Whom Should You Vote For? Don't be just a 'political hobbyist'
"My experience is that most of the people who get really upset about the current leadership of our nations tend to be folks who haven’t spent much time either as an activist or as someone working for a candidate. What happens instead is they immerse themselves in on-line news and commentary."
OK so this sounds like you are surprised. That most people upset haven't done something a relatively small % of the public have done.
And I am unsure why you think the point has any value. Political candidates represent a tiny % of the population. If each one had hundreds of people working with them. It would still be a tiny % of society..
Add to that that the vast majority of society actually has a life they need to work earn raise families. Honestly the largest percentage of society just dose not have the time or energy to protest or take part in politics.
They still have a right to complain that the people they are paying to do the job. To do it to a standard or in a way they don't like.
Have you ever milked a cow. Do you still feel annoyed and complain when someone sells you off milk.
It's also just anecdotal, and in my equally-anecdotal experience, wrong. I've worked on political and activism campaigns, but I absolutely whine about leaders who suck. So does everyone else I've worked with.
Of course people don't participate when you turn politics into a full time job. They already have a full time job.
Especially when activists turn it into a "No True Scottsman" situation. Just more, more, more.
The issue is that government is a lot more complicated and contentious than milking a cow. It fundamentally can’t work if people don’t educate themselves, get involved, and work at it.
Not everyone will find the time or energy to do this, but it is much more important and productive than wasting time arguing about whether we should or shouldn’t vote for Biden. If you don’t have the time yourself, perhaps you can find the time to support or encourage other like-minded people to do so.
I think a diary farmer. Managing the health wellbeing vs cost profit. Dealing with economic and environmental rules.
Would indicate the biggest difference is. The cows do not get to express a choice.
Where as in society the means of production and the customer all have input.
I tend to vote most idealistically in local races, and most strategically in top line races. With local ones I can also have an outsized impact on the folks who are voting in those races by volunteering or even just (at minimum) talking positively about a given candidate to those who are on the fence or those who vote but don't spend the same time I do researching positions. It's my feeling that producing a major shift in policy is most achievable by a surge in local voting, due to the brittle nature of political strategies that rely on low engagement.
As I said to him, “in the US you don’t get to vote and get someone better than Joe Biden
Actually, write-ins are a thing, so you literally can vote for anyone else than him and Trump.
This rhetoric that a vote for someone who represents you is a waste if they do not have a realistic chance to win, would equally apply to an unequal match-up of Dem vs Rep, but it's never deployed that way; it's only used to argue against smaller candidates. You never see people arguing that Democrats should have voted for a Reagan because a vote for Mondale, who had a 0% chance to win (he only won one state- his home state of Minnesota), was "a waste".
Voting has to be about political representation, otherwise Democracy is just a veneer for selecting a plutocrat or oligarch to be the new figurehead for a while. Half of Trump's appeal was his (fake) rhetoric that he wasn't that, which Republican voters actually acknowledged they'd been selecting for years. Too many Democrats have yet to admit this to themselves about our party-preferred candidates. Obama won with record numbers, both terms, because he wasn't this.
Obama was one of those '0% chance' candidates early in the primaries according to political pundits in 2008, too.
But I also believe that it is tremendously wrong-headed to insist that people should vote for candidates who have absolutely no chance of winning
No one has a chance to win until people actually vote for them.
Get involved at the state level to implement ranked choice voting. It is the first and most important political change.
I prefer Approval Voting, but no voting system by itself will solve the two party system. We need to move to proportional representation. Something like 5 member districts using Sequential Proportional Approval Voting would be ideal.
But really, anything is leagues ahead of single-winner "choose one."
The problem is that this specific election is an election that will decide if we become a Hungrian illiberal democracy or continue being able to vote. If you don’t vote for Biden, and yes this is true, Trump will win because anyone slightly in his direction will vote for him. There will be no write in campaign for Romney. You can’t have change in a system that has had Project 2025 fully implemented.
That was also the rationale last time. It's still going to be the argument next election. And the one after that. It's not specific to this election at all. After Trump, there's always going to be a DeSantis or Ramaswamy waiting in the wings, because we're not doing anything about the root cause, which is Republican voters. Trump didn't make Republicans racist religious nutjobs, he just showed them that they can choose their candidates over the RNC, and the DNC is terrified we'll figure that out too.
Republicans being a threat to democracy is the new eternal argument that the DNC will make in order to goad you into only voting for their candidates, because they have the money to ensure that their candidates will always have the biggest campaign warchests, the most name recognition, and the most impressive political resumes, and thus will always be "the best candidates to defeat insert nameR".
On paper, Obama had no chance in hell (and DNC lapdog pundits made a point of saying as much, loudly, when he started his campaign). In reality, he got more votes than any Democrat president before him (and more than Hillary, after him).
undefinedAs I said to him, “in the US you don’t get to vote and get someone better than Joe BidenActually, write-ins are a thing, so you literally can vote for anyone else than him and Trump.
I think you misunderstood the author. You can literally vote for anyone, but the winner of the next US presidential election is only going to be Biden or Trump (barring a crazy twist, e.g. death or criminal conviction). I think the author's point is that, in any given election, you should probably vote strategically, but getting better options takes a lot of work for a long time to make it happen, so get working if you can.
I understand that's what the author thinks, but they're wrong. We literally could collectively elect anyone else.
It's only going to be Biden or Trump, because everyone is going to think, "well, the winner of the next US presidential election is only going to be Biden or Trump (barring a crazy twist, e.g. death or criminal conviction)", and vote one of them into power.
The journey of a thousand miles begins with people quitting because it was too far.