#vote for the folks that aren't doing this

[tododeku-or-bust]

My serious response to this election:

Like it was so interesting at work on Wednesday. The people most distraught were the white folks. Literally everyone Black I knew (mostly women) had pretty much steeled up and took the blow, ready to survive once more. Ye olde resilience kicked in.

And I hate that it has to be that way. I hate that so much, it fills me with resentment. That even on a day where white people had the least to be worried about, that the numbers showed that a white supremacist resurgence is real and alive once again, that WE had to be the ones to control our tempers and emotions. We STILL had to center white feelings.

As predicted, white women showed up in the largest numbers. And still voted Trump. The second- no, the THIRD time this has happened. And this was the group that Kamala was so determined to convince and change the minds of, instead of speaking to her own loyal votership. Btw, once again don't ever talk to or about Black women on this app being the problem ever again, period.

So yeah, from now on, if y'all aren't confronting the racists you know- and yes, you DO know them, the odds that you don't are full of shit given the numbers- instead of punching down, I don't wanna hear it.

[cervidaedalus]

Conservatives legiterslly cannot process what people outside their own immediate sphere of experience, experience themselves. They are completely and often willfully ignorant of the degree of discrimination at risk groups face. I cannot count how many times they've responded to trans folks with "no ones out to get you" and black folks or women with dragging up history and implying it's over and therefore things are fine now. Like their brain short circuits completely.

And yeah, women can vote, segregation is over, trans folks aren't being put in camps right at this very moment. There are countries outside the US that have not come as far as we have yet and to them, that means everything is okay.

But white cis men do not have the experience to understand how differently we are treated. To understand how there are still plenty of otherwise warm and even liberal people who see black folks as criminals, women as rewards, gay men as predators and sex pests, trans folks as freaks and disturbed, mentally ill people as murderers waiting to snap, disabled folks and welfare recipients as lazy drains on society.

And because of this will treat us differently whether they're aware of it or not. Conservatives tend to fall prey to the worst of American individualism so even if you try to explain these things, again THEY don't see it so obviously it's not real calm down.

So when presented with these things they don't see it as a threat to human rights, but that all these at risk groups are just making a mountain out of a molehill and it's a Them problem. To them it is an opinion because it's not part of their reality at all, it's easy to dismiss...

[kanagenwrites]

So. Tuesday sucked.

We've all had a chance to come down from the "what the fuck" of it all, and we're starting to see the usual circular firing squad. Lots of lib centrists are doing everything they can to throw trans people, minorities, and basically anyone who isn't a finance bro under the bus, as is (very tiresome) tradition after both victories and defeats in the Democratic Party. I will be 42 years old in a few months, so this is far from the first time I've seen it, and sadly, I'm sure it won't be the last. To the lib centrists and those carrying water for them: This never works. Please stop trying it. Trans issues were not a major motivator; I'll get into that below. Sit down, kids, it's time for Auntie Kana's Fireside Dialectics.

One thing I've noticed is that a lot of my followers are significantly younger than me. (Imagine that, an audience that skews young on Tumblr.) A lot of you folks probably haven't been following politics for very long, and you've been able to participate in them for even less time than that. For some of you this is probably your first election as an adult, and it kinda feels like everything blew up in your face, doesn't it? I was about your age for 2000, when the election was nakedly stolen by George W. Bush, and not much older for 2004, when despite his disastrous presidency Bush the Younger rode a wave of 9/11-brained racism to the last popular vote victory the GOP had prior to (likely) this year. So I get it. I really do.

If you're living in the USA you have probably had a subpar education in politics and civics. This is largely by design - education is horrendously underfunded and there is a sustained attack on the ability of teachers to even discuss things like the Civil Rights Movement, the legacy of slavery in the United States, the genocide this country was founded on, and so on and so forth. Economic education isn't much better; you very likely got a short lecture on basic supply and demand and an argument-from-authority that "socialism doesn't work." All this combines to leave a lot of folks totally baffled as to how something like this election happens.

But it's pretty simple. It's just material conditions. That's it. What the media isn't telling you (because there's no profit in it, and the media is nothing but a clickbait engine when they aren't open propagandists) is that there has been a massive anti-incumbent wave of elections across the world. How massive? Japan's LDP, which has held power almost uninterrupted since the establishment of Japan's postwar democracy, managed to lose their recent election.

And why are material conditions so shitty? That's a complicated question, but a lot of it is the fact that we had a lengthy period of low inflation followed by a period of extremely high inflation due to the absolutely botched response to the Covid-19 pandemic. A bag of Doritos used to be 2.50, and now it's like 6 bucks. That's worse than all the inflation (and naked price-gouging, because there's a lot of that going on too) I experienced in my life prior to 2020, squeezed into the space of a year or two. This smacks everyone in the face every time they buy groceries, and while the government and the Federal Reserve were doing everything they could to manage inflation (and understand what a big deal it is for me, the anarcho-communist, to say that the US actually did an extremely fucking good job of doing it, because every other country on Earth had it worse than we did), they did fuck all to actually improve the material conditions people were experiencing. Wages were not keeping up with the cost of living, and price-gouging wasn't being dealt with.

Remember the 600 bucks Joe Biden still owes you? The American electorate sure the fuck does. Invisible backrooms liberal wonkery does not connect, regardless of whether it works or not, but going back on a promise? People remember that shit.

It's a rare incumbent that could win in an environment like this, especially when tied to a track record of doing exactly fucking nothing to actually help people from the perspective of the vast majority of the population. Kamala Harris was not that incumbent. She was a singularly uninspiring candidate who failed to connect with voters so thoroughly that she was on track to lose her home state in the 2020 Democratic primary. Nobody liked her (except a few very eager and very loud fans in the K-Hive), and speaking as someone who lives in California, I am not surprised she ate shit. She was a terrible choice for VP and a terrible choice of successor for Biden, but because Biden('s handlers) insisted on pretending he wasn't obviously declining before our very eyes, Harris, a singularly uninspiring candidate, had three months to build and run a campaign.

And it was still weirdly close.

Now, there's two possibilities: Either she actually ran an amazing campaign and it's incredible that it was even this close, or Trump is just so loathsome that even in a massively anti-incumbent environment he didn't bring anyone new to the table. Given that Trump is on-track to receive less votes this time than he did in 2020, and how many of those votes seem to have been cast for Trump and no one else down-ballot, I think it's more of the latter than the former. Trump brought the usual suspects, while Kamala successfully drove away voters that even Joe fucking Biden and Hillary fucking Clinton were able to bring home. Not on the left, not in minority demographics, but across the board. After all, if things are horrible and you're being promised that "nothing will fundamentally change," (literally an early-presidency quote from Joe Biden, whose agenda Kamala Harris 100% aligned herself with) and keeping in mind that the average American voter is not nearly so plugged into the minutiae and the day to day of politics (as evinced by the sudden peak in google searched for "Did Joe Biden drop out?" on Tuesday), why the fuck would you bother to vote?

Hopefully you have a better idea how we got here now. The question, of course, is where do we go from here? I will probably continue posting about this from time to time, especially if there's interest, but my advice is this:

We are still here. We will be here tomorrow, and the day after, and the day after that, and so on. Plan accordingly.

Things will get fucked up. Things will always get fucked up. That is the nature of things no matter who is running the government. Plan accordingly.

Organize. Develop parallel structures of power and assistance, because the government is likely going to be even more useless to directly assist you than it already was. Our greatest strength is each other, and our ability to care for and help one another.

I have been here before. You will be here again. It always feels like it's the worst thing ever to happen. That never really goes away, but your ability to deal with it, to plan around it, to endure it, and to rise up again on the other side of it and say "No, fuck you" is entirely under your control and within your capabilities. And you will get better at it as you do it. And you are not doing it alone. None of us are.

Do not give up. Do not surrender. This isn't the end, or the beginning of the end, or even the end of the beginning: it just is.

Now go watch a video of a cat doing something cute, or read some smut, or whatever gives you joy. You can't take care of others unless you take care of yourself. That's General Order #1: Take care of yourself.

Solidarity, y'all.

[traegorn]

Thank you for your answer. Do you also think that the Democratic party will now go even further center, given the results? Up until now I've heard and have been thinking that that would be a stupid mistake and the reason they lost, especially since Bernie thinks that the party abandoned the middle class. But I'm trying to re-evaluate. I guess I assumed that the people who didn't vote for her this time were like me and critical of her stances but maybe you're right and they just didn't care. But then is there any way forward?

There is.

We need to focus on a couple of things. First off, local organizing and getting more local leftist candidates. A lot of the battlegrounds over the next two years are going to be at school boards and city councils, and this is where we can most quickly find ways to protect at risk communities.

Secondly, as we look to 2026, we need to retake the house and Senate. Trump can be reigned in if we have an opposition legislature. Now we want to keep the existing Democrats in office, but in districts where we're challenging Republicans we need to vote for the most left options in the primaries. If you aren't in those districts, try to contribute to and volunteer to those campaigns. That will help keep the party from going to the center and help us stop the right win.

There's a lot more we need to do, but that's the bare minimum to keep the party (and the country) on track. In the meanwhile, also look at getting involved locally to help protect the folks in danger in your community.

[clonerightsagenda]

I'm really grateful I have a group I'm already involved in right now, because I'm seeing a lot of despair and "I don't know what to do" and "I'm the only one in my community who feels this way", whereas we're like. well. we know what to do. It's going to suck, it might not work, people are going to get hurt in the meantime no matter how hard we try to limit the damage, but we do know what we need to do.

The reality is, this is not a mobilization problem. It's not going to get fixed by convincing more people to go to the polls, or if a few third party voters had held the party line, so you might as well stop blaming them. Actually unfortunately the next steps rely on stopping blaming individual people, but go ahead and take however long you need to get it out of your system. I get it.

As I said, it's not a mobilization problem. A large portion of the population voted the way they did on purpose, and a big reason for that is because for a large portion of the United States population, life kind of sucks and has been getting worse. The Democratic party has failed to run on a coherent narrative of why this is and how they're going to make it better. The Republican party, on the other hand, has run on a very strong narrative of how they will make it better by getting rid of all the things and people who are to blame. It's a narrative that has worked for a lot of groups in the past. It's working now, in the increasingly polarized social media landscape, even in demographics Democrats have typically considered safe. Everyone loves the luxury of having someone to blame.

Unfortunately, the fix to this is long, and slow, and hard. It's not begging politicians for scraps. It's getting offline and going outside. Talking to your neighbors about their lives, their fears, their needs, and what kind of world would meet those needs. Even the one with the Trump sign in their front yard. Some of these people are in it for the racism and the cruelty and siphoning everything to their rich cronies, but a lot of them are struggling and desperate and grabbed for the life preserver someone threw them, even if it's secretly stuffed with arsenic. If thrown a different life preserver, they can be convinced to grab it.

And no, it's not ok that they decided to shove vulnerable minorities' heads under water just so they could theoretically get theirs. You're allowed to be angry! But unfortunately further isolating these people only pushes them deeper into the fascist movement ready to embrace them. They need to interact with real representatives of the groups they've been trained to blame and fear. They need to be given a different narrative with real solutions, but screaming it at them on Twitter won't do it. Long conversations where people take their hardships seriously but direct them more constructively might.

That's not going to be easy. You may not like or forgive them. And not everyone can do this work! It's going to be safer for white, not visibly queer/gnc folks to make some of these initial contacts. (At one of our meetings, a femme woman of color was talking about canvassing transit riders and dealing with misogynistic comments and having to decide, ok, where do I personally draw the line saying I cannot work with this person versus being aware that a lot of people are not steeped in politically correct language and can change. It's a tough line to walk!) People also aren't interested in answering their doors for canvassers these days, so organic social connections work best. Maybe you're talking to people in your workplace. Your apartment complex. Your neighborhood. Your own family. Maybe you join a book club full of seniors at your public library. Many people want positive change! My state notoriously always votes for progressive ballot measures and then turns around and votes in conservatives who try to dismantle them. There's a logic gap there, but in that gap is a potential for conversation, because we have places where we already agree and want to work together.

The theory here is, if we can talk to enough people, if we can build genuine real world offline connections where we agree on our shared problems and our shared desires for a better world and come up with solid solutions beyond pointing fingers, we can build a large enough coalition to start making demands, most likely through targeted disruptions (strikes, walkouts, etc.). The handy thing is, if you can get that many people demanding something, it doesn't actually matter which party is in power.

Is that possible? I don't know! Organizing that many people is really really hard. It's hard reaching out to people who've just punched you in the gut. Some people will not change. Some people will have hard lines that don't mesh with your hard lines. And I'm certainly really scared myself about the likely takeover of all three branches of government and probable draconian measures against dissent. We're going to have to carefully consider risk/reward when planning actions and disruptions. We're going to have to fight through fear and exhaustion and apathy and pain and betrayal, and I don't know if we can. I don't know if I'll see something like this happen in my lifetime (although the UAW sure is gonna try in 2028). Hell I don't know if we'll have elections 4 years from now. But that's the path. If you're not up for walking it right now, that's fine. If you're not up for walking it ever, ok. But I don't think there are any shortcuts or miracles. This is what we can try, and if it fails, at least we did what we could.

(If you see this post and your instinct is to reply with some variation of 'nice speech but we're all fucked and might as well give up', I understand why you feel this way. It's a feeling a lot of us are struggling with right now. Take the time you need to take care of yourself, and when you're ready, you can come back and we'll be happy to have you.)

[turtlesandfrogs]

Those are different numbers than I was looking at, and I do like the increased detail. For reference, I was seeing this:

And your source shows this:

So 11% more people in the 18-29 age group voted for Harris than for Trump, rather than merely 2%. They way I've seen people talk about it, they expect getting more youth to vote would wildly tip the scales. They talk about the youth being the ones to save us, but that's not enough of a difference to wipe out the other age groups' effects. (we all have to save us)

Meanwhile, millennial and boomers both are pretty much evenly split for who they voted for, which again is not the messaging people have been spreading. People are always going on and on about how much more conservative boomers are than millennials, but that's not what this shows. Gen x though, geez. But again, that's only a 10% difference. You can't (or shouldn't) go around being mean to gen x folks just because more of them voted for Trump. If you do, you're going to be being mean to the wrong person 44% of the time, which is way too high a percentage.

A bunch of people assumed Latinos would vote overwhelmingly against Trump, which did not happen.

A lot of people talk like there's this huge gap between how white men and white women vote, acting like white men are overwhelmingly voting republican to try to control women while white women are totally super democratic, which again, no:

And to be clear, I'm not saying that these groups were the most Trump-heavy demographics; I'm saying the those on the left have a tendency to assume that they know a person's policy positions based on their demographics. Which is very much not true and is a problem if you're trying to win a seat in the government. As much as we want everyone to be really rational all the time and vote in what we think is their best interest, a lot of people aren't going to vote for a party that ignores them, scapegoats them, or belittles them.

I am saying we can't just blame individuals/groups for the loss because we assume we know how they voted. I'm also saying that we can't ignore entire groups of voters because we assume that we know how they are going to vote. Yeah, maybe we could afford do that if 9 out of ten of a particular group voted one way, but there's literally only one group that meets that criteria: Black women. Black women, in general, you rock. But still, it's a bad move to ignore an entire group just because you're pretty sure you know how they'll vote.

How many people were saying that there would be a wave of women voters for Harris? (a lot)

Sure, 53% of women voted for Harris, but that's no where near as sure thing as we want it to be (especially since we don't know what the margin of error is), and it's less than in previous races. 45% of women voted for Trump- are you going to change how to treat women because of that?

I am also saying that we need to prove to and convince voters that democrats have a better plan for the economy, and we also need to change the discussion on abortion to be rooted in hard facts instead of wild mischaracterizations.

Also, I think it's more an issue of failing to motivate democratic voters rather than certain groups becoming more conservative. In 2020, 74,223,975 people voted for Trump. In 2024, that number was 74,182,656. Fewer people actually voted for Trump this round, so one could argue that there are actually fewer conservatives, and instead more undecided and democratic voters just didn't vote.

41,319 fewer people voted for Trump this year. 70 million voted for Harris this round, compared with 81 million voting for Biden last election. Why? We have to figure out why. And we have to make a better strategy. We can't just throw our hands up and say that men, or white men, or white women, or Latinos, or Christians, or who ever disappointed us and it's their fault.

I would really like to see people analyzing what happened and why, instead of arguing about who's fault it is.

Americans have a weird way of thinking that they know the politics and actions of a person, based on their race and gender.

The fact of the matter is a lot of women voted for Trump. A lot of Latinos voted for trump. A lot of millennials and gen z voted for Trump. A lot of college educated folks voted for Trump.

We, as people who are not conservatives, need to ask why. We need to look at the data, we need to look at what voters said, we need to get to the why. And then we need to change things.

Put down the blaming and the shaming, and pick up the analysis and critical thinking skills. Ask why, don't assume you know. Look below the surface of your knee jerk reaction that every voter for Trump is at their heart a racist, uneducated, uncaring person. That's not their reasoning, and you're not going to change their minds by repeating what they think you think about them.

[emanonyourstruly]

Politics, Love, and Uneasiness

So elections happened and I am uncomfortable. Donald Trump is president and I, like many others, hate him. He is a sexist, racist, classist maniac. Politics is important to me. I know people say there is no right and wrong and everyone has a right to their opinion but I'm sorry, so many people are wrong. Twisted.

What is right is that people should be equal and there should be separation of religion and government which republicans have a hard time understanding. Gay people aren't hurting anyone. Immigrants aren't hurting anyone. Muslim people aren't hurting anyone. Black people aren't hurting anyone. Women should be able to choose whether or not they want to keep an already dead baby in them or not.

My girlfriend- who is not really my girlfriend but my ex but we still love each other bla bla don't judge me- didn't vote. To some degree, I feel responsible. I joked that what was I gonna do, force her? I already tried to stop her from being friends with a guy, who sold his ex's nudes without her permission, but she looked so lonely and pathetic and she went back to being friends with him anyway so I stopped trying to force my mindset on her. She told me I should have educated her and pushed her to vote. I told her that maybe I should have, but it was also not my responsibility. If she didn't vote that was her own choice. Maybe she didn't think that it was her problem. She is a rich Asian Christian girl anyway. She never had to work for anything in her life. I'm taking my disappointment and frustration out on her but can you blame me? I'm a poor brown Muslim girl.

And like I said, I am a poor brown Muslim girl. What will happen to me and my family in the future? I rely on a government grant to get through college and I was hoping my brother could go to college with the same grant. College is so insanely expensive it is UNFAIR. no one can defend the prices of colleges. Anyway,

Can someone tell me I'm not crazy for being upset with her when she keeps defending Trump and her dad for voting for Trump? How are you gay and not mad? That just wreaks of privilege. I bet her dad is happy as hell that he'll be getting a tax cut. I am so over this. governments are corrupt. What did I really expect?

I just have a big fear of the world ending and goddd pleaseeee someone tell me that we'll be ok. poor folk. people of color. tell me we will be ok.

This is my journal entry for now thanks for reading if anyone even is.

I'm out :3 with love!

[tobiasdrake]

A lot of people aren't going to want to hear this. I don't want to be saying it. But I think one thing we need to take away from the Trump successes is that branding matters.

Part of the problem the Left has with politics is that XKCD comic about average familiarity.

"The average person probably only follows Senate roll-call votes and judicial appointments." "And White House press releases, of course." "Of course."

The Left has a bad habit of assuming that the work they do will speak for itself. We'll get into office, we'll make everyone's lives better, and people will see how much better their lives are and support us.

This is a mistake. In part because government moves slowly and in part because the Right is very good at filling the gap. Republicans proudly go on their propaganda platforms to take credit for things they voted against.

Sure, yesterday they were in the Senate voting against giving Kentucky healthcare. But today they can go to Kentucky and go, "While I was in the Senate, WE BROUGHT YOU HEALTHCARE. Isn't that the kind of leadership you want to re-elect?"

Republicans are masters of branding shit with their names and faces. And that works against the Democrats so much. People actually think Trump was better at pandemic relief. Why? Because they don't remember what the government was doing. They don't remember Congressional hearings and feverish debates about PPE. They don't remember endless arguments about vaccination.

What they remember is that one day, they got a check in the mail that had Donald Trump's signature on it.

That's all they remember. They think Trump personally sent them money to get through the pandemic. And no president has ever personally sent them money before. There were no checks with Biden's signature.

(There were checks. But not Biden checks.)

There were no Biden Booster shots or Biden-branded vaccinations or Bidencare medical clinics. But there were Trump Checks. People remember the Trump Checks.

We live in a society where people are so disengaged from politics that Google results for "Did Biden drop out!?" spiked on November 5th. Kamala Harris was running for election by a voting public that thought Biden was still on the ballot right up to election day.

And I know. I know we don't want our government to turn into the political equivalent of "This hurricane relief was brought to you by NordVPN. Are you worried about your internet safety?" But that's exactly what the Right has been doing. And folks. It's working.

So if we want people to like, subscribe, and hit that bell for notifications of Democratic successes... We might need to start branding and engagement soliciting too. That might just be what the modern political environment in the Information Age has become.

[victusinveritas]

[graysongoal]

Not to cause discourse on this site, but I am a

transgender

queer

disabled

neurodivergent

sex educator

DEI professional

with Palestinian friends, who studied Palestine in college

And I don't want to fucking vote for Biden, cecause he's committing gen0c!de and I have a strong sense of justice.

It is NOT fair to act like I'm holding privilege and then sit there and say that I don't care what happens to my communities.

I absolutely do.

I draw a big fucking line at gen0c!de - and at being told every fucking election that I have to vote for the lesser evil, when other options do exist.

I'm not saying I don't understand OP's viewpoint. But, I'm fed up with

this fucking system

being told the lesser of two evils is the asshole literally doing a gen0c!de (and who uses his links to various oppressed communities to get y'all to think he's progressive when he's center-right at best)

having my own identities & communities thrown back into my face by people who act like I'm not a part of them

I specifically have a strong sense of justice because I'm a part of these communities. Stop acting like we don't exist and aren't fucking struggling with our presented choices between raging orange diarrhea, gen0c!dal constipation, or ???.

Look.

I have made you a chart. A very simple chart.

People say "You have to draw the line somewhere, and Biden has crossed it-" and my response is "Trump has crossed way more lines than Biden".

These categories are based off of actual policy enacted by both of these men while they were in office.

If the ONLY LINE YOU CARE ABOUT is line 12, you have an incredible amount of privilege, AND YOU DO NOT CARE ABOUT PALESTINIANS. You obviously have nothing to fear from a Trump presidency, and you do not give a fuck if a ceasefire actually occurs. You are obviously fine if your queer, disabled, and marginalized loved ones are hurt. You clearly don't care about the status of American democracy, which Trump has openly stated he plans to destroy on day 1 he is in office.

[jaythelay]

Hot damn the whole "biden drop out" shit becomes more obvious as time goes on.

It's clearly republicans pressuring donors into fuckin dems over.

For some reason BPT wants to think it's an avoidance of a Black Female VP (Ya'll I have actively never heard anything good about her and she shut the fuck up barely a year in for actually everyone's own good, don't pretend race has any part in her actions and words dipshits)

And to add on further, Absolutely Everyone Fucking Hates Khamala Harris. Bar None. She was AWFUL PR for Biden damn near everytime I heard her speak, being one of the ones to call a Ceasefire Deplorable and claim to be too busy with covid to legalize weed and soon after started banning vape sales online, of which, clearly, they weren't busy with Covid to do.

My god it's hilarious and embarrassing how inneffective, uninformed, absolutely idiotic leftists are. My god. What happened??????? Seriously the fuck happened?????? Ya'll wanted to raise min wage! Now you're dumb enough to let R's shove Dear Leader out for Absolutely Worse???

You went from Definite Win to Definite Loss. How... How??? THE POLLS??? YOU STILL LOOK AT THE THING ONLY R'S FUCKING ANSWER AS THE POLLERS THEMSELVES TOLD US????

THE POLLS...? Really. Truly? Seriously. Wow.

my god man.

Insanity. All of it. Insanity. Dems are inneffective purposefully or genuinely? Not capable of thinking further than an emotional none.

Vote Third Party holy shit what a shitshow. Dreadful work Literally Everyone, I'll remember to laugh when I'm on my deathbed at your own orchestrated failures. Seriously. Be embarrassed. It's honestly sad how little effort any one of you put into something you supposedly believe in. There's not enough words, there's only strong feelings of contempt, dissapointment, fruatration, and most of all? Boredom.

I bored. You bore me. Leftists are boring. They believe in nothing enough to understand it and fight for it. All they know to do is make bad memes and pretend to care about online drama. That's it. No political bones in their bodies. Notta one.

[prokopetz]

I'm not gonna claim that most Tumblr polls are anything like rigorously structured, but I've seen a lot of folks rather smugly asserting that having a "not applicable" option that ends up dominating all other responses is evidence that the person who created the poll is incompetent, and y'all: under the specific circumstances in which these polls are constructed and distributed, that outcome is evidence of good poll design, not bad poll design. Yes, even when the "not applicable" responses outnumber all other responses ten to one. There are several reasons for that:

At the time of this posting, Tumblr polls have no "see response" button. The only ways to see a poll's distribution of responses are to wait for the poll to conclude, or to respond yourself – and not only are people on social media typically curious and impatient, many of them also know that there's no way they'll remember to check back later once the poll has concluded, so in practice, their opportunity to see the results is now or never. Adding a little note to the poll insisting that people who aren't part of the targeted demographic should refrain from voting isn't necessarily going to restrain that impulse. Indeed, it may end up encouraging folks who otherwise wouldn't have picked a random result-revealing response to do so, because fuck you, don't tell me what to do.

Many respondents genuinely won't realise they're not part of the targeted demographic until after they've voted. It doesn't matter how much text you add to contextualise the poll, because they'll read the poll first, and if they read the accompanying text at all, it's only after they've responded. Heck, a lot of folks don't even bother to read the question before responding to a poll; they just start going down the options and reflexively click the first one that seems like it might apply to them, then go back and read what was actually being asked (and complain in the notes if it turns out that they misunderstood). Even a well-meaning person can only comply with instructions they've actually read; for those folks, clicking the "not applicable" option is what compliance looks like.

Even folks who do fit your poll's targeted demographic can fall prey to the imp of the perverse. Giving the most accurate response rather than the most entertaining one can be a real struggle for a lot of folks; in scientific analysis of polling data, this is known as the "mischievous responder bias". In an informal setting like Tumblr, it's reasonable to suppose that the mischievous responder effect might be exaggerated compared to polls conducted in more formal contexts, and a well-designed poll is going to take that into account. A humorous "not applicable" option provides an escape by affording folks the freedom to screw around with the knowledge that they're not polluting useful data by doing so; in practice, the "I am a toaster" option is a mischievous response filter.

What this adds up to is that a poll where 90% of the responses hit the "not applicable" button is more likely to have yielded useful data than a poll with a narrow target audience where some unknown percentage of the responses represent folks not reading the instructions, clicking random options to see the results, and/or taking the piss.

[clandestinegardenias]

Okay fine. I teach an ethics course and I just keep seeing all of this discourse on whether or not to vote in the upcoming US presidential election and I just wanted to lay a few things out here.

People who are saying they will abstain from voting because they see voting for anyone as supporting/endorsing genocide are operating from a Rights Theory perspective.

Basically, Rights Theory posits that you should never take any action that could violate someone else’s rights. EVER. The balance of benefits and harms does not matter. There is NOTHING that can justify taking away the right to, for example, life.

And I think that’s where these anti-voting folks are predominantly coming from. They see voting as endorsing/enabling genocide, full stop, and therefore it is morally indefensible EVEN IF IT WILL RESULT IN LESS OVERALL HARM.

People who are arguing that you SHOULD vote, and vote for Biden specifically, are operating from a Utilitarian Theory perspective.

Utilitarianism is all about balancing benefits and harms, and essentially prioritizing overall harm reduction. They recognize the harm the system is creating, but are willing to participate in the system because through doing so they can ensure that various harms are minimized--certainly not eliminated, but reduced, and, importantly, made easier to eliminate eventually.

Through utilitarianism, we can actually make people's fundamental rights EASIER to defend! But a lot of people are so caught up in the idea of moral purity, and Rights Theory, that they're willing to let their inaction erode people's rights because at least they aren't actively participating in the system. (they are still passively participating, however, and we can argue about inaction being a form of action, but I digress)

Point being, VOTE. Because of Utilitarianism, but also because, if you believe in the inalienability of people's fundamental rights? Voting will make it much easier to protect those in the long term, and that's frankly more important than you getting to feel exempt from an exploitative system you are nonetheless inherently a part of and complicit in.

[melancholia-ennui]

Gentle reminder to UK folks that if you don't like Labour there is no better election than this one to vote for a third party or independent who actually stands for what you believe in.

Every major poll is predicting a Labour landslide and a total collapse of the Tory party. The only reason to tactically vote Labour to "keep the Tories out" is if in exactly your seat the Tories (or worse Reform) are projected to be first or second place and no one else is close - but in a lot of seats the predicted second is not the Tories, it's Lib Dems or SNP or in some places even Greens, and that gives you the freedom to vote for what you believe in because the Tories aren't gonna get that seat anyway.

Remember: UK is not the US, and despite all that Labour and the Tories try to do this is not a two-party state. Vote pragmatically, yes, and mindful of harm reduction, but be rational and informed as well.

[deadpresidents]

I just hope these next 4 years go by fast

This election isn't just about the next four years. With Trump in the White House and a Republican Senate at his side, the MAGA movement can pick up where they left off when it comes to packing the federal judiciary with right-wing judges who will control the Supreme Court and appellate courts throughout the country potentially for the rest of the lives of everyone reading this right now. It's the perfect recipe for them to continue stripping reproductive rights away from women nationwide and gives them the opportunity to turn their attention to the other issues that they have been dying to attack, from voting rights to gay marriage and every other extension of personal freedom that has been won by minorities and marginalized people in hard-fought battles over the past 60 years. This is the nightmare scenario that people have been warning folks about for the past few elections. It's here. And there isn't going to be a way to put the toothpaste back in the tube.

The consequences of this election will have a direct, negative impact on your life -- possibly on the entire remainder of your life. This country just re-elected a President with authoritarian tendencies who is the willing puppet of a dangerous Christian nationalist movement that figured out exactly how to manipulate him (through flattery) for their aims. They have created the perfect vehicle for a genuine cult of personality that they can use to achieve the goals they have been very clear about striving for over the past few years. And you can't blame anybody other than the American voters because they not only elected Trump, but they gave him a fucking mandate, with a Republican Senate and potentially a Republican House. They already have a right-wing dominated Supreme Court for the next few decades, and now they are going to ensure that the entire federal judiciary is in their control for years to come. And don't forget the fact that a few months ago, the Supreme Court handed down a decision that gave Presidents sweeping immunity for a broad (and conveniently undefined) range of "official" acts, so Trump is going to go into this second term knowing that not only does he not have to deal with the "guardrails" of responsible adults he had around him in his first term (Mattis, Tillerson, Kelly, General Milley, etc), but he knows he can get away with virtually anything and everything that he wants to do this time around. If you thought that Trump's first term was bad, just understand that they are prepared this time and now he's surrounded himself with people who will do his bidding -- people who are perfectly willing to let Trump be Donald Trump.

I wish there was a reason to cry foul, lodge protests, and challenge the election's results. But this wasn't a rigged election. There isn't any confusion about what the voters really wanted. The American people did this. People you know and care about and who say they care about you are the people who did this. We need to recognize that these elections aren't outliers anymore. Trump's supporters aren't simply chaos agents who got lucky on a bad day for the Democrats. That's the country we live in now and we have to find a way to resist it that actually makes a difference because now they have the keys to all the doors and all of the alarm codes. This country has normalized the conspiracy theories and nativism and racism that has powered the MAGA movement since the moment Trump came down the elevator at Trump Tower in 2015. He's given those people permission to be open with their hatred towards people who aren't like them, and it's actually become surprising to see how many Americans have been eager to take advantage of that. I didn't think I had any misconceptions about this country before Donald Trump because I recognized this nation's history, but I clearly had some misconceptions about people I thought I knew until I saw them wearing a red MAGA hat or noticed they had a gigantic flag with Trump's name hanging where their U.S. flag used to hang. Once that happened, it was like a switch went off with them and they started saying things in ways that I'd never heard them speak. I feel like that's happened to the entire country. It breaks my heart and it pisses me off.

For the past few years, I've been warning everybody about how elections have consequences. I imagine that there are hundreds of posts on this blog with that phrase in all caps listed with the tags. Now the elections have happened, and we have to live with real fucking consequences. And we're going to pass these consequences on to other generations because this is the one that you can't get a do-over on. When you give a movement like this the power and the mandate that this country just gave them, there is no easily rolling back the things that they end up doing. They are going to fundamentally change the lives of people in this nation and especially change the way the younger generations of Americans live and love and learn for years to come. And you have people in your life who made that happen. It's another disgusting day in America -- a prelude to another reprehensible four years (at the very least) -- and I'm ashamed of tens of millions of my fellow Americans because this one is on them. They know exactly who the man is that they voted for, and now we know exactly who they are, too.

[darcylindbergh]

I want all you vote blue no matter who folks to suffer just as much as all the disabled ppl you left on the wayside as soon as biden said the pandemic was over. All of you talk about solidarity but as someone disabled by covid its all so shallow. You are all so happy to stop masking and let covid keep killing. You cant even pretend its not true. 95% of dems stopped giving a fuck as soon as their guy said it was fine to. And every time i bring this up i get told i just gotta vote biden or other people will be in danger. Like me and those like me havent already been sacraficed by all of you. You all will have to live with that because i wont be alive much longer. Vote Blue! Vote Blue! Close your ears and vote blue because now YOU are afraid.

sure, we can deconstruct this one too.

this one's cleverer than ms terf because frankly a lot of disabled people DO feel abandoned vis a vis the pandemic and masking, and that's definitely something that needs to be addressed. but this anon is not addressing THAT - they want to address how i shouldn't vote blue.

here's a couple things we can pick out:

i've recently responded to posts about gaza and terfs, so this anon has simply picked a topic i haven't addressed yet like they're playing whack a mole

blames biden specifically for their topic of choice

pitches a you versus them division while explicitly attacking the idea that the left can express sufficient solidarity (implying it doesn't matter whether you vote)

specifically disparages voting for biden while scoffing at the idea that failing to do so will place other people in danger

make it personal while using inflammatory language: "i've already been sacrificed" "i wont be alive much longer"

mocks voting blue out of fear or out of the idea that failing to vote or failing to vote blue will result in a negative outcome

of course, not voting blue (either by splitting the vote, as in 2016, or not voting at all) will certainly not result in an improved outcome for disabled people. anon doesn't even pretend like there's a viable alternative that will improve life for disabled folks in the us.

failing to vote blue will just result in republicans in power - who are as a national platform anti-masking, anti-vaccinations, anti-obamacare, and anti-healthcare reform. so what we have here is someone who is using the disabled community as a cudgel to divide the left and discourage voting - because don't you know you specifically are a bad person for being against disabled people?

anyway here's a short list of things the biden administration has done over the last 4 years to improve the situation of millions of disabled folks in the us:

Biden's first 100 days re: disability reform

Biden admin recognizes long covid as disabling

Biden admin directs $200 million to programs supporting aging Americans and their caregivers (5 days ago)

HHS strengthened rule banning discrimination based on disability (May 1, 2024)

Dept of Education cancels student loan debt for over 300,000 disabled borrowers who cannot work (Aug 2021)

Biden admin seeks to end subminimum wage for disabled (and tipped) workers (2021) - Biden's DOL has been actively working on new regulations regarding disabled worker protections, although the recent decision ending Chevron deference by SCOTUS's conservative bloc will make it much more difficult.

there's definitely still more work to do - passing the marriage equality for disabled adults act, for example, and seeing through the end of subminimum wages - but republicans aren't gonna do it. these bills died in the republican-controlled house. voting blue down-ticket is the only way folks are gonna see any progress.