#whatever party you are in if you can vote then vote

[nianeyna]

not going to reblog the post that prompted this because long and blah blah who cares but not voting in elections is the ultimate betrayal of the tireless activists throughout long ages of history who gave their fucking LIVES to allow you to freely vote in democratic elections and if you HAVE the hard-won right to vote and you don't exercise it through your own free choice and not because you have been blocked from doing it for some reason you should feel ashamed. you should feel bad. and if you HAVE been blocked from doing it you should RAISE HELL.

vote. I don't even care what you vote for tbh. I mean I guess I do on a personal level but that's NOT the point of this post. CAST YOUR FUCKING VOTE ON EVERY BALLOT YOU ARE ELIGIBLE TO VOTE IN. DO IT. EVEN IF I HATE YOU PERSONALLY FUCKING VOTE!!

[belliesandburps]

Interactive - Favorite Burp Scenario

I need something to take my mind off the fact that we are home to the dumbest, most bigoted fucking assholes on this planet, and I feel like a lot of you probably feel the same way right now. So, how about another interactive game? Send me character requests via my askbox here and I will respond with my favorite burp scenario to imagine for them. (Note, ideally, keep it to characters I know or that you think I may know)

[dykedvonte]

I dislike takes that Danse would be just as conservative in modernized aus when it's clearly shown his staunch views of things come from his time in the Brotherhood and his deep-rooted desire to belong to something with a greater purpose.

Not to mention lines that show much more open-mindedness that get overlooked for his harsher sentiments when you first meet him. Like the oppurtunity to be a part of something is why Danse fell so far into Brotherhood dogma and it doesn't negate the offense things he does but I feel like it's just lazy to be like "hmmm he'd def be racist" just so it aligns to his BoS beliefs.

[flying-cat]

What is writing random bullshit on your ballot doing to save Palestinians. You are literally doing nothing except handing another vote to Trump who cannot be reasoned with. He is a selfish, senile fuck. You're fucking over all the women and minorities in your own country to do LITERALLY NOTHING for Palestine because what you're doing for them isn't worth the dry dogshit stuck to someone's shoe. You want to help Palestine? Keep donating, buying eSIMs and spreading awareness. Refusing to vote, voting third party knowing it won't work as a worthless form of protest, or incorrectly voting won't do anything except hurt the vulnerable people in your own country.

[ruby-red-inky-blue]

I know this is an inconsequential thought from an outsider, but I really do think a LOT of the radicalisation in politics, especially this latest US election, could be softened if they recognised a key feature of the democratic election process: your vote should be SECRET. This means nobody gets to demand to know who you voted for legally, but I mean on a cultural level. It’s fucked up that people think of voting as taking a public morality stance, or a part of their personality. Like, actually engaging in politics as a party member is another thing, but your vote?? That’s between you and the ballot, and absolutely nobody else. Watching people be like “I would be ashamed to tell my loved ones that I voted for Harris because she didn’t oppose the war in Gaza” or “who would I be if I didn’t vote Republican/Democratic” like… that should not be a factor in your vote. You should pick what you think is best for your country/whatever group is casting the vote rn, and not think about how it makes you look to your peers. Because that shit is secret. And peer pressuring everyone into loudly proclaiming allegiance introduces a dynamic into that decision that makes everything worse.

[sodrippy]

trump voter on the news saying 'now that we have a convicted felon as the president the hope is he will put prisoners' rights at the forefront' sorry to be a cunt but are you a fucking moron or what

[13lizardsinatrenchcoat]

.

[bugsbenefit]

first estimated results from the election today are coming in and i'm gonna be so fr right now it's so fucking overrrrr. this is so grim jesus fucking christ

[beeseverywhen]

"All political parties face a trade-off under a first-past-the-post electoral system. Governing depends on attracting a broad coalition of voters, inevitably involving compromises that leave a party’s base disgruntled.

So it is perhaps unsurprising that as we move closer to a general election, the discontent from the anti-Labour left who claim there is little to distinguish Keir Starmer from Rishi Sunak in the battle for the premiership is only getting noisier."

"The argument is threefold: there’s no meaningful difference between the Conservatives and Labour; Starmer supposedly can’t be trusted because he has dropped pledges he made in the 2020 leadership election to shift his party towards the centre; finally, the “Tories are toast” and Labour can’t lose, so disgruntled left voters can safely vote for other parties, such as the Greens.

With Labour so far ahead in the polls, the urge to debunk these sentiments may seem like an expression of paranoia. But all three aspects of this narrative are comprehensively wrong, including the reassurance that it is safe for anyone who would prefer a Labour government to vote for another party in Labour-Tory contests."

"But what this underplays is the number of Labour-Tory marginals where a relatively small vote for other left candidates could cost Labour a win. James Kanagasooriam, of the polling company Focaldata, has written about the “sandcastle” nature of Labour’s likely majority; his forecast is that there will be many more marginal seats in the 2024 parliament compared with 2019. If more than predicted numbers of those who voted Green in the locals decide they can afford to do so in the general election because Labour is so far ahead in national polls, that will boost the Conservatives.

Next up is the idea that Starmer’s dropping of some of his leadership pledges makes him dangerously untrustworthy. But this is the product of a system in which the tiny unrepresentative slice of the electorate that is a party membership pick their leader before voters choose their prime minister. Anyone hoping to be PM would have to shift position between a leadership selection and a general election: a Labour leader’s most important job is to connect with potential voters, not to coddle members with the comfort blanket of a policy platform such as the “free broadband for all” 2019 pledge that was roundly rejected.

Liz Truss provides a cautionary tale of what happens when a party leader seeks to impose a membership-endorsed platform on the country without a general election. For Starmer to have stuck to his 2020 leadership election pledges, instead of spending the past four years understanding voters, would have been fundamentally anti-democratic.

The most egregious aspect of the anti-Labour left argument is there isn’t much to choose between Starmer and Sunak. Yes, Labour’s “Ming vase” election strategy has seen it take a much more cautious fiscal approach than many of us would like: it has effectively adopted the Tory macroeconomic worldview and with it a set of spending constraints that no one sensible thinks either party could stick to in the wake of the election.

That is frustrating for anyone hoping this election campaign may illuminate some of the tough trade-offs facing Britain; but it would have been incredibly risky for one side to go it alone on this. The alternative is Labour walking into the trap and handing the Conservatives a “Labour tax bombshell” election campaign.

From a commitment to scrap the Rwanda plan to making clear that in an ideal world Labour would discard the two-child benefit cap, there are plenty of reasons that it is preposterous to think that a Starmer government would make the same trade-offs as successive Conservative governments that have financed billions of pounds worth of tax cuts for more affluent families by cutting tax credits and benefits for low-income parents. The six pledges Starmer launched two weeks ago may be incremental, but Labour needs voters to believe they are deliverable, and they are indicative of a very different set of priorities than those that animate Sunak."

"Starmer is not without weaknesses, as shown by the days he took to clarify an interview last October in which he gave the impression he thought Israel had the right to withhold power and food from Gaza. But there is no doubt whatsoever he would make a vastly more compassionate and competent prime minister than Sunak. To encourage people to put that outcome at risk by casting a protest vote against a Labour government that does not yet exist is perhaps the ultimate form of luxury belief campaigning."

[cyanide-sippy-cup]

All I've seen on the left this election has been a loop of

"I'm not voting Harris cause she's pro-genocide"

"But then you're letting Trump into power! It'll be on you when trans kids die!"

and

"I'm voting Harris cause I don't want Hitler Jr in charge again"

"So Palestine doesn't matter to you? Someone finally showed their true colors!"

I feel like we're saying the same things here. Some coordination would be nice, people.

[cringywhitedragon]

Remember for us in the US, tomorrow is election day

Please if you can then try to vote if you can if you haven’t done so early.

It doesn’t matter if you’re voting red, blue, third party, etc. It’s still an important thing to do. So please if you can, go vote ☺️

[princesssarcastia]

i have a problem with the theory that by not voting for democrats and letting democrats lose badly enough this november, we can force them to take a good hard look at themselves and swing to the left. well, actually, there are a couple problems, but here's tonight's object lesson:

the problem is the RNC Autopsy.

Republicans got pretty well spanked in the 2012 presidential election, and VERY well spanked in the 2008 presidential election. people decided not to vote for republicans, and let them lose so badly that the republican party took a good hard look at themselves.

The result was a report released in 2013, wiki page linked above. And they did exactly what some people on the left hope democrats will do in the coming years, should they lose in november 2024! They said hey, apparently being racist and hating poor people and only talking to whites isn't getting us anywhere! Why don't we try a different, kinder, more inclusive approach if we want to win elections?

Nice, right? Good proof of concept?

Unfortunately, history didn't stop in 2013.

Unfortunately, we all know how this story ends. It ends with a fascist reality TV star becoming president and encouraging the republican party that actually, its problem is that it wasn't racist and poor-hating enough. Actually, Trump told the republican party, your problem is that you've gone too long without saying the quiet part out loud. No more euphemisms, no more obfuscation, and definitely no movement to the left. Be full-throated in your hatred of immigrants.

And, like it or not, that did win Trump the election. Which convinced the republican party that he was right. They completely abandoned the ideas proposed in the RNC autopsy, and I don't know that they'll ever find their way back to that point.

So, when people say they don't want to support democrats, and they hope that by letting democrats lose the elections they'll move the democratic party to the left...i wouldn't be so sure.

In fact, if that happens, what I predict we'll see is a democratic party prepared to swing to the right. Sure, it'll still have a progressive wing. The Squad will live on. But they'll be increasingly ostracized by a party that will be even more obsessed with courting the forgotten white man, by toning down its inclusivity, by backing off of more expansive social safety nets and wealth taxes.

Like it or not—I certainly find it depressing to consider—Joe Biden is the most left-leaning president we've had in a long, long time. Certainly since Jimmy Carter, and perhaps since even before him. If he loses in November, if his party loses in November, I guarantee their washington insider strategists will find a way to blame it on progressiveness and walk us back at least a decade, if not more.

I'm not happy about any of this. But this is, I believe, the reality we're facing.

[pancoleon]

Absolutely one of my least favourite genre of responses to political posts. You see it for the US too, the assumption that anyone expressing displeasure at being made to choose between dog shit and cat shit must be trying to undermine an election in favour of "the bad guys".

You're not doing yourself or anyone else any favours by ignoring the blatant shitness of the other parties. In the UK, the most likely party to get the Tories out (and these party the post this response is to is criticising) is the Labour Party under Keir Starmer.

Under Starmer the party has been characterised by hostility to anybody not deemed to be in the in-group and with a very centralised iron grip on the party. He has broken just about every promise he made to get elected into leadership. In fact, half the promises the party has made since have also been broken. They spend most of their time sticking to the narratives handed to them by the Tories and saying they won't reverse any changes the Tories make.

These non-reversals include laws that aim to ban protests, restrict strikes, and reduce civil liberties. They include letting 100 new fossil fuel extraction licenses in the North Sea continue. They include keeping the 2 child benefit cap, which has contributed to 27% of children in the UK living in poverty.

Labour's current proposed trans policies are also worse than what they were in 2017/19, and the current Shadow Health Secretary advocates for the privatisation of the NHS and has accepted thousands of pounds in bribes lobbying from private healthcare interests.

Maybe the reason you're seeing posts like this isn't people wanting to undermine the general election/secretly support Tories. Maybe it's because Labour promise to fuck people over a reverse a positive policy every other week.

[rum-inspector]

Is it finally okay to admit that before this election, I though Harris was GOP bc every time her name came up, it was another cruel policy she was supporting.

Don't blame the voters if you brand your party as "progressive" but are too cowardly to push progressive candidates and instead run on "but we're only 99% hitler" campaigns :)

[musical-chick-13]

Okay for REAL, yell at me and chase me off this site if I'm on here again before the US presidential election to do literally ANYTHING other than post fic.

[kralmajales]

Whatever I like to piss EVERYBODY off by telling them we need a Jill Stein/Cornel West team up.