Image Transcription:
A tweet from the George Takei Twitter account which states:
"A Democrat was in the White House when my family was sent to the internment camps in 1941. It was an egregious violation of our human and civil rights.
It would have been understandable if people like me said they’d never vote for a Democrat again, given what had been done to us.
But being a liberal, being a progressive, means being able to look past my own grievances and concerns and think of the greater good. It means working from within the Democratic party to make it better, even when it has betrayed its values.
I went on to campaign for Adlai Stevenson when I became an adult. I marched for civil rights and had the honor of meeting Dr. Martin Luther King. I fought for redress for my community and have spent my life ensuring that America understood that we could not betray our Constitution in such a way ever again.
Bill Clinton broke my heart when he signed DOMA into law. It was a slap in the face to the LGBTQ community. And I knew that we still had much work to do. But I voted for him again in 1996 despite my misgivings, because the alternative was far worse. And my obligation as a citizen was to help choose the best leader for it, not to check out by not voting out of anger or protest.
There is no leader who will make the decision you want her or him to make 100 percent of the time. Your vote is a tool of hope for a better world. Use it wisely, for it is precious. Use it for others, for they are in need of your support, too."
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The last paragraph I find particularly powerful and something more people really should take into account.
I’m fine with people who don’t care about politics. I think they’re missing out on having their say, but I get it. However I will never understand your mindset.
You claim that participation legitimized the false choice, giving the lesser evil no incentive to reform, yet this is just wrong!
Voting for nobody means the status quo sticks. Voter participation can drop insanely low, and still nothing will happen. You’re just giving more power to those who do vote. The lesser evil has no need to change their ways, because you are irrelevant to them. You are not part of the equation for them. You are, quite simply, nothing. You may as well not exist. Your voice isn’t being heard, because the only time your voice matters in the US is when you vote. If you don’t vote, you have no voice.
But if you vote for the lesser evil, you are now a threat to the greater evil. The greater evil must now start leaning towards policies held by the lesser evil party in an attempt to take votes from the lesser evil party. By doing this, the lesser evil party once more must distinguish themselves, and thus they will move further away from evil in an attempt to keep your vote.
Voting for the lesser evil has a chance of improving the country. Not participating guarantees the opposite.
And all of this is ignoring the short term effects of how one party is definitely more evil than the other. One of them is actively trying to make the system worse, and less democratic. Ignoring that fact is so strange.
Please explain.
Lower voter participation is a threat to “moderate” parties, forcing them to appeal to radicals they’d previously written off as irrelevant if they wish to remain relevant themselves. Rather than preserving it, this disrupts the status quo.
This is a wonderful condemnation of our electoral process, detailing exactly why I’m being so openly performative with my refusal to vote for Democrats. A political party that is neither beholden to their constituency nor interested in appealing outside of it is not a viable party and must change to avoid a spiral into obscurity.
If only it were that simple. In truth, the existence of opposition emboldens reactionary parties who rely on actual or perceived external threats to supress internal conflict. Dem victories drive Republican voters and vice versa. If the Republicans vanished overnight, factions within the Dems would split tomorrow. The structure of our first-past-the-post electoral system guarantees it mathematically and allows them to be manipulated by Capitalists playing both sides.
This is the opposite of what we see in reality. Spite and fear drives the Republicans to further extremes to appeal to the most vocal and dedicated members of their base, and Democrats follow the Overton Window to the right in search of the new middle. This is called the “Political Ratchet Effect”.
I wish I could have such hope in the power of a single vote, but for that to actually be the case, we would need a Democrat party that’s willing to throw off it’s financiers and lobbyists to work for us instead. Until then, we’ll get (less) bread, (more) circuses, and maybe the occasional token gesture to rile up Reps and demotivate Dems to maintain the appearance of competition between them.
Just for clarity, I’m actually from the UK, but we also have FPTP voting and a number of similar issues. The Democrats would (for many issues) be considered right wing in the UK though… The really difference though is we actually have minor parties that can leech power from the big parties (see Brexit for a side effect of that).
I agree with this actually. The electoral process is horrible and needs reform. We just disagree on how to hopefully eventually achieve said reform
Gonna combine the rest here, because I think the crux of the issue is this. I believe that not voting leads to the Democrats shifting right, feeling no need to chase the “lost votes” that are too “radical” to ever convince. They’re too focused at trying to take votes from the Republicans to care about those further left.
Your (simplified) argument, if I’m correct, is that by not voting you present a base of people that are currently untapped, and hope to encourage the democrats to move towards you in order to convince you to vote for them again.
It’s effectively the same argument I used to claim that voting for the dems would encourage the republicans to shift left, but you’re trying to shift the dems further left instead.
My concern is I think I agree with you regarding how the dems are chasing the republicans to the right, but trying to think about this now (after a few drinks) I still think not voting is worse than voting. The not voting method seems to rely on things getting worse before they get better. i.e. you shift far enough right that there’s a big chunk of people not voting on the left that you can grab up in one fell swoop with a big policy change
Hmmm… I’ll have to think on this further, because you do raise interesting points to consider. So for now instead I would like to say thanks for replying in full and in detail. It’s rare to see people engage this way.
That’s the thing, I love arguing politics. It just gets frustrating when people come into it in bad faith rather than openly considering new perspectives and talking through the logic.
And anyway, I’m only threatening not to vote. Whether or not I actually do is separate from the effect of my ultimatum to the party.
If the Democrats believe that they need to shape up to earn the votes of people like me, then in a year’s time we might be lucky enough to have Democrats worth voting for on the ballot.
It’s pretty much the best move I could come up with given that I’m not rich enough to buy influence.