No, its not. you can’t infer that. jfc people read what I’m writing to you.
Not Voting can mean a number of things depending on the individual, including but not limited to:
I needed to work
My polling place had unrealistic hours.
X/Y/Z for Candidate/Issue were unacceptable to me wholesale.
I’d be fine with either
If ALL candidates are unacceptable from the get go that’s a candidate issue not the voters problem. thats literally the definition of a line in the sand. the fact you can’t distinguish it from ‘being fine with either’ doesnt mean what you’re implying is true. BOTH voters are fairly easy to win over long as your candidate isnt ideologically opposed to something they actually care about.
Here is a simple action you can take to distinguish between the two non-voters:
‘What issue would get you to support candidate Y?’
-> if they give a policy that neither candidate is running on you’ve found someone who finds both objectionable.
-> if they say they’re not interested in politics / can’t think of anything then you’ve found someone who is actually indifferent.
you need to approach these two voters very differently when trying to get them to vote. For example: my answer is ‘support universal health care, fix the visa program so people are not tied to a company, set a inflation matching living wage’ there are a ton of issues personally that would get me to cast my vote, and not a single one starts with ‘but Y (republicans) are X (murdering children)!’ or uses the phrase ‘least worse choice’.
You can get away with the ‘least worse choice’ nonsense with the indifferent candidate. but you’re still more likely to win them over with something they want.
false. I vote every election, I dont vote for everything on the ballot, sometimes i leave the ballot empty. two very different things. all you need to do is look at mandami’s results for the distinction. spend some time there and understand that there are many people willing to show up for the right candidate but wont show up for the shitshow that is the dem party currently.
You need to stop putting your values into your distinctions between the tiers.
false. I vote every election, I dont vote for everything on the ballot, sometime i leave the ballot empty. two very different things
So… You didn’t “not vote”. Cool. What I said. Awesome.
I think there is some fundamental confusion here that I can’t go into your brain and point to.
spend some time there and understand that there are many people willing to show up for the right candidate but wont show up for the shitshow that is the dem party currently.
There are many things on a ballot, and many different dems. There are members of the DSA running under the dem ticket. There are members of the WFP running under the dem ticket.
I will apologize only slightly for the caps here - NOT VOTING SENDS A MESSAGE THAT YOU ARE OK WITH ANY OUTCOME. Whether you want that to be the message or not is inconsequential. If you want to do something about the candidates, DO IT MORE THAN A MONTH AND CHANGE BEFORE AN ELECTION.
No, please stop and think. I’m telling you that you cannot infer what you think your inferring from people who didnt vote. The non-vote is literally a schrodingers cat situation you cannot make claims about the non-voters position unless you explicitly ask them.
Let me redo your list of options.
A candidate is acceptable to me. <- Voting for a good candidate, Voting for a better candidate than you have, Voting for the least shit choice, Voting for the worst possible choice.
None of the candidates are acceptable to me. <- Not voting
I wont vote for some other reason. <- electoral fraud, time constraints, life, giving up, etc.
The fact I personally show up and hand in an empty ballot is a personal behavioral quirk. I’m telling you that you’re entire premise is built on the false assumption that the two non-voting instances are the same thing. which they are not. they’re very different and need to be solved in very different ways. and there are more than two variations there but they’re outside the scope of this discussion.
Dems are currently trying to figure out how to solve the loss of voters who are saying ‘None of the candidates are acceptable to me’ by assuming they’re in ‘A candidate is acceptable to me’ group (someone who ends up voting). Instead of realizing that anyone in the ‘A candidate is acceptable to me’ group already has a prefered candidate (that isnt them) and that they should figure out why they lost voters.
I’m telling you that you cannot infer what you think your inferring from people who didnt vote.
I’m not the one who will be doing the inferring. This should be the first thing you try to understand before trying to get me to pretend what you’re suggesting is going to make sense (PS: It doesn’t).
The ones who will be doing the inferring are the political strategists. The ones who tell politicians, who tell the DNC and RNC the best strategy for what they want.
You know that good ol’ meme about the overton window? Want to know how it keeps cranking to the right?
“Leftists aren’t voting. To get voters, you’ll need to shift right.”
This comes from polling information, from voting records, etc. Not voting is a great way to keep cranking that window to the right.
They aren’t going to bother trying to capture the people not voting.
This is shown further with systems that allow someone like Mamdani to succeed. They are already working on one approach to capture votes, so they try to prevent situations that will require a strategy change.
You can obviously do whatever you’d like, I’m encouraging people to vote. I sure as anything won’t tell people to not vote and continue decades of the same message, get the same results, and then be mad about those results.
I also know that if you want to make a difference in who is on the ballot, that doesn’t happen after the ballots are set. That was months ago. I put my efforts in to push the people I wanted to then. Some of them are on the ballot, maybe I helped with it, maybe I should have done more, idk. But I did what I could and there are some progressive candidates locally that I wanted that hopefully will get in.
And if you want to change who is on the ballot too, you should also put in efforts a lot earlier than a month and change before. The deadline has already passed just about everywhere, including last-minute petitions for a vacancy.
Vote by mail ballots are being prepped (I do not recommend voting by mail, use a drop box).
Early voting is single digit weeks away.
The time to complain about who is on the ballot has long since passed.
Now take a moment and realize that if people didnt complain then, and then don’t vote now, what message comes across?
The ones who will be doing the inferring are the political strategists. The ones who tell politicians, who tell the DNC and RNC the best strategy for what they want.
Oi. Let me explain something clearly: You can literally be screaming outside of their conventions and they’ll still ignore you (see harris’ campaign). The only thing they’ll understand is you not voting for them, that does not mean you need to vote for the other guy. long as you continue to think ‘you must vote for the least bad option’ they’ll continue to ignore you and you wont be able to convince people who already dont vote for your ‘least bad option’ to come out.
The time to complain about who is on the ballot has long since passed.
no its not. candidates need to give people a reason to vote for them. remember harris’ 11th hour policy reveal? because I do… fucking weed legalization. a policy basically everyone already has. not health care, not a reasonable life. weed. jfc.
Now take a moment and realize that if people didnt complain then, and then don’t vote now, what message comes across?
people have been complaining for literally decades. harris literally voted against raising the minimum wage as VP and you wonder why she lost. Remember obama’s hope and change + universal healthcare? because I do. where is it? oh right, every candidate who wasnt bernie / warren ran on not doing it since.
“Leftists aren’t voting. To get voters, you’ll need to shift right.”
congrats welcome to corporate propaganda, first time here? this simply isnt fucking true. never has been. they dont vote for shitty corporate candidates, there is a difference. people who understand what the term marxism is about are not the ones you need to convince to vote. Do you know how many times i’ve had to explain to people that ‘electibility’ means absolutely nothing? They’re not the leftists. Its the liberals like yourself who think constantly giving your vote to the corporate cunts sliding to the right is worthwhile as a form of harm reduction. jfc.
You can obviously do whatever you’d like, I’m encouraging people to vote.
no you’re not. you’re telling people they’re bad people for not voting for shitty candidates and wonder why they dont want to interact with you.
while completely ignoring the knock on effects your preferred voting strategy (a stupid fucking concept, having a strategy, in the first place) has on lived outcomes which are similarly bad. arguably for more people atm since it resulted in trump twice because the dems politicians havent learned. they’re still supporting the war in iran, they’re still blocking wage increases, they’re still blocking minimum paid leave, they’re still trying to throw trans individual and other minority groups under the bus, etc.
You want to encourage people to vote? go push your candidates to adopt policies the people you want to encourage to vote want. Don’t tell them to vote for the least shitty candidate. talk to them and find out what they want. they’ll fucking tell you. then talk to your candidate and tell them to grow a pair. 20 million people were screaming at you idiots during biden/harris’ campaign that a red line was being cross. wake the fuck up. stop with the strategy nonsense and attempting to shame people who dont think your candidates are worth two shits.
All I see if you here struggling to prove yourself right.
That sounds like a you problem. ;)
functionally I’m grateful harris lost it woke a lot of people up. sadly not you though. you’ll continue trucking on with your ‘at least I voted for the least horrible fucking option!’ path blindly until the ground falls out below you into fascism.
“I’m grateful people are dying, children are being murdered, and families are being torn apart because I feel like some people realized Trump does bad things” is a pretty shit take IMO.
I didnt care that harris lost. i’ve literally said this repeatedly. she lost because of her own mistakes, like supporting a genocide and ignoring the economic plight of the middle class. While literally 20 million people screamed at her to change course.
oh boy! THIS CANDIDATE DOES A SMIDGEN LESS GENOCIDE. SIGN ME UP! wtf are you goldilocks trying to pick a mattress?
Exactly, I understood your point precisely. The problem is you dont understand human behavior and its why you end up losing. repeatedly. to trump.
You: I dont have to change! You have to change!.
Other person: walks away
You: shocked pikachu
No, you clearly did not understand.
“Not voting” is a message of apathy, not discontent.
“Not voting” is being OK with things as they are.
“Not voting” is not taking every avenue possible.
“Not voting” is nothing more than giving up.
You should try reading my comment again.
Removed by mod
Removed by mod
No, its not. you can’t infer that. jfc people read what I’m writing to you.
Not Voting can mean a number of things depending on the individual, including but not limited to:
If ALL candidates are unacceptable from the get go that’s a candidate issue not the voters problem. thats literally the definition of a line in the sand. the fact you can’t distinguish it from ‘being fine with either’ doesnt mean what you’re implying is true. BOTH voters are fairly easy to win over long as your candidate isnt ideologically opposed to something they actually care about.
Here is a simple action you can take to distinguish between the two non-voters: ‘What issue would get you to support candidate Y?’
-> if they give a policy that neither candidate is running on you’ve found someone who finds both objectionable.
-> if they say they’re not interested in politics / can’t think of anything then you’ve found someone who is actually indifferent.
you need to approach these two voters very differently when trying to get them to vote. For example: my answer is ‘support universal health care, fix the visa program so people are not tied to a company, set a inflation matching living wage’ there are a ton of issues personally that would get me to cast my vote, and not a single one starts with ‘but Y (republicans) are X (murdering children)!’ or uses the phrase ‘least worse choice’.
You can get away with the ‘least worse choice’ nonsense with the indifferent candidate. but you’re still more likely to win them over with something they want.
You really enjoy being wrong, don’t you?
left / right whats the difference. not my problem you dont agree/understand what im telling you.
As I said. you’re not understanding.
false. I vote every election, I dont vote for everything on the ballot, sometimes i leave the ballot empty. two very different things. all you need to do is look at mandami’s results for the distinction. spend some time there and understand that there are many people willing to show up for the right candidate but wont show up for the shitshow that is the dem party currently.
You need to stop putting your values into your distinctions between the tiers.
So… You didn’t “not vote”. Cool. What I said. Awesome.
I think there is some fundamental confusion here that I can’t go into your brain and point to.
There are many things on a ballot, and many different dems. There are members of the DSA running under the dem ticket. There are members of the WFP running under the dem ticket.
I will apologize only slightly for the caps here - NOT VOTING SENDS A MESSAGE THAT YOU ARE OK WITH ANY OUTCOME. Whether you want that to be the message or not is inconsequential. If you want to do something about the candidates, DO IT MORE THAN A MONTH AND CHANGE BEFORE AN ELECTION.
If thats a message you are OK with, go for it.
I’m not.
Edit: mobile typo.
Again this incorrect. It can also mean NEITHER OUTCOME IS ACCEPTABLE TO ME see the difference?
Thats your intention. That isn’t the message.
No, please stop and think. I’m telling you that you cannot infer what you think your inferring from people who didnt vote. The non-vote is literally a schrodingers cat situation you cannot make claims about the non-voters position unless you explicitly ask them.
Let me redo your list of options.
The fact I personally show up and hand in an empty ballot is a personal behavioral quirk. I’m telling you that you’re entire premise is built on the false assumption that the two non-voting instances are the same thing. which they are not. they’re very different and need to be solved in very different ways. and there are more than two variations there but they’re outside the scope of this discussion.
Dems are currently trying to figure out how to solve the loss of voters who are saying ‘None of the candidates are acceptable to me’ by assuming they’re in ‘A candidate is acceptable to me’ group (someone who ends up voting). Instead of realizing that anyone in the ‘A candidate is acceptable to me’ group already has a prefered candidate (that isnt them) and that they should figure out why they lost voters.
Already did, but sure.
I’m not the one who will be doing the inferring. This should be the first thing you try to understand before trying to get me to pretend what you’re suggesting is going to make sense (PS: It doesn’t).
The ones who will be doing the inferring are the political strategists. The ones who tell politicians, who tell the DNC and RNC the best strategy for what they want.
You know that good ol’ meme about the overton window? Want to know how it keeps cranking to the right?
“Leftists aren’t voting. To get voters, you’ll need to shift right.”
This comes from polling information, from voting records, etc. Not voting is a great way to keep cranking that window to the right.
They aren’t going to bother trying to capture the people not voting.
This is shown further with systems that allow someone like Mamdani to succeed. They are already working on one approach to capture votes, so they try to prevent situations that will require a strategy change.
You can obviously do whatever you’d like, I’m encouraging people to vote. I sure as anything won’t tell people to not vote and continue decades of the same message, get the same results, and then be mad about those results.
I also know that if you want to make a difference in who is on the ballot, that doesn’t happen after the ballots are set. That was months ago. I put my efforts in to push the people I wanted to then. Some of them are on the ballot, maybe I helped with it, maybe I should have done more, idk. But I did what I could and there are some progressive candidates locally that I wanted that hopefully will get in.
And if you want to change who is on the ballot too, you should also put in efforts a lot earlier than a month and change before. The deadline has already passed just about everywhere, including last-minute petitions for a vacancy.
Vote by mail ballots are being prepped (I do not recommend voting by mail, use a drop box).
Early voting is single digit weeks away.
The time to complain about who is on the ballot has long since passed.
Now take a moment and realize that if people didnt complain then, and then don’t vote now, what message comes across?
Not the one you’re claiming IMO.
Oi. Let me explain something clearly: You can literally be screaming outside of their conventions and they’ll still ignore you (see harris’ campaign). The only thing they’ll understand is you not voting for them, that does not mean you need to vote for the other guy. long as you continue to think ‘you must vote for the least bad option’ they’ll continue to ignore you and you wont be able to convince people who already dont vote for your ‘least bad option’ to come out.
no its not. candidates need to give people a reason to vote for them. remember harris’ 11th hour policy reveal? because I do… fucking weed legalization. a policy basically everyone already has. not health care, not a reasonable life. weed. jfc.
people have been complaining for literally decades. harris literally voted against raising the minimum wage as VP and you wonder why she lost. Remember obama’s hope and change + universal healthcare? because I do. where is it? oh right, every candidate who wasnt bernie / warren ran on not doing it since.
congrats welcome to corporate propaganda, first time here? this simply isnt fucking true. never has been. they dont vote for shitty corporate candidates, there is a difference. people who understand what the term marxism is about are not the ones you need to convince to vote. Do you know how many times i’ve had to explain to people that ‘electibility’ means absolutely nothing? They’re not the leftists. Its the liberals like yourself who think constantly giving your vote to the corporate cunts sliding to the right is worthwhile as a form of harm reduction. jfc.
no you’re not. you’re telling people they’re bad people for not voting for shitty candidates and wonder why they dont want to interact with you. while completely ignoring the knock on effects your preferred voting strategy (a stupid fucking concept, having a strategy, in the first place) has on lived outcomes which are similarly bad. arguably for more people atm since it resulted in trump twice because the dems politicians havent learned. they’re still supporting the war in iran, they’re still blocking wage increases, they’re still blocking minimum paid leave, they’re still trying to throw trans individual and other minority groups under the bus, etc.
You want to encourage people to vote? go push your candidates to adopt policies the people you want to encourage to vote want. Don’t tell them to vote for the least shitty candidate. talk to them and find out what they want. they’ll fucking tell you. then talk to your candidate and tell them to grow a pair. 20 million people were screaming at you idiots during biden/harris’ campaign that a red line was being cross. wake the fuck up. stop with the strategy nonsense and attempting to shame people who dont think your candidates are worth two shits.
Lol, then walk away bro. All I see if you here struggling to prove yourself right.
That sounds like a you problem. ;)
functionally I’m grateful harris lost it woke a lot of people up. sadly not you though. you’ll continue trucking on with your ‘at least I voted for the least horrible fucking option!’ path blindly until the ground falls out below you into fascism.
You’re glad we’re at war with Iran? You’re glad ICE is murdering citizens and disappearing non citizens with impunity? You are 14
Are you done putting words in my mouth? go troll elsewhere child.
I didn’t put shit in your mouth beside what was already there, child.
“I’m grateful people are dying, children are being murdered, and families are being torn apart because I feel like some people realized Trump does bad things” is a pretty shit take IMO.
You mean all the things biden/harris were enabling the last year 1/2 of their term? wake up. others already did.
The scale is quite a bit different, as are many of the actions taken. Let’s not ignore reality.
If there were no actual difference you wouldn’t care if Harris lost.
I didnt care that harris lost. i’ve literally said this repeatedly. she lost because of her own mistakes, like supporting a genocide and ignoring the economic plight of the middle class. While literally 20 million people screamed at her to change course.
oh boy! THIS CANDIDATE DOES A SMIDGEN LESS GENOCIDE. SIGN ME UP! wtf are you goldilocks trying to pick a mattress?
Mhmm.
Done with this comment chain too.
yeah I dont vote for jsut a little genocide sorry not sorry.