the year". So, I'll just say I'm not going to be on tumblr for at least the rest of the year.

Okay, actually I have a bunch more to say, but it'll be under the cut.

Politics sucks. And paying attention to it, even in the reduced way I've been paying attention to it over the last few years, is hard. You end up spending so much of your supposedly free time thinking about things you can't change, getting mad about things you can't change, and getting depressed when the people who can change things just keep going in the wrong direction. Even when good things happen, it's just a matter of a few days before something bad happens once again. And vice versa. It's an endless cycle of hope, despair, resignation. Rinse and repeat, and triple speed that cycle during an election year. And I'm tired of it. I'm tired of spending every other year worried about what's going to happen on one day in November. I'm tired of hearing a piece of news and automatically composing a post about it or running through 20 different responses I might give to asks I might get about it in my head.

Everyone I know who doesn't pay attention to politics (or at least doesn't run a social media page dedicated to it) seems to enjoy their live a lot more than I currently do. Which sounds way more dramatic than what's actually going on, which is mainly that I want to get to a place where I just don't care. I want the world and its problems to flow off my back instead of weighing it down. I want to stop thinking about what people on the internet might say about something I haven't even posted yet. And that can't happen while I'm tied to this blog. So I'll be staying away from it for at least the rest of the year.

I did have a good time with this blog. I've met a bunch of really awesome people, some who are sadly no longer with us (RIP Blue), and some who I think will carry on the "fight" way better than I ever did. This isn't an admission of defeat, or pessimism about the election. Even if Trump wins, and I truly think he will if we have a fair election, I still won't be back this year. But I'll still vote and I'll still be proud that my silly little tumblr blog had an impact on some people's lives. I may not have the reach of a Tucker Carlson or a Glenn Beck, but I've gotten a lot of messages from people who said they changed their minds about an issue, or even politics in general, because of things I said, and that counts for something. If you guys take anything away from me, I want it to be this: Even the smallest impact matters. It doesn't matter if you only ever reach one person and then stop, reaching that one person is enough. Changing one vote is enough. Changing one mind is enough.

To all my mutuals, you guys are the best. I truly hope you have wonderful lives and I'm sad I won't get to see your names on my dash everyday anymore. To anyone I've ever followed or reblogged from, I couldn't have had a blog without you, so thank you. Yes, even the leftiod psychos, XD. To everyone else, find your own balance and never give into despair and never listen to people who tell you not to try. Even a failed effort is still more meaningful than sitting back and mocking people for trying to improve even the smallest thing about themselves or the world around them.

I won't be logging back in after I post this, so any messages or asks you send, I won't see. I'll still be active (or as active as I ever am) in my discord, so feel free to join there if you want to. It should still be my pinned post, but if it isn't, I'll edit this with a new invite link.

And that's all I've got to say for now.

[noonesgaylikegatson]

Here's the thing: Republicans are the party of the rich, but policies that help the rich fuck everyone else up, so they are inherently unpopular. Republicans hitch their wagons to white supremacists and religious fanatics who will gladly vote for them in hopes of bringing their own agenda. Rich people believe that their money is able to keep them unaffected by their social policies that harm mostly minorities.

Present day: Religious Fanatics and White Supremacists have gone too far. Their plans are so corrosive that they will actually affect the rich; Not to mention, there are a lot of nouveau rich who are also these fanatics.

So now, these rich people, "never-trumpers" want to join the democratic party and make it into a party for them. They are anti-progressive because they don't want to pay more taxes and they don't want more regulations. They want a milquetoast white democrat leader, and not one like Joe Biden who has embraced progressive policies and is now further left than 2008.

They don't want Kamala or Pete Buttigieg or Corey Booker or that skater boi from texas. They were to the left of Biden when they ran in the 2019 primary. They want someone to the right of Biden. A more corporate friendly democrat.

And keep in mind, these republicans have always been racist. And have always been white supremacist for them. This departure from the republican party is not a moral one. It's because the oppression that these Trump Republicans want isn't profitable.

These republicans were fine with rounding up Black people on bullshit charges and sending them to prison to do make them money on prison labor. (Biden ended the use of private prisons on a Federal Level fyi). They're not fine with rounding up 20 million undocumented people and putting them in internment camps and deporting them, that would cost so much money that would be better spent giving to them via tax cuts. (I bet you they'll get on board when someone touts the idea of using the undocumented people for unpaid labor)

They're okay with banning abortions or just limiting. They're not okay with stripping all of woman's freedoms (because many of them are women and like to spend the money they have) because women going back into the homes, means the spending power of the economy shrinks.

Less Women and Men of color going to college means less student loan payments. Not to mention, the policies that Trump will enact with Project 2025, would just wreck the economy. Government workers would lose their jobs. Facilities and infrastructure would crumble. The middle class would all but disappear, the gap between the poor and rich would grow, to the point where there is just no more money to extract from anyone in the lower classes. The money would have to come from them.

If trump gets in office by 2028 there will be so many evictions, its impossible to keep up. The rich would have to bribe police officers (made legal by the supreme court btw) to get people evicted. Not all rich people are rich equally. Those who can afford to bribe will be new upper class, those who can't will be suckers.

FDIC will be gone. So imagine you're one of those rich suckers, and the bank you have your money goes belly up cause the new upper class used it to fund their next yacht?

You can't be a tech mogul in a country with poor infrastructure. All that AI requires massive amount of electricity. How can you have any developments if your company shuts off the power every few weeks and there is no policy in place to keep it going, to fix it. Look at texas? Every hurricane gets rid of the power for weeks. Imagine when Project 2025 gets in and there really is no regulation at all.

What is the point of all this? Biden is the correct choice. He is the incumbent, he won the primary, and the election is less than four months away. This talk about replacing him is a bunch of rich assholes trying to take over the democratic party and making it into the new republican party. The literal worst night mare: socially liberal, financially conservative. They are antagonist towards the democrat's base: Black voters, because black voting population support centralized government, regulations, higher taxes, and a robust social safety network (because its literally the best way to govern)

Focus on getting people to vote for Biden or just not vote for Trump.

[qqueenofhades]

What do you think of the movement to vote "uncommitted" in the primary? Personally I think it's a good idea as a protest vote, while not "allowing Trump to win" since it's, ya know, the primary. You're voting for "the Democrat you want to be the candidate for president" not who you actually want to be president. Most of the arguments I've seen against it seem to forget primaries exist...

Well, since you came to me and presumably do want my honest opinion on this topic, I'll share it with you. However, this will also be very blunt and candid, including some things which I haven't yet said in the 4+ months since the whole Israel/Hamas situation kicked off, and therefore also frustrated. This frustration should not be read as/taken as being directed at you personally, but since you're the conduit for this question, that's just something I want to highlight.

So. Why should you vote for Biden in the primary, and not "uncommitted" or whatever else?

First of all, what I desperately want to ask all these self-righteous VOTE UNCOMMITTED IN THE PRIMARY TO SEND BIDEN A MESSAGE types is: what exactly the fuck do you want this message to be, and what action do you expect Biden will take as a result? Is this actually based on an expectation of what he can/and or will actually do, or is it just a froth of misguided Online Leftist "rah rah this Bad Thing Happening Is All Biden's Fault," as we also notably went through when Roe was overturned by the Trump-stacked SCOTUS selected precisely for the purpose of overturning Roe? My god, the amount of bad "THIS IS BIDEN/THE DEMOCRATS' FAULT" posts that appeared, and are still circulating on the particularly idiotic corners of this site. Nothing could ever be Trump/the Republicans' fault in that case; it was the same old same old "DEMOCRATS DON'T CARE ENOUGH TO STOP THIS!!!" puerile fantasy. That's what we are getting now with Israel/Hamas. This isn't Hamas's fault for attacking Israel on October 7 (god forbid; the online left loves Hamas) and it isn't even the state of Israel and Netanyahu's fault for responding with full-scale genocide on Gaza. Or it is, somehow, but not so much that Biden personally couldn't magically reach in and stop it "if he really wanted to." I'm sick and fucking tired of this bullshit sixth-grade bad-faith disingenuous approach to playing Super Moral Social Justice Yahtzee and refusing to acknowledge the thousands of complex factors at play, especially when it involves blaming literally anyone other than Biden, personally (just like the Trump cultists, for whom "IT'S BIDEN'Z FAULT" is the beginning and end of their political theory, just like the Online Leftists). I'm sure this will get me called a genocide apologist by the Very Smart Moral Twitter Thinker types, but I don't think "Biden has failed to magically single-handedly solve this crisis, which stems from one of the most major and long-running issues in post-WWII and indeed pre-WWII world history, in four months" is actually a good reason to vote against him.

Likewise: withholding your vote might make more sense as a strategy if Biden was still only blindly supporting Israel and refusing to do anything to pressure them, which is demonstrably untrue. I know it's hard for some of these people to actually read the news and/or anything outside their ultra-curated Twitter feed, but it's been well-reported and well-documented that he is. If the US was directly involved in the bombing campaign on Gaza, sure, tell Biden that you will vote uncommitted to increase pressure on him to pull out. None of that is actually true, and the "information" about Biden's action in re: Gaza on both Twitter and Tumblr is basically just entirely malicious lies. So again: what message are you sending when you decide to be all precious and announce you're not voting for him? You don't want him to pressure Israel? You're willing to blow this up entirely and increase the media nonsense about BIDEN WEAK DEMOCRATS DIVIDED and give Trump an opening to exploit? You really want to announce to the Trump/Putin/Netanyahu axis of evil that their anti-Biden propaganda is working (since all three of them are working as hard as they fucking can to get Biden out of office, and as someone who opposes all three of them, I think this is a good idea to vote for Biden!) and they need to hammer harder on this wedge issue? Because that's all your oh-so-moral Uncommitted vote is doing. It's not a protest. It's not leverage. It is the withdrawing of leverage. If you want Biden in office so he can be pressured to listen to you and take action that you agree with, you will vote for him. Yes, in the primary. Yes, when it's not directly against Trump.

You want a ceasefire, you say? GREAT! WE ALL WANT A CEASEFIRE AND/OR ACTUAL PEACE AND RECOGNITION OF A PALESTINIAN STATE! That's in fact why you should be busting your fucking ass to make sure Biden gets re-elected, and to give him a strong show of support in the primary. Biden is the only candidate with a credible long-term (and like, baseline functional sane adult) plan for Gaza. Biden is the one who has been pressuring Netanyahu in every single contact to tone it down and stop acting like an insane murderous maniac and therefore torching any remains of sympathy for the attack Israel suffered in October. Biden is the one who has his entire diplomatic team working on high-level contacts with the Israeli government and the Hamas representatives via Qatar, while sufficiently threatening Iran to back down from frothing at the mouth to destroy Israel (once again, just like the rest of the antisemitic western left). Biden is the one who is pushing for this not to be World War III, and yet we get Baby's First Social Justice Activist screaming at him for being GENOCIDE JOE and blaming him personally for not, as I keep putting it, shapeshifting into Netanyahu's body and making this stop. "He should publicly call for a ceasefire!" Or, and this is just a suggestion, he should DO HIS FUCKING JOB and continue to work on serious problems that don't have instant socially media marketable catchphrases and won't come with instant gratification. Also, please tell me how you plan to get both Hamas and Israel to accept the same terms for a ceasefire, abide by it, and do exactly what Big Daddy Biden told them, because you, the dedicated anti-western anti-imperialist, think that's the best course of action?

Like. I mean. As vice president and now as president, Biden is actually one of the least foreign-intervention-happy leaders the US has ever had. He was originally against the Abbottabad raid to take out Osama bin Laden in 2011; he wound down the overseas drone assassination program (at which the Online Leftists screamed bloody murder at Obama, ignored in Trump, and then refused to give Biden any credit for ending) to almost nothing, he pulled the US out of Afghanistan, and even though he's been supporting Ukraine in its fight against Russia, he's also been extremely slow and cautious (in my opinion, too slow and cautious) at giving them all the military hardware they need, even before this latest blockade of aid in the House by Putin's favorite little bitch Mike Johnson. He has already presided over a historic shift in US policy toward Israel, in terms of conditioning the use of lethal aid, imposing reporting requirements, starting to criticize them publicly, and calling for the recognition of a Palestinian state and more humanitarian aid to get into Gaza. Yet in the Online Leftists' mind, because he is not personally out there Captain America-ing away the Israeli bombs and/or calling for Israel to be totally destroyed "from the river to the sea" as the Tumblr activists are fond of using no matter how often Jews ask them to stop, there is nothing he's actually doing! GENOCIDE JOE!!!!! Like, I thought the anti-western anti-American crowd thought all overseas American influence was evil (but all overseas Russian and/or Chinese influence is fine). When Biden actually doesn't recklessly intervene in foreign conflicts like Kennedy/Johnson/Nixon/Reagan/Bush 1/Bush 2/pretty much every American president in the latter half of the twentieth century, you'd think that would get him plaudits? NAH.

"Biden should stop selling Israel weapons without Congressional approval!" Okay, sure, he should. Which he did one time, and he also repeatedly promised to veto and/or not pass any only-Israel aid package that didn't also help Ukraine and Taiwan. He's also not beholden to the frothing antisemitic Online Leftists position that Israel should just lie down and let all of its citizens be killed and its state wiped from existence. Like. We also remember that Jewish voters exist in America, right? And that Jewish lives are something which are repeatedly and demonstrably under threat in the rest of the world, including from Hamas and the Houthis (who are genuinely terrible people and the western left's warm embrace of them as principled anti-Israel actors is all we need to know about their inherent brainrot and moral vacancy). We know that maybe going full masks-off antisemite (which Biden isn't going to do anyway, for any number of reasons) isn't the greatest plan and nothing to which you should be conditioning your vote? Likewise, please tell me how you plan to make Congress (especially the GOP-led clown car House) "do what Biden wants," since you're still beholden to that being the be-all-and-end-all of moral action? Or how you account for Congress at all, and not just think The President is An Almighty King?

Aside from all this, I am sick to my fucking back teeth of the Precious Moral Princesses (gender neutral) who have spent four years lying about everything Biden has done. We had the personally blaming him for Roe ending (he could unilaterally overturn SCOTUS if he really wanted!) We had the endless bashing about student debt, only to ignore him actually making the most major effort to forgive student debt in all the post-Reagan years. We have had a complete ignoring and/or distortion of his domestic policy accomplishments, which are some of the most momentous since FDR and LBJ. We have had an utter ignoring, revision, and downplaying of the damage Trump did in one term and how very much worse his second would be. We have had to endure "WELL YOU CAN'T ASK ME TO VOTE FOR BIDEN" at every single second for every single thing, because this is such a terrible onerous thing to ask them to lift one single fucking finger to give us some more time to come up with a better solution. And yet, as astutely pointed out by one of my anons yesterday, they utterly don't care whether the obvious outcome of this action is to help Trump get back into power. Apparently that's not a moral reach too far, but straining their delicate tender moral sensibilities to fucking do the goddamn bare minimum to help us out -- both in America and around the world -- no, no. We can't have that.

Like. These people allegedly want a ceasefire, and they want it to come about by asking literally nothing more of them then posting snide anti-Biden diatribes on social media. That's the extent of the effort they're willing to put in. They can't even trouble themselves to take the first step of voting for people who want to address this crisis in a constructive way. So yeah, I have a hard time believing this is anything deeply felt in regard to opposing genocide, and just wants what makes them look morally superior. Also: I don't care if your feelings are genuinely pure and strong and you obviously oppose what's happening in Gaza (we all do!) and want it to end. In that case, why the fuck aren't you throwing your support (yes! Even in the primary!) behind the one guy who's actually working to fix it and not just posting empty platitudes on Twitter? It likewise does not excuse you from the harmful consequences of your rhetoric and actions, if you decide that the best way to act on your deep-seated and genuine desire to stop the genocide is just to blindly bash Biden all day every day. Not voting for Biden in the primary does not excuse the fact that this election is against Trump and everything horrible that he represents, and that we are in this situation largely because the online left has learned literally fucking nothing from 2016 and is eager to do it all over again. Not voting for Biden in the primary does not give you a special Gold Star Moral Activist sticker announcing that you were too virtuous to engage in the process now, but if you're sufficiently placated, you maybe will do it in November. Miss me with that bullshit. I've spent eight years pleading with people to help us fix this mess, by -- yes! engaging with the flawed process that makes partial changes!!! -- and all I hear is that same fucking nonsense. That is a large part of why this response is so steamed.

Anyway. In short, I don't think voting "uncommitted" is a good idea, I think it only helps Trump in the short and long term, I think it protests nothing, I think it represents the same old tired anti-voting schlock that I have had more than fucking enough of, and I don't endorse it by any means. However, you will see that while I can strongly and unequivocally give you my opinion that it is a bad idea, I cannot actually reach through the screen, take control of your body, and force you to obey me one way or the other. So maybe, just maybe, Biden can't do the same with Netanyahu. Weird.

[c-rowlesdraws]

You can give that whole rigamarole about voting for the lesser evil and I understand where you're coming from... but I'm also not voting a man complicit in genocide back into office because he happens to have better politics than his equally shit competitor.

“he happens to have better politics than his competitor.”

He has better politics than his competitor.

Living in the USA means voting for “the lesser evil” so that the rest of the world doesn’t have to face the GREATER one.

Do you think trump won’t be complicit in genocide? Do you think he and his supporters and potential appointees aren’t actively salivating over having an excuse to bomb the middle east to dust, except the parts that will sell us oil?

Get out of my house.

Anyone else sends me doomer asks like this and they’re getting deleted. I won’t put this stuff on my blog.

[tirsynni]

I'm already seeing it: everyone complaining that Trump is going to win. Why? Because people are frustrated with Biden. So their response is... what? To passively let Trump win? Are you kidding me right now?

If Trump wins, I don't want anyone blaming Biden. Not a single person. Everyone has already made their position clear and have also made it very clear that they understand the consequences of those actions. Just instead of accepting blame, they're blaming Biden. For their own choices. For their own actions.

No. You need to be an adult to vote. Now prove you're an adult and that you can take responsibility for your own actions.

No matter how pissed you are at Biden, you need to recognize that non-Trumpers outnumber the Trumpers and it doesn't mean shit if non-Trumpers don't vote. Guess what. Trumpers are going to vote. They're going to go to the polls and they're going to vote. If they vote and you don't, guess how it's going to go, even if non-Trumpers outnumber Trumpers. Doesn't mean shit if your vote doesn't reflect that.

What do you think is going to happen with Palestine if Trump wins? If you're pissed about Biden's actions and inactions regarding Israel and Palestine, how are you going to feel about Trump? Because I promise, if you choose not to vote for Biden, you are voting for Trump, and he will be worse.

There is no third party option which is going to win against Trump. Your symbolic non-vote is a vote for Trump. If you don't vote for Biden, you are fucking voting for Trump, so I hope you're ready for that.

"But Biden --" I don't give a fuck. Be an adult. Accept that sometimes in life, you have to accept the lesser evil. There is no room for you to go "Well, I have to do what feels right." NO. That is self-serving, self-indulgent, selfish bullshit. You are helping no one but your own feelings. You will pat yourself on your back with one hand and stab your neighbor in their back with the other.

If you are really concerned about Palestine, vote for Biden, because I promise, he's still better than Trump. Vote in all elections, because they all matter and Trumpers are voting in all of them. Make phone calls. Raise hell. Sign petitions. Do whatever else you can. I fucking promise you, though, that for any of that to count, you need Biden in the office, not Trump.

Again, I don't give a flying fuck if you hate Biden. I sincerely don't. The US presidential election will be two party. Should it be? No. Doesn't matter. That's reality. The US presidential election will be two party: Biden vs Trump. We need to be adults, and we need to recognize what we're dealing with. I will say it again and again and again: any vote which isn't Biden will be a vote for Trump. Don't think to yourself, "I don't want to show the Democrats they have my support with all of this bullshit, so I'm going to not vote/vote third party/symbolically write something in." Be truthful with yourself. Be realistic. If you are pissed at Biden and decide that you aren't going to vote for him, say clearly to yourself, "I'm voting for Trump and all that entails."

If you really think that way, please let me know so I can block your selfish ass. Make sure to tell your neighbors that you're cool with fucking them over, because you need to do what feels right, and that means letting Trump back into office. If you want to brag about your integrity, then at least have the integrity to at least be that truthful with everyone.

[decolonize-the-everything]

If only 1/3 of voters of vote and only half of those voters are democrats why do people care when democrats say "nobody else would vote a 3rd party"?

You mean Democrats wouldn't, right? They represent barely half of 1/3 of voters. They absolutely do Not speak for everyone. There is still 80% of the fucking country remaining.

I'm not talking to democrats about my candidate or asking for their opinion anymore than democrats ask for approval from Republicans. Why have the rest of us given them the power to speak over us?

So if you are a Democrat, this post is not for you

"It's splitting the vote" when I try appealing to the 80% of the country that doesn't vote? Then why don't dems yell at Trump about splitting the vote?

Cuz they know those are Republicans™ and have fundamentally different beliefs than them. It's useless. The people voting for Republicans would have no interest in Democrats, right? There's no point.

Interesting 2/3 of the country doesn't vote in that context.

It's interesting that 2/3 of voters said they would vote for a 3rd party in that context.

The country does not support democratic politics anymore. Accept it. Democrats are not entitled to anyone's vote and other candidates are not required to step down just to let them win.

You know what I mean?

3rd parties absolutely have a shot is what I'm saying.

Democrats don't listen to Republicans who tell them how Biden is a pedophile and shouldn't get elected do they? Why the fuck do people who support 3rd parties listen to what democrats think about them??

Reminder Trump won the electoral college vote in 2016 with 304 votes. Clinton had 227. 7 people voted for someone else. 227+7=234. Less than 304 still. And Clinton won the popular vote by millions.

Clinton didn't lose because of 3rd party voters or non-voters. The election was not that close. She lost because Trump was more appealing than she was to voters.

So again, why are we letting the 16.5% of America that doesn't even like their own candidate tell 3rd parties that giving Americans another option is useless and "swaying the vote?"

Non-voters need to be motivated to the ballot box or they simply won't show up like they've been doing. And Clinton wasn't as motivating to voters as Trump was.

She lost because she did Not have any 3rd party/non-voter appeal and could not sway people from Trump's camp. She needed to do one or the other to win the election and she did neither.

Just like Kamala is doing because she also is a centrist democrat. And she too statistically appeals to way less people than Trump does.

You know what I think? It's time to tell democrats to get fucking stuffed.

Sorry but if Dem candidates can't get the support of the half the country and even their own party hates their candidates, why the fuck should anyone let democrats tell them how elections work?

"it's not realistic" oh but it's realistic for 16% of the country to hold the rest of us all hostage to stop Trump instead? Gtfoh.

Anyway

This is who I plan to vote for because fuck Biden and Trump. The remaining 2/3 of us need someone who's up to our standards and stands to actually motivate people to the ballot box.

This person motivates me.

Jasmine Sherman is doing a 24 hr live on tik tok right now (July 27, 2024) if you have any questions about their policy. They're also streaming it on twitch too if you'd like to tune in without using tiktok (links at the bottom). They'll be there until 10pm EST.

Some things they support:

Abolish police

Free Palestine, Free Sudan, Free DRC

Landback

Guaranteed housing

Reparations

Trans rights

Universal healthcare & healthcare reform

Universal basic income

Disability Rights

COVID regulations

Decriminalizing drugs & sw

And way way more!!

Tik tok live link: fatblacksocialist

If you are someone who usually doesn't vote and/or refuses to vote for genocide, please reblog this

[eightyonekilograms]

Obviously, JD Vance's proposal to give parents additional votes stirred up a furor from progressives saying it's anti-feminist, reactionary, trying to keep women in the kitcen, etc.

And I agree with them. Frankly I wouldn't shed a single tear if Trump "who will rid me of this meddlesome running mate"-d a second VP in a row and I never had to hear from Vance or his 2010!NRx ideas ever again. But I have a more prosaic objection also: if implemented, I don't think this plan would actually work?

Like, as I understand it, there are two proposed justifications for how this might be a good idea, but I don't think either of them stand up to scrutiny.

The first (and less plausible) one is, people who selfishly want more votes will have more children in order to get more political leverage for [whatever they want]. Even though they're doing it for selfish reasons, children are a public good, and so on net this is good for society.

I think this theory can be dispensed with pretty easily. It sounds just like one of those $1000 payments for having another child that budges the birth rate not at all because it's way too small a reward for the expense involved. Even speaking as someone intensely annoyed by trendy anti-electoralist cynicism, I know the EV of an additional vote is microscopic compared to the expense of having children. It won't move anyone except at the very bleeding edge of the margin.

But that's the easy case. The much more interesting theory of the Vance Plan is that of fixing broken incentives. The story goes like this: one feature of democracy, for better or worse, is that it rewards those who show up. If you have no vote (or don't use your vote), you are invisible to democracy, so your wants will be systematically underrepresented. This is why wealthy first-world countries are increasingly gerontocratic in both legislative makeup and resulting policy: old people reliably vote, young people don't, so even with no conspiracy involved, democracy gravitates to favoring the wants of the old. Vance says, hey, children cannot vote, so just as you'd predict, their interests (as a class!) get ignored, so we end up with a legislative landscape that doesn't favor children and makes it harder to raise them.

It makes perfect sense on paper! But I think in the real world it falls apart.

What are the actual bits of legislation and policy which discourage people from having more children? I mean, people can and do argue furiously over this question, but IMO three of the most significant ones are:

NIMBY localist housing policy locking young potential parents out of the housing market

More localist tax and education policy making competition for "good schools" a Red Queen Race which drives up house prices still further, requiring two working parents

Safetyist legislation which, while well-intentioned, is making everything from cars to child care more expensive than it necessarily needs to be

In order to believe that giving parents additional votes will cause a more child-friendly society to emerge via electoral pressure, you have to believe that parents are more likely than non-parents to oppose 1, 2 and 3. And that just... doesn't seem true? At best there's no difference, and to be blunt, I think as a class parents tend to be worse than non-parents on all three. #NotAllParents, of course, there are plenty of people with kids who still want good abundance policy, but averaged over everybody I think it's hard to deny that parenthood tends to push people toward defensive, loss-averting "protect the children" mentalities which, on a global scale, fuck everyone else over. That talking point you constantly see among the Very Online Right that parents are more likely than non-parents to think Beyond Themselves and want to build a stable world for the long term, just seems obviously false to me. Or at least if it is true, it's true in a way which is mostly irrelevant, since these "long-view parents" don't know how to turn those wants into policy which actually achieves them.

Frankly, I think it's easy to envision a world where the Vance Plan makes all policy around child-rearing worse instead of better, and depresses the birth rate even further.