#I was already convinced not to vote for Trump

[angstandhappiness]

FUCKING YIKES, THE HYPOCRISY

[technofeudalism]

i keep seeing people (mainly liberals to be fair) suggest that the Democrats should just let the electorate suffer the consequences of their votes and they’ll come “crawling back” in 2028 and i’m sorry but how do people really think all of this works?

so people didn’t vote for the Democrats in 2024 because they felt like they weren’t offering them anything… but if they spend the next 4 years doing nothing and letting the Republicans tear everything down from the inside and then nominate Pete Buttigieg in 2028 to run on the same platform as Kamala, you think people will go “oh, that sounds much better now”?

like… shit is going to be so much worse in 4 years even with any kind of milquetoast pushback from the Democrats. so much so that it’s not even a foregone conclusion there will even be an election in 2028.

do you genuinely think that a platform that didn’t exhibit enough urgency or comprehension of peoples material conditions in 2024 is really going to be more effective in 2028? or do you think maybe the people who haven’t been harmed by the time 2028 rolls around will be even more convinced that Trump is the answer and the people who have been harmed even more than they already were will have lost faith completely?

[safirefire]

I know liberals on here accuse anyone who’s critical of Harris to be Russian psyops but even CNN is reporting about her hypocrisy and rightward shift. They have on a republican legislator who is endorsing her who said out loud he would not have endorsed her 2019 positions but is endorsing her now because she’s “evolved as a politician”

[lastoneout]

It's important to remember who our really enemies are but I genuinely am starting to get pissed with how many leftists I've seen on other sites gleefully mocking minorities who voted for Trump when they post about how scared they are. Like yeah I get it you're mad at them, I am too, but responding to that video of that latina woman sobbing because she's terrified of being deported with "lmao you deserve this have fun when ICE gets you" isn't okay, actually.

Like I cannot stress enough that no one fucking deserves that. No one. Not even the people who voted for Trump. You should never take vicarious joy in watching minorities, or anyone honestly, suffer horrific violence ffs deciding that some people are exempt from having human rights is the logic of the enemy, it's not suddenly okay when it's aimed at people you hate.

The lack of compassion is legit concerning. For the love of god remember who the fuck your real enemies are and stick to your goddamn morals even when it's not fun. I don't want to associate with these people either but I know the right thing to do is protect vulnerable people from fucking ICE so I'm going to do it. Ask yourself why it's so easy for you to set aside your beliefs the second they're tested.

[centrally-unplanned]

So I think I will just add "the declining efficacy of protests" to the topic pile for an effort post since it is a very good topic that needs depth to cover. I will be briefer therefore here, no real expectation that it will be super convincing or anything.

protests are an incredibly important signal of how pissed off people are about something. protests can and frequently do serve an important function of being a highly credible and highly visible signal to people pissed off about something that other people are also pissed off about that thing--they served this role in the first trump administration wrt the muslim ban.

They are a very weak and indeterminate signal of all of that, actually! Which you sort of self-prove here: the muslim ban protests were quite small. A few thousand people at a dozen or so airports., The US is over 300 million people. This is anti-data, it is pure selection bias, it tells you nothing. One can try to claim "sure but that number of highly active people indicates a mass backing of semi-active people, it is like bubbles from a boiling pot" but everyone knows that isn't true, a class of people who "professionally" protest (students, party activists, etc), composed them. They are not the organic bubbling of the narodnaya volya, they are a faction everyone already knew existed.

Protests can be effective by surfacing undiscussed issues - if Maine's lobster fisherman "March on DC" due to a dispute on water pollution runoff I bet some people will go "okay fair enough let's take a look here". But the Trump muslim travel ban was not undiscussed! Every media source on the planet was talking about it. Hell, that is, in a lot of ways, why there was a protest! People think the protests create the tweets but just as often it is the other way around. They generate more tweets, sure, but there is a harshly declining value on these things. Most people's minds were made up and protests are very poor as an argument for those who were on the fence.

Which again ties back to the actual results - the protests did nothing. They (or the ban overall) were not a big topic driving median voters in the 2020 election, Trump didn't budge, etc. Maybe not literally nothing, eh, I'm sure the ACLU got marginally more funding for their legal suits due to bonus tweets driving donors. I don't think the individual protests in this case were like "bad" to be clear, marginal donor driving aint nothing for a few thousand people to spend a day achieving. But that is very small bore.

And they didn't do anything because:

(and the media is plainly not covering what is happening in the US government right now enough)

Guys:

My friends:

My dudes:

"Look if they just replaced that Groundhog Day Story with a headline on Birthright Citizenship the battle would be won"

It is actually impossible to drive more attention to the current activities of the Trump Administration because literally 100% of all political bandwidth that exists is currently being allocated to it. Trump has monopolized attention on his activities so badly the Danes are reading about defense policy on the daily, this shit is insane.

And, of course, Fox News is not covering these stories the way you want them to. The constellation of alt-right podcasters are not covering these stories like they are bad. But protests are not going to shift that needle! Because this (to play that transition card again):

americans must communicate to other americans in clear and difficult to ignore terms that 1) yes, people are mad about this, 2) no, they won't stop being mad about it, 3) you should be mad about it too and 4) if you are mad about it you are not alone,

Is false. It isn't true. Liberals are mad about this. Which you know because they are liberals and they didn't vote for Trump! Conservatives just aren't mad about this, not yet! And street protests by liberals - which is all they will ever been seen as because that is probably what they actually would be, it is lying to claim they would speak for the masses - will certainly not convince them.

We just had a real street protest, a vocal expression by the American people, a resounding call of a million voices making themselves heard:

And expecting people less than a month into the admin of a winner of that contest to give a single thought to what a crowd 0.1% the size of this one is waving signs about is folly. It isn't gonna happen.

Which I get is frustrating by the way. Trump is awful, doing real damage, he is correctly reading that he has a virtual blank check on power right now because that is how the system (both the gov and the Republican Party) works. Voters were fools to vote for him. Reality just sucks sometimes, it is a world of fools.

(This of course is laser-focused on the idea of "protest" a la things like the Muslim Ban response or the Women's March. Dems are currently doing many other things that are valuable and could be doing more. It is complicated but tweets and podcasts are almost certainly more important things to focus on. And hey if you wanna pivot to violently attacking or overthrowing the government none of this critique applies!)

It's kind of weird to me how little in the way of mass protests we're seeing in response to this Trump stuff.

I'm usually skeptical of protests. The modern, uh, left-wing protest culture seems actively calibrated to accomplish nothing other than making its participates feel good.

But this seems like exactly the type of situation where protesting could genuinely accomplish things. Trump is doing things that are (1) bad, (2) unpopular, and (3) illegal. That's the ideal case for protests to make progress!

Like, Trump isn't personally going to care about protests. But the thing they're good for is drawing attention to an issue that people either don't know about or would rather ignore, but where they'll be on your side if they have to actually think about what's going on.

That doesn't apply to most wedge issues, and especially not most of the ones that get the left fifth of society really excited. But "Trump shut down Medicaid" or "Trump handed the Treasury over to private actors who are refusing to spend money on [insert program here]" or "Trump put in a bunch of tariffs and now your groceries and phones are way more expensive" all totally apply.

[caswlw]

i’m just so devastated, exhausted, and emotionally drained. steve kornacki, thanks for your service. big fuck you to anyone who abstained, voted for trump, or voted third party.

[rabbithaver]

every so often i will see a post from a leftist on this website that is so egregiously ableist that i remember that like. oh yeah the userbase of leftists on this website is violently anti-disabled people and will jump at any chance to demonize any of us for any reason. i just forget that fact because i'm extremely dedicated to curating my space

i'm paraphrasing here but i saw a post that said, "every time i see an American [disabled person] mention being scared about the election because they're afraid of losing their benefits i have to laugh. anybody who wants blood-soaked money from the US government deserves to starve" which. like. goodness that's a lot to unpack. i think we should burn the whole suitcase instead !

[irenespring]

I was going to make my next politics post about Project 2025 and its likelihood of trying to ban fic in the US but then I saw this and fuck it, we're talking about this right now.

Not sure whether my Jewish alarm bells or history person alarm bells are ringing louder, but this is getting really scary. This is Nazi shit. Full-tilt unabashed Nazi rhetoric. He's talking about assigning people numbers and putting them on buses in massive groups. He wants to do it with violence. With the Supreme Court the way it is right now, he could do it. He can kill people with impunity, as long as he's doing it as President. That is the current law.

If you can vote in this election, you need to vote for Harris. Whether you like her or not, she is not using Nazi rhetoric and elevating admitted Nazis (*cough* Robinson in North Carolina *cough*). She is the only one with a shot at victory.

We need to stop this man. If that means making a pragmatic move and voting for someone you detest on some issues but who is not going to assign humans serial numbers and round them up into detention camps bloodily---fucking pinch your nose and do it.

Take it from someone who has to spend a large portion of their week reading history studies...history will not remember your supposed reason for not voting. You will be remembered as a Trump supporter, because you supported Trump.

Tldr: We need to stop this man in this election. Vote for Harris.

[dreamteamemojis]

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[nagitoedit]

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[umanta]

posts that made me think 'hmm, maybe there is a point to voting in the us election': a post simply mentioning that the next president will pick ppl for the supreme court, listing some of the judges who are likely to retire this term, and reminding us the kind of majority we have now and how we got to this point. no actual mention of voting, just info. an info post about how you can register to vote and why voter disenfranchisement is bad

posts which make me quite uncharitably and falsely feel like usamericans think a lukewarm centrist policy in their country is more important than a genocide of brown ppl: every blamey post that treats ppl choosing not to vote like they're a) stupid radicals who don't understand strategy or b) weepy emotional babies who are too childish to do what the adults are telling them

[tirsynni]

If Trump wins in November, it won't be because of this weekend. It will be because his people will show up. They will not lose focus. They will vote.

I'm so tired of the defeatist talk. The anti-Trumpers outnumber the Trumpers by a lot. We could win in a landslide if people just showed at the polls and voted for Biden. The problem is that so many people let themselves decide that their vote won't matter or decide to divide the vote for short-sighted reasons. I can already imagine the sheer amount of people who see the events of this weekend, decide that Trump won, and decide that there's no point in voting. NO. Fucking VOTE.

Specifically, vote for Biden. Do not let psyops or idiots convince you to vote for a third party. Third parties do NOT win presidential elections. That is how Democrats have REPEATEDLY lost presidential elections. No, this time will not be different. You need to vote, and you need to vote for Biden. Otherwise, we get Trump in office and you can kiss your rights good bye.

This weekend didn't decide anything. All that matters is who shows up and votes. By the numbers, if people actually vote, the Democratic party will win. That simple.

[eowyntheavenger]

Palestine and the US election

I’m done with Twitter soundbite takes that voting blue = supporting genocide. I see a lot of people making an argument that goes like this: "Biden has sent arms to Israel, helping its government commit genocide against Palestine. Therefore, voting for him in the 2024 US election, if he is the Democratic nominee, is supporting genocide, and NOT voting for him helps Palestine." There's a lot wrong with this view, so let's break it down.

It's true that Biden has sent a lot of arms to Israel and bypassed Congress multiple times to do it, and it's indefensible. I'm ashamed that any US politician would help Israel wage its brutal, genocidal war against the Palestinian people. As one of Israel's closest partners, the US could actually be using its leverage right now to put pressure on Israel’s government—I’m thinking about how apartheid in South Africa fell, in part, because of international pressure. That's what should be happening, but instead the US government is literally just helping Israel kill Palestinians.

I wish there were a strong pro-Palestine candidate in the upcoming election. The best bet in that regard would probably be Bernie Sanders, since he's prominent enough, well-liked enough, and has good ideas, not just on this issue but on many things (and yeah, he's way too old, but so are the current frontrunners). But he's already ruled out another run. Unless an amazing candidate materializes and wins the Democratic nomination (please vote in the primaries where you live), it will probably be Biden running against Trump. It’s not guaranteed, but it’s likely.

Here's what people need to understand: the election will not be "genocide Joe" vs. "pro-Palestine candidate." It will most likely be a choice between these two candidates:

On the one hand, Biden, who has armed Israel, but can be pressured to change his policies because he can be pushed left; who is not a wannabe dictator; who will not destroy what's left of the country's democratic norms; who will not encourage coups, political assassinations, or jail his political opponents; who will not utterly stifle dissent.

Or on the other hand, Trump, who is beholden to a fanatical evangelical base that backs Israel no matter what, that actually wants more conflict because they are part of a death cult. Trump, who is not susceptible in any way to pressure from the left, but is susceptible to pressure from the right and the far right. Trump, who has been clear all along about his desire to be a dictator; who will destroy what's left of democratic norms; who has already encouraged a coup to overthrow a democratic election, encouraged the assassination of his own vice president, and is openly planning to jail his political opponents if he returns to the White House.

(This isn't even touching on Trump's positions on trans rights, gay rights, women's rights, the environment, policing, immigration, or his racism against every group he could be racist against, or his liability for sexual assault, or a whole bunch of other issues).

There's a very convincing argument that Netanyahu actually wants Biden to lose the US election and Trump to win. That's because Netanyahu knows that Biden has in the past responded to pressure from his own party and the public. If there are a lot of people criticizing his policies, it gives him pause. Trump doesn't operate like that. If millions of Americans criticize his policies as inhumane he just lashes out at them. In short, Biden views criticism from the left as a liability that he has to act on. Trump views criticism from the left as an incentive to be even worse.

Biden is not the candidate I want. But you need to understand that if Trump wins the election, he won't just arm Israel like Biden is doing now: he will do that and more. Not only will he help Israel escalate its war, your very freedom of speech to support Palestine will be under attack. Trump might even decide that financial support for Palestinians or charities that help Palestine = financially supporting terrorism, and use that as a pretext to arrest and jail people. You think he and his far right goons wouldn't go that far? If Trump wins this election, you shouldn't be surprised if this kind of thing happens, and much worse.

Do you want the US to accept Palestinian refugees? Because it won't accept them under a Trump presidency. A key Republican talking point in this election is "the US shouldn't take Palestinian refugees because they're probably all terrorists." This isn't just a Trump thing, it's something other Republicans are saying, but obviously you can imagine where Trump would fall on this issue given his infamous Muslim ban and conflating refugees with terrorists. These are just a few examples of how Trump would actually be even worse for Palestine than Biden—which is saying something.

In this upcoming election there is no neutral option. There is no morally pure option. There just isn't, I'm sorry. Refusing to vote will not help Palestine. Refusing to vote will only help Trump win, and will give every single person in the United States who is fighting for a better world a significantly harder battle to fight.

It goes without saying that there are things everyone should do to help Palestine besides voting in an election. But I'm writing this post that is about voting because I'm genuinely worried by how many so-called leftists want to give up their right to vote—a right that older generations had to fight tooth and nail for—because they think it won't achieve anything. If voting didn't achieve anything, Republicans wouldn't be trying so hard to suppress your vote.

I'll conclude by saying that nuance is not this site's specialty, but please try to understand what I'm actually saying here before attacking me in the notes. Finally, people being antisemitic or islamophobic on this post will be blocked. People denying that Israel is committing genocide against Palestine will be blocked. Trump supporters, tankies, and people who say that Biden and Trump are the same will be blocked. So will people who say "voting is pointless" or "but Biden did this bad thing—" Biden fucking sucks, I know that very well, so if you're going to try to make that argument to me then stop right now and read the post again.

[godisarepublican]

Hey, slow down there, CNN. I was already voting for Trump. No need to convince me...

[captainjonnitkessler]

I think the issue I'm having with the "you can't blame the average voter, you should blame the institutions that were supposed to prevent those voters from being stupid!" is that it inherently buys into the idea that there's some sort of elite class that's supposed to do the *real* ruling and average people aren't supposed to actually be able to choose their representatives because they're too stupid and ignorant to be trusted.

Like, Republicans already believe that! That's WHY they vote for people like Trump, who vow to take down those establishments, punish those elite, ivy-tower academics and give "the American people" a real voice in government!

And it also presupposes that those institutes have WAY more power over people's opinions than I think they do. Like if Trump had been tried for treason, do you really think that was going to convince his voters he actually did it, or do you think they would have used it as proof that Biden was using the Justice Department to prosecute political enemies? If the news had gone harder on Trump's fascism do you think it would have reached more people, or do you think he would have spun it as "they're attacking us because they know that we're winning and we're going to bring freedom back to America!"

And I don't know the answer! Maybe it WOULD have swayed enough people. I definitely think the courts and the news and the Democrats should have tried harder, just because it's the right thing to do to attack fascism on every available level. But I don't think you can say that we definitely would have won if they had, and I think if we HAD run that play and lost we'd be listening to a bunch of people talking about how obviously we went in too hard and we should have focused more on solidarity and outreach. Hindsight is 20/20, y'know?

[seancurry1]

Remember, Thou Art Barnacle

A serenity prayer for election day.

Originally posted on my website.

The Ann Selzer Iowa poll, regarded as the gold standard in all of political polling, shows Harris is up +3 in a state that Trump won by +8 in 2016 and by +9 in 2020. 

And you are a barnacle. 

The election better markets have Trump up by +19 (as of noon EST, 11/5/24), and bettors don’t care if people are ashamed to admit who they’re voting for—they’re in it for the money and only the money.

And you are a barnacle. 

Mainstream pollsters have admitted to weighting their polls heavily in favor of Trump, to ensure they don’t end up with egg on their face like they did in 2016 and 2020 again. International whales are taking out huge bets in favor of Trump, swinging the markets, and right wing think tanks are flooding the zone with bullshit polls to artificially inflate Trump’s odds in the aggregate. And even if the popular vote is overwhelmingly for Harris, Trump’s team is already laying the narrative groundwork to support a Stop the Steal campaign that, by the time you read this, will likely already have started. 

All of that is true. 

And you are still a barnacle. 

You are not piloting the ship. You are not the captain of the ship. You are not laying out the potential courses the ship could take, you are not deciding which course the ship will take, you are not scouting ahead. 

You aren’t even a paying, ticket-holding passenger on the ship. You are a barnacle on the hull, deep underwater, and unfortunately, there isn’t really anything you can individually do to affect where this ship goes. Sorry! 

This isn’t an invitation to check out, or become apathetic, or (heaven forbid) embrace doomerism. Quite the opposite: this is a reminder of who you actually are in this entire scenario, of the power you do not have, and of the power you definitely do. 

After the 2016 election, some small part of myself was convinced I could change the outcome if I just posted hard enough. If I fought enough of my friends on Facebook, texted angrily, and tweeted from enough protests and rallies, somehow Trump would no longer be President-elect. 

All it did was, literally, give me a rash. I got so angry for so long that my skin started to break out in hives. A doctor friend more-than-half seriously prescribed that I “get the fuck off Facebook” until my skin returned to normal. Trump was still President-elect, the next 8 years happened the way they did, and here we are today. 

You’re going to hear a lot today: polls are tightening! Votes still aren’t in from this critical precinct! If these trends hold, then we can expect to know something by such-and-such a time! The race is as tight as can be! White supremacists are threatening violence to avenge a dead squirrel! 

(The squirrel thing is 100% real, and my god, I really wish I was joking.) 

Remember, through all of it, that you are not the captain of the ship. You are a barnacle on its hull, and there is very little you can personally do to change it at this point. You’ve already done all you can do—or maybe you haven’t, but even then, you’ve already done all you’re going to do. 

And as you stress, and consider how inebriated you’re going to get, and decide on which web pages you’ll be refreshing every thirty seconds, and stress out some more, remember too that Donald Trump hasn’t ever won the popular vote in his entire miserable life. He only won the electoral college, a racist system explicitly designed to empower slaveholders in southern states, one time, and ever since then, he has lost every election he’s declared for. 

More people did vote for the woman candidate the last time one ran for President, and more people have voted for the candidate of color than their opponent every single time a person of color has run for President on a major party ticket. 

And women have already made up a larger share of early voting than men in this, the first general election post-Dobbs, than ever before in American history. (53% women to 44% men.) 

So as you stress and consider your inebriates and say to yourself, “How can it possibly be this close?!” for the umpteenth time today, remember too that Donald Trump is a fascistic, deeply unpopular person (let alone President) backed by an even more deeply weird party, and that almost the entirety of your experience of this election is being filtered through the lens of a national, for-profit media that doesn’t care who wins, so long as you keep watching. 

Remember, you are not the captain of the ship, you are not the helmsman, you are not the map-maker. 

You are a barnacle. 

Vote for Harris, vote Democrat in your local and state races, and trust your other barnacles.

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