this post was submitted on 19 May 2025
894 points (91.5% liked)
Political Memes
8084 readers
2534 users here now
Welcome to politcal memes!
These are our rules:
Be civil
Jokes are okay, but don’t intentionally harass or disturb any member of our community. Sexism, racism and bigotry are not allowed. Good faith argumentation only. No posts discouraging people to vote or shaming people for voting.
No misinformation
Don’t post any intentional misinformation. When asked by mods, provide sources for any claims you make.
Posts should be memes
Random pictures do not qualify as memes. Relevance to politics is required.
No bots, spam or self-promotion
Follow instance rules, ask for your bot to be allowed on this community.
No AI generated content.
Content posted must not be created by AI with the intent to mimic the style of existing images
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Even when there isn't a clearly superior option; there's no excuse to not vote in the U. S. when the right to vote is such a pivotable portion of your history. We are barely over a half century away; only a mere 60 years. Unconscionable.
If voting is a right, then surely not voting is also a right. You seem to be confusing it with the word "responsibility."
Considering I never said that one doesn't have the right to not vote, I don't believe I am; but you are correct that I consider it a responsibility.
On the one hand, corporatist party, on the other, literal fascists. Yes, clearly there is no superior option.
You seem to be deriving meaning unstated in my comment.
Then maybe vote for a third party.
A vote for a third party in presidential is not a vote.
It is a vote, and over 1.5 million Americans (excluding those for RFK) made such votes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_United_States_presidential_election#Results
IMO, progressives (who's not too bothered by Stein's cozying up to Russia a bit) from California, most of New England, DC, Maryland, Hawaii, or Washington (state), and yet yammer on about how bad third parties are because they split the Democrat vote, are probably stupid, or at least ignorant, and should give some of the time they spend watching CNN or Vaush to reading election stats.
Hey, I don't need to comment because you said it all for me.
Election stats? You ever hear the phrase "There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics"
Stats on their own given a poor analysis of an average joe/jane can mislead just as much if not more than a talking head can.
The core fact remains that voting for a third party under a first past the post system is risking permitting the greater evil to win.
Yes, I think it's from Twain.
I backed my assertions with stats, however poor you think they are as analysis.
What do yo back up your assertions with, other than lame DNC, CNN, and Vaush talking points?
Its commonly misattributed to him.
Your assertion is too vague to rebut directly. And I did not say stats are "poor analysis" I said using stats on their own without the background in contextualizing stats makes any analysis nearly worthless.
So you already have made up your mind about what and how I think allowing you to dismiss my actual points contained in my post, which you've conveniently ignored.
So I'll repost my most important point: The core fact remains that voting for a third party under a first past the post system is risking permitting the greater evil to win.
Apparently, you're right on that.
FWIW:
wp:Lies, damned lies, and statistics
So what are you saying, that a Californian progressive who voted for Stein made a dumb choice and the one who voted for Harris made the smart choice? Are you saying that not supporting or voting for leftist competition for the Democrats, and working in the system of supporting the contender who wins the Democrat candidacy, will expedite reforms, including election reforms, more quickly. Did Harris even publicly utter the phrases "ranked balloting" or "proportional representation" in 2024?
What points? Third parties bad, lesser evil good, because vote-splitting?
In some states, the risk might be worth it in the Presidential elections.
What if in the 2028 US Presidential election, the GOP nominates Lisa Murkowski for President, the Democrats nominate Biden, who recovered to having the cognitive and speech abilities that he had in January 2022, and Joe Manchin as his running mate? Let's also say Stein runs again, after condemning the Russian invasion of Ukraine, paid a visit to Kyiv, Kharkiv, and Kherson, and shook hands with Zelenskyy; in September of that year was polling 15%; and you're a voting citizen of a state that since 2000 averaged a >10% plurality in Presidential elections?
Hypothetical, but still, who would you vote for?
Blue states are the area where my argument is weakest, but honestly as a means of voting against Trump I'd probably still vote Harris if I lived in Cali. I'm less judgemental of people in solid blue states here voting third party, but I still think voting third party even then introduces future risk of vote splitting, but its a gaussian and temporal risk. So its hard to conceptualize.
Further, doing so and openly stating you intend to do so encourages people in purple and red states to potentially do the same. And lets be completely honest here: third party voters are going to be incredibly vocal about their vote. Third party and non-voters fucking love jerking themselves off about how virtuous they are for not voting for Harris.
I don't know. But not for fucking Jill Stein and can tell you that much. I wouldn't trust her 180 on Ukraine at all and there are other stances of hers I think are dumb. Nor would I likely bother with a different third party. I'd probably look look very closely at my options between red and blue. And I'd probably grit my teeth and vote for Biden depending on how he campaigned but I'd not be nearly as terrified since Trump is out of the picture.
And that's the rub: in your scenario fascism is not on the ballot. The stakes are significantly lower. So the details would matter more.
I don't think she did, but neither did Trump. And in fact Trump is largely interested in destroying what little democracy we have.
I'm going to be honest though, it might as well all be hypothetical. Americans are fucked. Its game over, and we very very much deserve what's coming.
I'm not just saying blue states: New Hampshire was blue, but only because Harris got fewer than 25 000 more votes than Trump; so yes, voting for Harris in states like New Hampshire is far more forgivable. Ditto "solid blue states": at the risk of pedantry, that could mean blue reps, blue senators, blue governors, but being purple in the vote for President.
I also include red states with big pluralities. If you're a progressive who lives in, say, Wyoming, West Virginia, or Alabama, the people you vote for President are probably not going to win your state for the next few decades, so you might as well vote for a more-progressive-than-the-Democrat candidates—vote your heart.
It feels good, man.
Thanks for answering. 😁🙂
But Trump and RFK, Jr at least went to the Libertarian convention, and Chase got a little over 1/3rd the votes JoJo got.
Imagine Biden or Harris went to a Green Party convention. I can see many of the older Democratic party insiders reaching for their pills, buffers, or defibrillators. 😁
The US had tough times before.
I was in greater despair over the US about 20 years ago.
Then either you are a fascist or you aren't paying attention.
EDIT: Or an accelerationist. In which case also still just a fascist but a more delusional one.
4th option: I've read a bit of history.
What Israel is doing to Gaza is minor compared to what the US did to Iraq. Then Obama came along.
Decades before that, the US did worse to Indochina than the aforementioned combined, but it ended under a Republican President—the same one who dined with Mao.
80 years and a few weeks ago, Hitler murdered a a despicable tyrant.
Presumably Germany recovered less than 20 years after that.
You are OK with death and suffering if there is a light at the end of a tunnel. You are a psychopath who views individuals as disposable as long as humanity/civilization benefits in the long run.
no.
If you think we were worse off 20 years ago, you either are a psychopath or you are clueless.
Life is going to get a whole hell of a lot worse for a fuck ton of people because Trump won. Way more than during W. Bush.
I simply cannot grasp why some people believe voting 3rd party in a presidential election isn't one of the dumbest possible things you can do in life.
Like, beyond the fact that the 3rd party candidate with the most votes in 2024 got a whopping HALF OF A SINGLE PERCENT of the total votes cast, meaning a 3rd party literally cannot win, there's still the reality that even if they did win, no 3rd party has A SINGLE MEMBER IN CONGRESS, so if a 3rd party presidential candidate actually won, they wouldn't be able to do shit, because they'd have literally ZERO allies in Congress.
I'm pretty sure anyone voting 3rd party for president has absolutely no clue how our government works. They have no concept of the reality they live in.
You might want to say that to Michiganders who voted for Stein (and Oliver) because of Gaza and the US presence in the Middle East.
The 2024 Presidential election isn't the only one in US history: there have been 57 others.
Trump had few allies in Congress before 2016, but now members are the Republican caucus are falling all over themselves to curry favour from him.
You are so correct—as members of the herd generally are. I like people who resort to exaggerations, over generalizations, and distortions.
Non-voters are beneath Trump supporters in my opinion. They're the lowest of the low. A complete failure to understand their civic duty that a ton of people died to allow them to have. At least Trump supporters get involved. In the worst, dumbest possible way, but involved nonetheless.