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The longer Biden enables Netanyahu, the more his presidency is at risk | Mohamad Bazzi
(www.theguardian.com)
this post was submitted on 01 Mar 2024
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politics
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Because it doesn't work in a non-proportional system with two parties.
Your want no war but you have the choice between party 1 with war or party 2 with war + everything else being worse. You don't vote, knowing full well that it helps party 2 win, well you made things worse for everyone and the war is still going on.
In a proportional system you could have voted for an anti war party to help them win seats so they would represent your ideals. That doesn't exist in the USA and not voting doesn't make it any more likely to start existing, hell, not voting actually makes it less likely to happen as it's good for the traditionalist party!
It can work if the politicians are willing to change to listen to their voter base. Both war parties aren't single-issue parties. If parties want to win the democratic mandate to enact other policies, they need to play ball with their electorate. That's the entire point of a democracy - that the electorate gets to be heard. It seems ridiculous that one side is enacting policies that are almost across-the-board unattractive to their demographic, and they're getting away with it because it can't be helped, we can't vote for the other guy, after all. (Obviously the other side is worse, but presumably their side loves their evil policies.)
Your argument basically amounts to "because our political parties will never listen to the people", which to me is pretty damning, and ensures that the DNC can continue to never listen to their voters. Do I want Trump to win? Absolutely not, even as someone not in the US. But the DNC can't be allowed to keep looking at these numbers, shrug, and say people will vote for them anyway.
Edit: My main point is that if Biden loses this because people aren't willing to vote for him, maybe some of the blame should go to the DNC and not just the "stupid voters"?
Sure, but this logic only works if you don't think about the consequences of letting Trump win just to pull the DNC to the left.
More people are going to die, mostly from the side you root for and all over the world, environmental policies will be fucked, rich people will get even richer, women and minorities will lose even more rights, he might be able to put more Republican judges in the supreme court.
If we were talking about two fairly reasonable parties (Liberals vs Harper's Conservatives in Canada back in the day for example) then sure, teach your party a lesson, there will be an impact but it won't be major. But that's not the situation we're talking about right now.
That's a very persuasive argument against voting.
If the party knows that they cannot win any seats without changing then they're either forced to change or they'll lose relevance and eventually be replaced by a third-party.
Republicans are fully aware of this, which is why the party went all-in behind Trump. They know that this is their last chance, and a thin veneer of populism is all that separates them from being absorbed by the Democrats' shift towards the right.
Democrats don't care though, they only need to triangulate a middle position between the Republicans and the Greens to maintain a stranglehold on the Overton Window's center.
If you see that as an argument not to vote then either you're an accelerationist or you're just a Republican that's trying to discourage Democrats from voting so the Republicans win, either way you're just trying to make more people suffer and don't really give a fuck about the war and I don't have anything else to say to you.
You're not thinking deeply enough. Lesser-evilism has been the rule since the Democrat party replaced the Whigs, and it only ever pushes candidates towards greater extremes. Extreme candidates can motivate their base, but their base of support is way out in the wings and tiny in comparison to the apathetic moderates in the center.
So when an extreme candidate does win office, the moderate center suddenly finds itself unable to be apathetic anymore and turns out for the subsequent election in droves. That's what happened in 2020 to put Biden in the White House.
But now, Biden's support for the genocide in Gaza makes him an extreme candidate too. There is no anti-war option, so the moderate middle returns to apathy. Trump inevitably wins, and Democrats are forced to decide if they want to reverse course on apartheid or cede their relevancy to a third party who will.
Whether we vote or not is no longer a material factor, if it ever was at all. The contours of the future have already been dictated by the ruling class, but do not let this discourage you. If the situation was hopeless then their propaganda would be unnecessary. Work your way through the stages of grief and let go of the faith in the system that has been drilled into you since grade school. It does not serve you, and it never did. Building alternative structures of power outside the Capitalist system is always scary, but it will be necessary to weather the dark times ahead.
"Let Trump win so more people die for four years as he does nothing to get a cease fire in Gaza and he fucks everything up, this way in four years the Democrats will have moved left and will want to enact anti war policies to... Oh, never mind, there won't be any Palestinians left in Gaza at that point so the issue will have solved itself 🤷"
You guys are totally ridiculous. It's not a system in which the government could be replaced sooner if it fucks up too much, elections happen every four years and people FROM ALL AROUND THE FUCKING WORLD live with the consequences for all those years.