Eiba posted:

Eiba posted:

So... "go ahead and vote for Biden"? Is that what you're saying? That is my current position. I was mainly curious to hear from people who thought it was not just reasonable but a moral imperative to not vote for him.

And for the record, I think the issue (for me) is that I believe he is contributing to a uniquely horrific crime against humanity. The violence inherent in any position of power is not what's got me bothered in this case. I can rationalize that away.

If most people in a similar situation to me are okay supporting Biden because he's "not that bad" then, well, that's fair. But it's not the situation I am in. This might ultimately be about how I see the morality/culpability of what's going on in Gaza, which would put it outside the scope of this thread. I would accept that if it were the case.

hooman posted:

Does the Party you are voting for draw a distinction between a vote and an endorsement? If you are voting for the party is there any impetus for that party to change any of the behaviours or policies, or is voting for them giving the party the go ahead to continue to behave in ways you find personally abhorrent?

If there is no point at which you withdraw your vote, why would the party you vote for even know it needs to change, let alone be motivated to?

hooman posted:

Oh gently caress no, absolutely not.

The change I am hoping for in the future is in the policies of the Democratic Party.

I am not talking about a permanent vote withholding, I am talking about tactical vote withholding. I don't want to repeat myself so have a look at the discussion I had earlier in the thread about incumbency and the large replacement of members in the UK that changed the Labour Party under Blair.

Basically in order to replace poo poo representatives, they have to lose so they don't have the defense of incumbency, which opens opportunities for institutional change within a party.

EDIT: To be clearer, my view is that you should withdraw your vote from any candidate (up and down ballot) who is bad and give your vote to any candidate who is good, with an eye to seeing the bad ones lose, and the good ones win to change the makeup of a party, in order to change the direction of the party.

B B posted:

You don't even have to be a leftist for the Democratic Party to ignore your views. You just have to be a person who thinks genocide is bad. Providing material support to an ongoing genocide is very important to the modern Democratic Party, and there's not much individual voters or motivated groups of voters like those in Dearborn, Michigan can do to convince the Democratic Party to stop supporting genocide.

Kalit posted:

If your stance is among the majority, than withholding your vote makes tactical sense. But if your stance is among the minority[...], they'll never think that they need to move closer to your political views to win elections.

hooman posted:

I don't assume they know why I am withholding my vote at all. I am saying to withhold votes from candidates that are bad and give them to candidates that are good. I am not saying to never vote, but to only vote for good candidates in order to change the overall grouping of views within the party. That is the only way we (as non super donors) can influence the views of the party or feed back to them.

The Sean posted:

Could you explain what he has done to defend trans persons, let alone as "a priority"?

Everything I've seen is barely anything. For instance: https://www.hrc.org/resources/president-bidens-pro-lgbtq-timeline. Everything on here is: hosting a dinner, calling for action, proposing a plan, and other performative measures the result in headlines that provide an assumption that he's doing something without actually meaning anything.

quote:

What yesterday’s order does mean, though, is that this administration is prepared to vigorously defend and enforce the legal protections that LGBTQ people enjoy under federal law. Every state considering anti-trans bills barring trans people from sports must now consider that they will face a U.S. government that is not facilitating anti-trans discrimination but actually enforcing Title IX’s protections to stop it. Every employer, every landlord, every health care provider that is considering firing or evicting or denying health care to a transgender person must now think about the fact that all three branches of the federal government have made clear that anti-LGBTQ discrimination is illegal.

quote:

Biden’s executive order, which comes during Pride month, asks the federal health and education departments to expand access to gender-affirming medical care and find new ways to counter a flurry of bills passed in US states by conservative lawmakers this year that ban these treatments for transgender youth.

Wednesday’s order asks federal agencies to ensure that federally funded programs do not offer conversion therapy, which tries to force LGBTQ+ youth to change their sexual orientation, and the Federal Trade Commission to consider policing such practices that seek to change a patient’s sexual orientation or gender identity as deceptive businesses.

Josef bugman posted:

See this is the thing, I am unsure as to how choosing who helms the empire changes the underlying assumptions of Imperialism. It may be different in terms of what is done, but the involvement of the USA in various places does not change because the structures are still there.

Like a waterwheel, the empire continues to turn regardless of who is in charge of it.

Josef bugman posted:

This is the thing you seem to believe that this makes it necessary to vote for a lesser evil because nothing can be done about those big issues by any singular individual. The overarching problem must be fixed by doing things outside of the current structure, as much as possible.

I think that looking at things holistically as a whole instead of zooming in to such an extent that you miss the other things being done by a candidate/structure.

Fundamentally this is a large divide and I am unsure can be bridged.

Rappaport posted:

This seems like an unsatisfactory answer. If no one can provide a good example, if we grant your hypothesis, then one need never be presented?

We can argue that it all went sideways around the time when Ike made the speech about the military-industrial complex and how he saw that as a Bad Thing, but the POTUSes since have also wielded immense power, and it isn't an unreasonable ask to say they should be held to high scrutiny. If someone doesn't vote for anyone for that office, it doesn't invalidate their choice by simply saying "every other nation is crap too, what do you want from me, I'm walking 'ere?"

Does withholding that vote make a difference? Probably not, but it seems like a reasonable argument that if someone wishes to abstain from voting for all the bad poop, they should be free to do so, without anyone scolding them.

Josef bugman posted:

Does that have any relevance whatsoever? Is there any national party that I would vote for at the moment in my own nation depends on the candidate and what they are aiming to do. If they are talking about destroying those structures in some way then I may well vote or support them.

But again, I have to turn this around and ask if you are as cross with people not being directly supportive of policies as much as you are at politicians ignoring demands/ out and out lying to people.

One day is never, but we still work on it. In the same way that someone will never be perfect but we can work towards it.

Ultimately if the structure makes it easier to kill someone than feed them, something more is required than interest rates changes.

Josef bugman posted:

Again, I ask you if you are this concerned about powerful people doing worse things than a single, far less powerful, person doing something other than expressing support for the structure. It may be concretely meaningful to many people, that is their decision and I am okay with that. But is me going "No, and I will work against this structure" not also okay? Is it that moral qualms should be a matter of popular vote?

But the thing is one does undercut the other in practical terms. Again if I were to vote Labour or Tory at the next election I would be supporting transphobes who want to make things worse of working people whilst giving out money to the wealthy. Why then is the onus on me to change my own behaviour instead of those with more power?

Josef bugman posted:

Hesitant but you still would? See, this, ultimately, is where we are having difficulties. Because ythere are lines which you will not cross, but do you think others can have the same and them be at different places than you and it still be valid?

Josef bugman posted:

This is the thing though, if you accept that it does exist then it's just an argument about degree and becomes a purely personal line of preference.

This is the thing though, the vote doesn't matter as anything other than a show of support and what it can practically do. Which is not a lot. You can make a level of compromise about it, but it still exists.

Josef bugman posted:

The point is that there is an agreement that there are reasons why people should not vote at all, you simply define where the line is different from others. If this is the case, then it simply becomes a matter of preference and degree, not one of fundamental disagreement with the idea of withholding/none voting.

Essentially the latter bit is attempting to say the following "One individual vote does almost nothing, but is simply a show of support for the candidate overall not for a particular part of the platform of said candidate and that level of compromise is up for interpretation by each person."

Josef bugman posted:

But this is the thing it's still showing, in practicable terms, support for a candidate. If I'm voting for Boe Jlogs because of his robust environmental record and not his "slaughter everyone born on May 7th" policy, I am still lending support to the latter through the vote. That doesn't mean that there is no level of compromise, merely that it is drawn in different places for different people.

But this is the thing that the entire debate and purpose of this thread hinges on. The idea that you "need to vote" is a fairly major part of it. It may not be from folks in this thread in particular but we've all seen on this forum when people are told that not voting for X is, in effect, voting for Y.

Mooseontheloose posted:

From the White House itself: https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing...qi-communities/

The Sean posted:

Rule I.B - Assume good faith.