So, a comparatively high amount of states are voting on the fate of ranked choice voting this year. Missouri is voting on whether or not to kill it, Alaska is voting on whether or not to keep it, and most importantly, Nevada, Oregon and Idaho are voting on whether or not to adopt ranked choice voting, with maybe Colorado to follow.
And if you live in these states, even if you don't want to vote at the top of the ticket, I urge you to get out there and vote in favor of ranked choice voting on all of them.
Like, the two-party monopoly is a big part of the reason why politics in this country is so shit, and a big part of that is our "first past the post" system making it basically mathematically impossible for candidates outside of them to win anything beyond a local or state level.
So, if you want to try and break the cycle of voting for the lesser evil, of bipartisan cruelty towards the Global South and the country's own citizens alike, we need to change this and we need to vote on it where we can.
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okay i love your posts and work and understand why you hate the US and both parties (reasonably) but can we please stop with like. just the biden slander. like haha biden old and dumb bothers me because it equates 81 year old continuing like 80 years of US foreign policy and 78 year old who openly paraphrases NAZI rhetoric in one of the worlds superpowers. like i fucking hate biden and am vocal about this but equating status quo old guy and fascist old guy is such a false comparison
you (plural, i have multiple of these asks rn) gotta reflect a bit on what you're using your political campaigning energy on if your biggest issue of the day is me making a shitpost. my post i made last night literally just comments directly on the two biden press conferences that day where he first referred to ukrainian president zelensky as "president putin" and then later referred to his vice president kamala harris as "vice president trump".
i am making fun of the CURRENTLY SITTING president of """""the free world""""" who's very clearly not in any position anymore to be doing this job. none of what i said in any way even pits him against trump, but im not making fun of trump because right now he's fucking irrelevant as he's not currently in control of the most powerful country in the world. i sure hope he still won't be after november, but you're not going to win this election by getting mad at some european tumblr user who made an observational joke.
there is so much more i could say about this and especially how meaningless this election really is when it's suddenly taboo to at all criticize the lesser of the two evil, who as a reminder, has been actively aiding the genocide in gaza and has now thrown trans kids under the bus for some minor campaign points. i somehow remember there being this thing about how biden was the compromise candidate but surely we could push him to the left, but hey, what do i know about politics.
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okay, if you have ever made or reblogged a “hold your nose and vote for biden” post, this is for you.
here’s the fucking thing about these kinds of posts. i've been seeing them since i first returned to tumblr in, I think, late 2022? they've certainly increased in frequency since october 7, but they were there before too, ready to counter any kind of opposition to biden that has cropped up. many of them are not just trying to educate people about what positive things biden has done, which, like, at least I can understand the motivation behind those ones? but so many of them are directly in response to people criticizing biden, and their only real point is “sure you’re upset at this thing biden did, but have you considered the election?” starting YEARS before the next presidential election, mind you.
and october 7 only made that clearer. i don’t think it had been a week before i saw these posts cropping up. can you not see how fucking ghoulish that is? to look at the rightful pain and anger of those whose relatives and communities are being slaughtered with active american support, to respond to one of the few pieces of agency most americans have in influencing what their governments do – their vote – by saying “yes but trump would be worse.” as if the primary people you’re lecturing – palestinians, muslims, arabs, black people, indigenous people, disabled people, other marginalized people – don’t remember exactly how bad it was under trump!
and even if you think not voting is an empty gesture – something i, who studied political science at a mainstream american lib college, who has worked as a field organizer on a previous democratic presidential campaign and for several policy campaigns, who currently works in public policy in america, used to believe, but have absolutely changed my mind on – what is in no way an empty gesture is saying publicly that you will not vote for someone. the arguments people usually have about why simply not voting is bad are that you can’t tell why someone is not voting, so it is as likely to be apathy or disenfranchisement as it is a political statement. but saying publicly that you will not vote for someone, and why you will not vote for them, absolutely is a political statement, and potentially a powerful one! but you choose to negate and/or ignore that by trotting out the “lesser of two evils” bullshit.
and then there’s the whole “yes but people will DIE under trump”. PEOPLE ARE DYING NOW. even if you’re fucking racist and have decided that palestinian lives don’t count, have you forgotten biden’s ongoing covid minimalism and dismantling of the CDC’s covid research and prevention infrastructure? have you forgotten his increase in spending for law enforcement scant years after the murder of george floyd and his administration's surveillance of protesters, including cop city protesters? have you forgotten his recent ramp-up in deportations of undocumented immigrants, including the active continuation of many trump-era policies?
maybe you have forgotten all those things and do purport to care about palestinians, but you just think that biden is doing his best to influence netanyahu and is getting nowhere! but then you must have forgotten all of the things that biden and his administration themselves have done to further this fucking genocide, including:
continuing to send arms to israel
putting together a military task force within days of yemen’s red sea blockade and attacking yemeni ships
bombing yemen
bombing syria
bombing iraq
vetoing three ceasefire resolutions at the united nations
testifying to defend israel and its genocide and occupation at the international court of justice
refusing to rescue palestinian-americans stuck in gaza
halting funding to the united nations relief and works agency for palestinian refugees (UNRWA) based on israeli claims that 12 of UNRWA’s over 30,000 staff were hamas agents, even though u.s. intelligence has not been able to independently verify this
lying that he’s personally seen photos of babies beheaded by hamas when he hadn’t because they didn’t exist (and even when his own staff cautioned him that reports of beheaded babies may not be credible)
questioning the number of palestinian deaths reported by the gaza ministry of health (when even israel has not questioned them, since they are in fact proud of those numbers)
perpetuating lies about hamas having committed the attack on al-aqsa hospital
questioning united nations reports of adults and children raped by israeli soldiers while claiming to have proof (that no one else has seen) of hamas doing the same
honestly so many more things that i can’t remember them all but others feel free to add
or maybe you haven’t forgotten any of that, and think that you’re still justified in lecturing people about why they should vote for biden, because you genuinely believe trump would still be worse. if that is the case, you have still failed to see that by saying you will vote for biden no matter what, you are part of the problem of biden continuing to act like this. because biden is counting on fear of trump to win him this next election no matter what else he does. despite his appalling polling numbers, despite the knowledge that he is losing the palestinian-american vote, the arab-american vote, the muslim-american vote, the black american vote, the youth vote – despite all of that, he is secure in the idea that he will still win because he is better than trump. can you not see how that allows him to act without impunity? how it becomes increasingly impossible for his base to influence what he’s doing if he thinks that they will be with him no matter what? this is how you make yourself complicit to biden’s actions, by not affording anyone even the slightest power to hold him accountable for anything.
and in most cases, the “hold your nose and vote for biden” thing is the response of people who aren’t even being instructed by others not to vote for biden. it is their response to people saying they themselves are choosing not to vote for biden. fucking ghoulish.
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I keep seeing posts that are like "now that Biden is supporting war crimes you aren't going to still say to vote for him, right?" and for fucks sake how have you people still not grasped the most basic point of the "you need to vote" thing?
It's not about Biden being good. He's awful. All US presidents are awful and have supported various war crimes. Yes, even that one you liked. This is not now nor has it ever been about praising Biden (for most of the people I see on Tumblr; obviously there are plenty of people out there in the world that do like Biden, but you know what I mean).
We have a two party system, and it sucks. Not voting or voting third party accomplishes nothing. Voting for the least-bad option DOES accomplish something, and does not prevent you from working to improve the system in other ways in the meantime. Why do I only hear people talking about trying to change things in terms of the presidential election?
Acting like you're remaining "pure" by not voting for someone horrible is ridiculous. This fantasy that lower voter turnout will bring about some sort of magical change in policy is completely unfounded in reality. Get involved in local politics where third parties or fringe candidates have a chance! You CAN influence politics, but the presidential election is not where change happens.
And remember, even if we do change things for the better it's still going to be about voting for the lesser evil when it comes to the president. They're all bastards, but there is a VERY real difference between them - there's a huge list of very positive things that have come out of Biden's presidency which doesn't make Biden himself less of a monster but does illustrate why this matters.
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People supposedly on our side regurgitated Republican propaganda about Hillary and Trump was elected. Many of those same people are now actively regurgitating Republican propaganda targeting Biden.
Some people are completely naive about how foreign policy and diplomacy work. Short of sending in troops Biden can’t force that little prick Netanyahu to stop this madness. At this point Netanyahu is actively trying to sway the election in Trump’s favor. Trump and the Republicans in power means the literal end of Palestine and its people.
Repeating Republican/Hamas/Iranian/ Russian propaganda will only make things worse for the Palestinians, Americans, and the whole world. Biden is a good man doing as much as he can while being hindered by a Republican House of Representatives and an illegitimate SCOTUS. Stop calling Biden the lesser of two evils, he is not. Trump is the only evil person (from an evil party) and he’s already proved it repeatedly.
Trump killed over a million Americans, killed more Middle Easterners than Netanyahu, and is responsible for the Russian aggression in Ukraine. Further it’s almost a certainty that Putin put his proxy Hamas launch the October 7th terrorist attack on Israel. Putin needed a distraction to take the world’s attention off his campaign in Ukraine and wanted to weaken Biden in the hopes of getting a more compliant Trump back. Putin funnels money and arms through his other proxy Iran to Hamas, which is also a proxy of Iran and has also attacked Israel.
Hamas are not champions of the Palestinians, they are an oppressive terrorist organization holding Palestinian as virtual hostages and using them as literal human shields. Palestinians want them gone as much as they want that little shit Netanyahu gone. Hamas leadership resides in luxury estates in Qatar that are paid for by Iran. Most Middle Eastern governments are oppressive autocracies and they only way they can keep their own people from rebelling is to provide them with a common enemy as a distraction and that scapegoat is Israel. Just as states like Iran need Israel as a foil, Netanyahu, and his conservative government, need the Hamas terrorists and hostile regimes like Iran to keep himself in power.
Protest Netanyahu and his supporters as much as you want as they deserve it and more. Donate to feeding and caring for the people of Gaza. I do both. But don’t repeatedly drag Biden through the mud and dissuade people from voting for him. Biden is trying to solve this nightmare while Republicans are giving speeches about how they are going to exterminate Palestinians and confiscate their land.
All these slogans you repeat came from a Republican think tank. Please consider doing something constructive for the Palestinians instead of working to get Trump back in the White House, because if he does we all lose.
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