As the title states I am confused on this matter. The way I see it, the USA has a two party system and in the next few weeks they’re either going to have Trump or Harris as president, come inauguration day. With this in mind doesn’t it make sense to vote for the person least likely to escalate the situation even more.
Giving your vote to an independent or worse not voting at all, just gives more of a chance for Trump to win the election and then who knows what crazy stuff he will allow, or encourage, Israel to get away with.
I really don’t get the logic. As sure nobody wants to vote for a party allowing these heinous crimes to be committed, but given you’re getting one of them shouldn’t you be voting for the one that will be the least horrible of the two.
Please don’t come at me with pro-Israeli rhetoric as this isn’t the post for that, I’m asking about why people would make such choices and I’m not up for debate on the Middle East, on this post, you can DM me for that.
Edit: Bedtime here now so will respond to incoming comments in the morning, love starting the day with an inbox full 😊.
Three points:
In summary:
It’s sad that no democrats are pulling to the left on the major foreign policy issues. Illian Omar said the best thing for Ukrainian children is to ensure that Ukrainian nazis can control regions they hate. Bernie has recently said that “Israel has the right to defend itself” even if he has also said a ceasefire is important. The only voice who would trade the demonic warmongering US empire for an extra hotel or two is Trump.
i agree mostly with you, even thought i’m a foreigner. i’d just like to point out that even though there are doubts about trump continuing america’s support of a genocide (and i believe he won’t have that much of a problem since both major parties in america support it), there’s everything else about him.
and also, everything else about the dems too. let’s just say that major lawfare campaigns against progressive governments here in latin america have been conducted under dem rule in the u.s… brazil and uruguay had their coups d’état orchestrated by the johnson administration. honduras, paraguay and brazil suffered lawfare coups under the obama administration.
If the Republicans get absolutely walloped in the election for running a wannabe dictator, it will show them that the extremism isn’t going to work and they have to run reasonable candidates to have a chance at winning. Then next election when they present someone who isn’t a megalomaniacal idiot who wants to be a “Dictator Day 1” it will require the Democrats to do better and put more effort than “not a dictator.”
Letting the Republicans be this close will cause the Democrats to move further right because the leftists aren’t going to vote for them anyway, and they sure as fuck won’t vote for Republicans, so moving to the right to steal 1000 votes from Republicans is better than moving left and gaining 1500 votes from people who otherwise wouldn’t vote.
Whilst the first paragraph does make some sense, it presumes that in such a situation the Republicans would not conclude it’s the style of the candidate rather than his ideas that caused the rout. That might be a little optimist considering that the traditional Republicans’ were just as far right economically before and almost as right in Moral issues, but they had a different style of candidate (remember Reagan?).
It might also be a little optimist to expect an absolute walloping of anybody, Republican or Democrat.
That said, it’s a valid scenario, though it relies on very low probability events.
The second paragraph is inconsistent with every single thing the Democrats have done in their pre-electoral propaganda, from the whole “vote us or get Trump” (something which wouldn’t scare the Right) to the raft of pre-election promises on Left-wing subjects like student debt forgiveness or tightening regulations on giants such as Telecoms a little bit. If they really thought they could win with only votes stolen from the Right, they would be making promises which appeal to the Right, not the Left.
Besides, the whole idea that Rightwing voters would go for the less-Rightwing party rather than the more-Rightwing party is hilarious: why go for the copy if you can get the real deal?
From what I’ve seen in other countries were Center-Left Parties totally dropped their appeal to the Left and overtly went to appeal to the Right, they got pummeled because the Maths don’t add up and, as I said above, Rightwing votes will choose the “genuine article” over the “wannabes”.
It’s not by chance that in Europe even whilst becoming full-on Neoliberal parties, Center-Left parties maintained a leftwing discourse and would throw a bone to the Left once in a while (say, minimum wage raises) when in government.
Are you talking about nations with better electoral systems that can support more than 2 parties?
Yes, in a 3+ party system Party A moving closer to Party B to take 1000 votes from them but losing 1500 votes to Party C in the process is a bad play.
In a “Winner takes all” 2 party system where the only thing that matters is having 1 more vote than your opponent to have 100% of the power, Party A moving closer to Party B to take 1000 votes from them is a better position even if it causes them to lose 1900 votes from people who now won’t vote for either party. Moving further away from Party B to get 1000 votes from people who are refusing to vote is a losing position if it causes them to lose 501 votes to Party B.
In a 2 party system chasing the people who are actually voting will always be twice as good than chasing the people who aren’t voting.