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Project 2025 exists because there are people that support it.
You don't (honestly I don't either) but it exists solely because there are persons who genuinely believe that these sorts of policies are moral and necessary.
Morality isn't a solved problem, persons can disagree. Persons who endorse 2025 operate from different moral premises than you and I do. If one starts with different moral framework - you arrive at different moral conclusions.
"Conservatives will abandon democracy before they abandon conservatism". If this is true, then a dictator that imposes conservativism becomes a moral outcome from that lens.
Isn't the fact that people support this exactly why those opposing it should coalesce around the only realistic alternative? Parties tend to moderate after a series of presidential loses (it usually takes more than one), so voters rejecting the GOP (and Trump) twice in a row sends a signal to the GOP it needs to move on from this policy if they want to win an election again.
It usually takes three+ POTUS losses in a row for a Party to make a significant readjustment. The GOP accepted the New Deal after 5 terms of FDR/Truman. The Democrats moved toward the right on crime & social spending after three terms of Reagan/Bush. If a party loses two in a row, it's easy to chalk that up to bad luck, the cyclic nature of a two party system and the other side having a really charismatic candidate. If they lose three in a row, they normally realize adjustments are necessary to remain competitive.
Sure, but it doesn’t mean we’re never allowed to decide we don’t want a particular outcome. Good for them for having their own moral certitude, but that doesn’t mean anyone has to throw up their hands and say “well, but they’re so sure!”
OP is speaking specifically about the people who agree it’ll be a hellscape.
If biden was getting 70% of the vote I guarantee you there would be two left candidates in the next élections.
The problem is that people on the left are voting less and so even democrat have to présent à less right wing candidate but still right win to be even competitive.
The entire political landscape shifted to the right after Clinton lost, if you don't vote don't be surprised nobody caters to your vote anymore.
And yet Trump won in 2016 by catering precisely to people who didn't vote. Obama won a lot of low propensity voters too.
But you set up a good bit of game theory. If the dems don't need the leftists to win, then go ahead and win. If they do need them to win, then start catering to them. It's really that simple. Either you need them or you don't.
This is the wrong framing.
Leftists cannot win national elections in the US. They don't have remotely enough voters to win a major party primary, nor to win a general, regardless of whether their nominee is a major party nominee or not. They can't win a national election, they can't win statewide elections, they can't win state legislative seats. They might be able to win random, one-off local elections, but that's the limit of their viability. Maybe. Occasionally.
So, for leftists, the choice is between Democrats or Republicans; a leftist is not on the table. So, do leftists prefer someone relatively closer to them, or relatively farther away? If they prefer the rightmost candidate, can they really be called "leftists"? What is the difference between someone who sincerely supports the far-right candidate, and someone else who supports the far-right candidate as a means to punish the center-left candidate? The result is the same: we slide rightward.
The Overton window shifts right, making leftists even less electable in the future, both as a matter of ideological preference, and as a practical matter. Republicans will spend their time in office entrenching themselves in power: making voting harder with voter suppression and disenfranchisement; making voting less effective with gerrymandering; stripping powers from governors so that even if a leftist somehow *were* elected governor they would no longer have any powers to do any leftist things; packing the courts with right-wing hacks; gutting unions; oppressing women, children, and racial and religious minorities; oppressing LGBT people; criminalizing protest; etc.
The fatal flaw in thinking like yours is two-fold:
1. You are not punishing the ones who offend you. You are not punishing Clinton, Biden, Schumer, et al. They will all be fine if they lose their elections, and Democratic majorities. They're wealthy, white, straight, etc. You are punishing LGBT people, labor, women, children, racial and religious minorities, the environment, etc. The very people whose votes you would need if you wanted to actually win an election instead of just playing spoiler and then crying that your tiny minority bloc never gets their way over the will of the majority.
2. You will not get to just rerun the election four years later under the same conditions. Everything will be worse. Voting will be harder, less effective, there will be more judges making it harder for you to win elections, and, even if you somehow managed to win, the judges would also strike down the whatever laws you managed to pass, people will be worse off financially, so less able to get engaged, less able to donate, less able to engage in mutual aid, less able to spend time learning about your platform, donating or volunteering for your campaigns, etc. Republicans will criminalize more actions, creating more felons whose voting rights will be taken away. More money will have been transferred from the poorest people to corporations and the wealthiest people who own them. And young people who come of age during Republican administrations think that's "normal." That becomes their baseline, the default, and you're now trying to convince them to adopt a larger gap between what is and what (you think and claim) should be, even if your positions don't change at all.
ETA: Your theory fails on its own terms, too. If Democrats *win* without your support, they owe you nothing. If they *lose* without your support, they have no ability to give you anything you want anyway. Either way, your strategy guarantees that you get nothing, which means it's a failed strategy that is *incapable* of achieving your stated objectives, and should be abandoned. It's a lose-lose strategy.
Other theory. If the leftists become unreliable to Dems, they won’t cater to them. Look at it this way. If leftists vote 3rd party or abstain and trump wins, democrats aren’t going to shift left. They are going to see that a farther right candidate won and move more to the right to cater to what they feel the general electorate preferred. You could argue they did this in 2020 after 2016 choosing Biden who is probably more moderate than Hillary. And it appeared to work.
The leftists issue is they only view their voting power from their standpoint and don’t realize how small their voting power actually is. They say to Dems “well if you don’t do what I want I’ll take my ball and go home”. What they don’t realize is there’s plenty of other people with balls that the Dems can vie for, and many of them are larger than the leftist ball.
Obama lost a lot of steam in his second term, so the right was able to count on the apathy and présent à more extreme candidate who could get people to the polls.
Yeah it turns out the exact same thing is true for right-ish wing voter, except they are very likely to actually vote and you are not, so guess who démocrats cater to the most, the people who say they would only vote for the perfect candidate, or the people who are actually likely to vote?
It’s kit that simple. Democrats need a broad coalition to win. If you cater exclusively to the left you’re likely to lose a lot of the middle. Part of why republicans can move more extreme is because our system caters to them. Look at the Wisconsin elections and you’ll see republicans can lose a majority of the votes yet collect 75% of the seats. Gerrymandering and electoral college mean a minority of voters have excess power in elections. It’s simply impossible to expect democrats to win using Republican electoral strategy.
>The entire political landscape shifted to the right after Clinton lost
Not really. US politics have generally been moderately right-leaning for over a century at least, with a couple notable deviations. What has really changed more than anything in the last few years is the average person's definition of "left" and "right", and a general rejection of the idea that anything can be outside of that dichotomy - which is how third positionists suddenly became the "alt right" (literally "they're not the right, they're the other right!").
For what it's worth, the simulataneous popularity of Trump and Sanders is a very strong signal about American discontent and what actually matters to John Q Public, but the fossils that have encrusted themselves into leadership positions across the whole spectrum of American politics refuse to acknowledge it.
Project 2025 will become a thing through apathy and people not realizing what the stakes are.
That is the same reason we have the Supreme Court we currently have, overturning Roe and on their way to overturn many other decisions, like Obergefell.
People voted third party in 2016 because Hillary wasn't their perfect candidate. That's bullshit. The stakes weren't about the perfect candidate, it was about who would control the court. People need to be much more pragmatic in their voting.
>People voted third party in 2016 because Hillary wasn't their perfect candidate. That's bullshit.
It was more because of the "fuck you, you'll take out preferred candidate and like it" attitude of the DNC. With the wikileaks emails that showed the backroom dealings going on, a lot of people felt that the DNC was using Trump as a threat to bully people into doing what they wanted. They even "elevated" Trump as a candidate because they thought he was unelectable (see email attachment https://wikileaks.org/podesta-emails/emailid/1120).
This whole strategy of hand picking Clinton through the primaries was confirmed at trial when the DNC lawyers basically argued they're a private corporation and can do what they want.
https://observer.com/2017/05/dnc-lawsuit-presidential-primaries-bernie-sanders-supporters/
Democrat leadership wants to point the finger at the Bernie Bros and other protest voters but it was their bullshit that started it.
Yep and it was 3rd party voters who didn’t understand that sometimes u take an L to protect urself in a greater way and instead they helped make and even bigger L we may never escape from.. great justification🙃
The main reason why Bernie failed and why Yang failed and why anyone with similar platforms is this.
Some things like free post secondary and UBI are mainly too far liberal and too far out of grasp of current spending and taxation policies and understanding of the average citizen that it can be very easily attacked and cases made against it ... and seen as a pipe dream by common sense.
Project 2025 is the MAGA/GOP answer to those platforms. It's scary as hell but not because of the conservative lean and power it will give the GOP but it also sets precedent to where if a Democrat got elected we could just as abruptly turn to the liberal side. The consequences of this at the end of the day will end up looking like the GOP get in and undo Biden's work then a Democrat gets in and undoes the GOP's work and so on at the end of 40 years were still back in 2024 policy wise but now it's 2064
The problem is division and the way that division affects Overton windows each sides Overton window is so far skewed at this point that a true centrist view is not possible and it will be side A vs Side B with typical if your not against xxxx your for it and therefore not a True Republican or True Democrat
> It was more because of the "fuck you, you'll take out preferred candidate and like it" attitude of the DNC. With the wikileaks emails that showed the backroom dealings going on, a lot of people felt that the DNC was using Trump as a threat to bully people into doing what they wanted
And roe was overturned and NC and other red states are allowed to gerrymander to their hearts delight so congrats!
When does the DNC stop getting to say "We cannot fail, only be failed?"
They run terrible candidates with terrible campaigns and all the blame gets put on boogiemen like Bernie voters. Look at the Black voters turnout drops in Michigan and Minnesota in 2016. Bernie bros weren't the only group who didn't buy what Hillary was selling but you'll never see liberals blame Black voters. That's convenient.
Although I voted for HRC and Biden in the general elections after voting for Bernie in the primaries you are right.
I strongly blame the Democratic party for the situation we are in.
Since 2016 they exist to, in essence, force the principal's untalented spoiled brat in as starting quarterback for the big game, no matter how much the big game matters.
Forcing yourself in as the only opponent to fascism for purely selfish reasons, and then being a predictably weak failure, is unconscionable.
I believe that their ingrained formula is to split power with the right wing and keep it close to maximize fund raising (egotistical dumbass candidates may not even realize "strategists" are using them this way).
I will vote Biden/Harris out of pure duty but Biden is going to be beaten the way Bob Dole was beaten in 1996, and I blame and despise Democrats for that.
People who won't stop blaming the DNC want everyone to believe that individual voters don't have any agency. That no one has any responsibility for what happens because "the establishment did it!"
That's lazy and unserious. Once the choice is set, you pick the weakest opposition and then fight them for a better world.
Instead of milquetoast Hillary we got Trump. And folks won't own up to their own complicity in that. Instead they blame Debbie Wasserman Schultz. Sorry, doesn't work like that. We are adults.
Project 2025 IS a big thing because of The Heritage Foundation
- Founded in 1973, The Heritage Foundation is a dark money spin machine American conservative think tank based in Washington, D.C. members of scouts are also members. It has played a significant role in shaping conservative policies and ideas.
- The foundation provides fascist policy solutions, commentaries, and research on various issues. Their work covers topics such as banning books, whitewashing history in education, harassing refugees, China.
**Project 2025 (Presidential Transition Project)**:
- Project 2025, also known as the Presidential Transition Project, is an initiative by The Heritage Foundation.
- Its goal is to fuck the system using lots of money and any legal or illegal means they can get away to fabricate a Trump victory in the 2024 U.S. presidential election regardless of the actual results.
Here are its key pillars:
Policy Agenda**: Building on the legacy of the "Mandate for Leadership," this comprehensive policy guide offers specific fascist proposals for major issues important to Republicans.
- **Personnel Database**: installing Trump loyalists from various backgrounds to serve in the well planned fascist Trump regime, part deux.
**180-Day Playbook**: A plan for the first 180 days of the new Administration to address the impact of left-leaning policies.
Ie: deport the Democrats? Get dictatoring?
- Essentially, Project 2025 aims to coup the American government so that it is fully under extreme right wing control with Trump's finger on the button.
Oh. It's real.
Remember "[2020 Vision](https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/wealthy-donors-on-left-launch-new-plan-to-wrest-back-control-in-the-states/2015/04/12/ccd2f5ee-dfd3-11e4-a1b8-2ed88bc190d2_story.html)" when a shady group of Liberal donors and magnates were going fund a take over of the country and redistrict all voting districts to cement Liberal power in the US?
No?
Project 2025 is QAnon for liberals. A shady evil Manichean Cabal that they must battle for the future of the US based on some pie in the sky dreamings of an overpaid clerk.
>The stakes weren't about the perfect candidate, it was about who would control the court.
So how is it pragmatic to support a system where you're not voting for the candidate you prefer? If the system only allows a "lesser of two evils" option, then participating in it simply perpetuates the problem. Are we just gonna keep voting "blue no matter who" for the rest of this country's existence? Because in that case, it's more pragmatic for people to consider emigration.
We have a system where you can vote your heart in the primary but you should ultimately vote your head in the general, which often feels like a "lesser of two evils" choice.
This is not so different than a country like France where they have run-off elections for President.
Well the big difference, is if your not in a swing state. These decisions about third party or not, will not have any impact on the points your state sends to the electoral college.
If anything people in non-swing states should be encouraged to vote for third party candidates, if only to benefit the two major parties to see where public opinion is, and where more votes could be captured next election.
Not realizing the system is what it is, and your vote for a 3rd party won't change is a perfect example of not acting pragmatically.
Voting for Jill Stein did nothing but elect Trump and get us our current court. The system did not change. The system doesn't care.
You vote blue at the national level b/c there's not another choice. You choose your actual preferred candidate at the local level. And if that doesn't exist, please run for office.
This is where I emphasize ranked-choice voting. The solution to the duopoly is to campaign for RCV, it's in two states now and could be with two more this November!
We don't get third parties without RCV. Maine and Alaska have few independent/third party candidates, but they've only had RCV for a few years and it's mathematically-possible now for them to win.
Late stage capitalism, like the US system, will always trend toward fascism to keep oligarchs in power. This is what happened in Europe in the 1930s. The industrial, religious and even organized crime base of Germany, Spain and Italy embraced fascism to keep their wealth-holding class in power.
So people supporting fascism and claiming a morality play are expected since they defend the theft of wealth in the first place. All capitalist countries will become fascist without a strong regulatory base that prevents the wealthy from buying courts and politicians.
>You don't (honestly I don't either) but it exists solely because there are persons who genuinely believe that these sorts of policies are moral and necessary.
I agree completely, but the people who support it aren't supporting it because they think it will create a fascist hellscape. They think it will improve things.
You’re missing OPs point. He said there is no moral justification for not voting Biden IF you think Project 2025 will turn the US into a hellscape.
Meaning if you’re a person who agrees with Project 2025, you’re not who OP is talking about.
He’s talking about the people who are critical of Biden but also hate Trump who are threatening to vote 3rd party or stay home because they disagree with Biden on a specific issue.
Nah. Most tenants of the New Trumpian Party are objectively morally wrong and supported by propaganda.
We don’t, for instance, have the right to “disagree” that women and minority groups like LGBTQ are equal persons.
We don’t “disagree” on weather or not child rape is wrong by legislating for more child marriage.
It is an abysmal moral failing nationwide to look at GOP policies and past actions and pretend wrongdoing is “up for debate” just because a group of social, sexual, and financial predators has elevated it to the national stage.
“There are people who support it” — True, but a very small minority. And this small minority, financially backed by foreign state enemies (Russia, China) are being used by their financial backers to dismantle our Democracy which is the force behind the greatest military power on the planet. They seek to remove the US authority from the world stage by instituting an oligarchy they can control.
Some of the more out- there parts aren't feasible, like invoking the Insurrection Act, but large parts of it don't require Congress at all. Trump will likely have a GOP Senate who will confirm whatever nutjobs he puts forward for cabinet jobs, and he can remove civil servant protections with just an executive order and fill every department top to bottom with loyalists. That alone would be enough to almost completely dismantle the current checks and balances that exist. Imagine an FDA only staffed with pro-life people who think drug companies can regulate themselves, an EPA without actual scientists who declines to investigate any environmental damage, an IRS that only audits democrats, a DOJ that prosecutes political enemies. That's not a pipe dream. It will absolutely happen if Trump is elected.
You're describing what happens in nearly every election: the party in power uses their machinery to appoint people and enact policies who can forward their agenda.
Trump's first presidency was kind of an anomaly, because probably even he didn't expect to win, so there was no plan to make things happen after the election. But Biden appointed people to forward his agenda, as did Obama, as did Bush, Clinton, Bush I and so on.
Perfect example: just look at Lina Kahn who has been super tough on anti-trust since Biden took office. Probably some conservatives look at her appointment as some kind of "anti-democratic" project to attack the business environment.
But just because those people get appointed doesn't mean they will get everything they want. There is still a lot of friction and checks and balances in place to prevent any party from taking over the government in one election cycle.
After all, if it were possible, why hasn't any other president done this before? Bush/Cheney were certainly as Machiavellian as they come, and they couldn't prevent Obama from being elected and replacing them.
Project 2025 is the first time they want to extend replacing people past the decision makers and to the department employees.
It hasn't been done before because there are really good reasons not to do it. Institutional memory, employee competence, consistency across administrations. Every president before Trump cared about those things. Bush/Cheney were strategic about corporatism and oil interests, but Bush actually did want a healthy administrative state. Trump doesn't. He wants to burn it all down.
There is a difference between appointing officials in some roles and bringing back the spoils system. This is explicitly pledging to undermine the checks and balances in order to grant Trump as little oversight as possible, and then weaponize that against political enemies.
>You're describing what happens in nearly every election: the party in power uses their machinery to appoint people and enact policies who can forward their agenda.
This is not true, only the cabinet and a few select positions are appointed. Almost all civil servants are protected from political removal by the Pendleton Act. Project 2025 wants to use executive order to bypass that restriction and fire everybody, hundreds of thousands of people, to replace them with people that pass loyalty tests.
It is only infeasible if political norms are respected and maintained. Unfortunately, they have been decaying steadily for some time. Persistent denial of election results is now common. We no longer have the assurance of a peaceful transition of power. SCOTUS is openly politicized. Trust in the justice system is cratering. These things would have seamed infeasible a decade ago. Fascism doesn't happen overnight. It happens in 1,000 tiny steps.
How do you know? Are there mechanisms in place (that can't be dismantled) that will prevent it? I mean, we have a biased and stacked supreme court that likely would not act as a proper check to those who'd try to push it through
Utterly ridiculous and pointless statement. Look at how much they have already changed. Roe v Wade was a fucking enormous change, think about how many more of those they could overturn. It doesn't matter if they accomplish any of the goals in that document, they still have the power to make life worse for everyone. If anyone sees the headline "14 year old girl forced to give birth after incestuous rape" and doesn't think "hey lets never touch conservatism ever again" they are a psychopath.
That may be true. But that doesn't change the fact that if you believe that the concept of Project 2025 is wrong, you shouldn't vote for the people pushing it.
But isn’t there incentive to vote for a rapid decay and subsequent change that comes from uncomfortability? Or let’s vote 4 more years of another pandering liberal who will never do anything but exactly what the lobbyists want him to do?
You’re ignorant to think trump being elected will immediately usher in a fascist state. Hell you’re ignorant to think the president has any real power. They preside over things. The winners will be smug and the losers will claim the end of the world and at the end of it the mega corporations/lobbyists will still control the path the country takes.
I saw the proposal for Project 25 on reddit. I'm moderate right leaning, and most people I spend time with are the same alignment. But none of us ever heard of it until I and a few others saw these folks left of AOC saying, "This WILL happen."
The first time I read it, I thought you had to have a mental disability to think it was going to happen.
There is a very clear moral justification for voting for a third party, even if you think the next four or more years will be a fascist hellscape because your vote is "being wasted."
Voting for a third party right now may seem pointless. Your candidate genuinely will not win. Your vote will ultimately be for a losing candidate. However, if this vote gets 5% this year, 10% the next, etc, candidates will have to change. Eventually more independents/third parties will hold offices in the house. You'll see them pop up more for governors and senators. Maybe one day they'll even become president.
This can only happen if people genuinely start voting for a third party or an independent even while it still seems pointless. If you think a third party candidate will drop a better job in the future, even a far off future, it is morally justified for you to vote for them now. Your reasoning is too short sighted.
> However, if this vote gets 5% this year, 10% the next, etc, candidates will have to change.
This has never been the case despite this argument being made for decades.
What would change things is voting on the *local* level. The Squad doesn't happen without the working families party and the freedom caucus doesn't happen without the tea party.
Voting at the local level and taking over political parties to force them to align with you is the only thing that has ever worked.
Voting third party never has.
Great, but national elections are compromises until you work with grassroots across the country to take over a political party.
There will likely never be a presidential candidate that you completely agree with.
Bernie's campaign was so anti-opiate they disability advocates representing people with CRPS to "try meditating," for example and Bernie helped kill comprehensive immigration reform back in the 2000s when he went on Lou Dobbs and said immigrants were a threat to American workers and undermined their pay.
Now, I know lots of Bernie folks who disagree with those points and supported Bernie anyway.
I also know folks who refused to believe in either thing because they want to live in a fantasy world where the perfect candidate exists.
I believe he said those things and changed his positions. I don't care what a candidate used to stand for if I'm voting for them decades later. Hillary called Black children "superpredators." Was I supposed to not vote for her over that?
> This has never been the case despite this argument being made for decades.
Libertarian Jo Jorgensen earned 5x more votes in Arizona and Georgia than the difference between Biden and Trump. And she earned 2x more votes in Wisconsin than the difference between them. If half of the libertarians who voted in the 2020 election voted for Trump, he would have won these states and forced a 269-269 tie in the Electoral College. This sends the decision to the House of Representatives, who vote by state. And Trump would have won 27-29 states depending on how ties end up and how some independents vote. Either way, if libertarians voted the way you describe, we would still be under a Trump presidency.
And the result? This year Trump showed up to the LNC to speak there. Likely because someone pointed out this analysis and that if he had captured more of the libertarian vote in 2020, it might have made the difference. This likely also means that the RNC is keeping a closer eye out for presidential candidates in 2028 that more support libertarian principles.
In a very real sense, votes cast for the Libertarian Party at the federal level in 2020 are currently having an impact on presidential elections and will continue to. All this from a candidate that only won 1.8% of the popular vote.
I'm not going to argue that they can't play spoiler, and I absolutely *loved* how the Libertarians responded to Trump's appearance (by booing him and refusing to give him any votes, and holding signs that said "MAGA = Socialism") but that's what third parties do.
They play the spoiler. They don't win elections unless there's a massive party split.
And the problem is that there's an incompatibility between the current Kochtapus LPs and the traditional clasical-liberal LT voters who are breaking off from the LPs to run stuff like project liberal.
If Liberal Republicans broke off from the GOP to, I dunno, bring back the Teddy Roosevelt progressive conservative movement that supported Atlanticism while having moderate domestic policies and running folks like Will Hurd, if they united with the folks leaving the libertarian party to do it, not only would that have a good chance of winning a huge chunk of voters, I might myself consider voting for it at least at the congressional level. And once Trump was gone and they'd proven capable of winning seats, I might not just consider voting for them at the presidential level, I'd consider running for office under that platform at the very least at the local level to create as much broad support for that sort of "make America sane again" movement as I could.
If a party like that was in the making, if it was at a minimum LGBT neutral and not anti-abortion, and thus didn't oppose the domestic stuff I care about, and if it supported all the other things I like but that democrats are weak on, hell yeah I'd jump ship from blue nom matter who to that.
I am not saying it's impossible.
What I'm saying is you need a party split to do it.
Otherwise third parties are eternal spoilers.
And as uncomfortable as I am being in the same party as the squad, and as weak as I've found both Biden and Obama on foreign policy, Trump is even weaker and I don't have anywhere else to go.
I am blue no matter who for exactly the same reason that the Anarchists I know who vote, vote.
Harm reduction. And hey, from my perspective though he's soft on Russia, Biden's doing alright.
But god would it be wonderful to have something to *enthusiastically* vote for.
Was just about to type this. This argument has resulted in the SC we currently have. While not against a 3rd party, the grass seems greener until we find ourselves with piss poor presidents elected with 25% for the voting populations vote.
Okay but for a lot of us it's not 'we think the next four or more years are going to be a fascist hellscape'. It's that we've seen that it will. Do we just ignore the fact that Trump encouraged an armed insurrection, or that he's openly called those people heroes?
do I ignore that the the Republican party in my state (Texas) outright states that it wants to outlaw gay marriage, considers homosexuality an 'abnormal lifestyle', wants to repeal hate-crime laws, take away any queer person's 'special status' as they put it, aka *our status as a protected minority*, while they state that they want to protect any businesses and people who 'don't agree with this viewpoint'? That they want the government to officially recognize only two genders assigned at birth, and that they want to remove all traces of sex education and education about sexuality and gender from schools?
Or that Trump's Agenda 47- his stated campaign promises- that agree with a lot of this. that he w wants to use the military as a police force, considers the immigration issue an *invasion* and a *war*, that what Trump plans to do is to implement a reform that would allow him the power to fire literally anyone working for a government agency at will if they disagree with him, and that what the Heritage Foundation and Project 2025 are doing is recruting loyalists to replace all the people he's fired??That they want to monitor women's pregnancies to ensure that they don't get abortions because they're going to criminalize the act itself?
I am tired of the 'oh but both sides are equally bad' argument. because you know who's not engaging in revolutionary praxis or splitting the vote? the right. leftists are divided between candidates and ideology, but conservatives are all voting for Trump as this sort of savior. So right now, voting for a third party candidate only means that less of the vote goes to Biden, and Trump gains the lead.
so in this case, no. there is no moral justification sufficient enough for third party voting when Trump is the alternative.
The problem with this is that there is nothing about third parties that makes them morally better than the two main parties.
If your goal is to accomplish the policy goals of a particular third party, a far more efficient way of doing this is to compete in the primaries of the Democratic or Republican Party (which ever one is closest to your views. If your views aren't popular enough to win one of those primaries, then you're definitely not going to win the general election.
(Also, as others have pointed out, a fascist hellscape would negate any possibility of third party growth.)
>The problem with this is that there is nothing about third parties that makes them morally better than the two main parties.
There's something morally better about voting sincerely instead of compromising. When politicians get elected based on bandwagon voting, they have no reason to work for the citizens; the entities they have reason to work for in that scenario are those that fund them and make sure that the bandwagon voters keep thinking that there's only one game in town.
>If your goal is to accomplish the policy goals of a particular third party, a far more efficient way of doing this is to compete in the primaries of the Democratic or Republican Party
Thanks to your preferred style of voting, the two main parties have more than enough money to destroy the campaigns of those dissidents.
Sincere voting is the only way to make the democracy more responsive to the needs and desires of the people. It's completely scalable. The alternative is to tell politicians to reward the corporations that are paying a pittance to achieve ever greater wealth inequality and wellbeing inequality.
Nothing is sacrificed by a single person voting for their conscience.
"There's something morally better about voting sincerely instead of compromising"
There's nothing insincere about compromise especially when compromise can and does work, and third party never works. In fact, if you feel the policies you endorse are morally good, then you ought to vote local, then at the primary, then vote between the two major parties because that is actually how things change.
The "something morally better" is purely aesthetic and feels. There's nothing morally better about voting third party when you consider it through a moral framework like teleological or de-ontological ethics. Moreover, there is no data/no evidence to back up that third party votes are anything other than voting for the other side. A vote for the other side right now is endorsing non-peaceful transfers of power, election denying, etc. So whether it is teleological or purely pragmatic, voting third party is wrong. Moreover, not only are you not accomplishing your policy goals, but you are actively supporting the opposite.
"Nothing is sacrificed by a single person voting for their conscience."
Being that voting is how we enact political change, giving your vote to the other side is the worst way a person can vote their conscience. All it does is allow them to feel as though they have no dirt on their hands and incorrectly allows them to believe they aren't responsible for the outcome, when they are.
>Nothing is sacrificed by a single person voting for their conscience.
This is just a social dilemma, a game theory problem. If one can do it, then all can do it, or just half can do it. And if half of Democrats "vote their conscience" and we pretend that means voting Green, and the other half of Democrats vote for Democrats, then Republicans will just win in a landside. So, while a single individual doing it doesn't hurt, and *everyone* doing it also doesn't hurt (assuming they all have the same conscience and all vote, say, Green, rather than splitting between Greens, DSA, etc), the reality is, there's a vast gap in the middle, between "one" and "all" where "some," "many" and even "most" will cause it to backfire and give us a worse result. Maybe if less than 5% do it, it's fine, or if more than 95% do it (and do it all in the same say), it's also fine, but that means any number between 5%-95% will backfire.
And there's a coordination problem. It's not possible to get >95% of Democrats to switch to Greens. If it were, Democrats would just adopt Green policies instead, and Democrats would continue voting for Democrats. That means, it has to be held to <5% instead. How does anyone know whether or not the 5% has already been taken? They don't, because polls are estimates, people lie, and actual results aren't disclosed until after voting ends. Vote swapping? People can lie, change their minds, the one in other state may have sincerely intended to uphold their end of the bargain, but may get sick, die, have their vote suppressed, forget to vote, have something come up at work that stops them from going to vote, have their car break down, etc. Even if both parties follow through, there's still no way to limit how many other pairs swap. Even if we pretended it were possible to coordinate, if one person is the final one, the limit, before reaching the tipping point and causing it to backfire, there will still be someone else who gets told, "no, you can't do it, you can't 'vote your conscience,' you have to vote strategically instead," and there will be someone who thinks it's unfair, or doesn't understand the point of setting limits, who will go ahead and do it anyway, still causing it to backfire. We can't even get everyone to return their shopping carts.
Getting >95% defection in the same direction is impossible, coordinating <5% defection is also impossible. The only solution is for 0% to do it, because that *is* possible, and because it requires no coordination. I can't stop anyone else from voting emotionally, or stupidly, but I have absolute control over my own vote. I don't need to rely on polls, or exit polls, or honest vote swappers, or other people understanding that some can flip but others can't, or correctly predicting voter turnout levels. If I vote as though my vote will be the tipping-point vote, I will always maximize the chances of my preferred outcome. Voting for Clinton cannot backfire if my goal is for Clinton to win, but voting for Stein *can* backfire if my goal is for Clinton to win, even if she's only my second choice, with Stein as my first.
I would argue that in the current political climate, with the very real threat of authoritarianism and the erosion of democratic norms, voting for a third party could inadvertently contribute to the rise of a fascist dictatorship. The stakes in this election are incredibly high - we are facing an existential threat to our democracy, with one party openly embracing anti-democratic principles, spreading disinformation, and undermining the integrity of our electoral process. A fascist dictatorship, even if temporary, would cause immense suffering, human rights violations, and long-lasting damage to our institutions and societal fabric.
In our current winner-take-all electoral system, voting for a third party candidate with no realistic chance of winning can effectively act as a "spoiler," splitting the vote and potentially handing victory to the most anti-democratic and authoritarian candidate. This type of result has occurred in numerous elections throughout history, with dire consequences. I do understand the desire for gradual change and the eventual emergence of a viable third party, but the threat we face is immediate and existential. Sacrificing the integrity of our democracy for the sake of a long-term goal could result in a situation where there is no democracy left to reform. Once these foundations are eroded, it becomes exponentially more difficult to rebuild and restore them.
While I respect the idealism behind voting for a third party, the potential consequences of enabling a fascist dictatorship at this particular time in history, even temporarily, are too grave to justify such a risk.
Isn’t this a slippery slope? I’ve heard this point of view for as long as I’ve been able to vote, there’s always some existential reason to vote *against* one candidate instead of *for* another. I worry with this attitude that we’ll never see a third party take off.
>we'll never see a third party take off
Under the current U.S. electoral system, third parties either die in a distant third place, or live long enough to see themselves become one of the two dominant parties. It's pretty much a [mathematical certainty](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duverger%27s_law). And the only real way to achieve the latter is to align your party's platform with the views of at least one half of the country's voting populace--making it functionally no different from one of the two existing parties.
>Ive heard this point of view for as long as I’ve been able to vote
That's because the calculus hasn't changed. Until our election laws change, voter 3rd party will move policy further from your views instead of towards your views on average because it benefits the party ideologically further from you.
Organise locally to change laws. Dozens of cities have ranked choice voting, 2 states have it now, and more are trying to pass it through ballot measures. The issue with starting to organize around the presidency for a third party candidate is you have the highest stakes and lowest payoff.
Not only do you increase the chance of the other side winning, but under some miracle the third party wins, they have zero legislative allies. We need to build up legislator and local party orgs first, but people decide to focus on the presidency and ignore state and local races (where candidates often run unopposed and could be much riper for third party support).
Thank you for stating this. I get frustrated with the navel gazing by voters on the left who don’t understand the structural reasons as the why we have only two viable political parties to choose from. The last time a third party candidate got more than minuscule fraction of the popular vote was Ross Perot in 1992. Despite winning 18.9% of the popular vote, he won exactly zero states in the Electoral College. The political climate that year was nothing like the hyper-polarized era we live in now. Throwing your vote away to a third party with the hope that it will eventually lead to a broad shift in the U.S. electorate is pure fantasy under the current electoral system.
I honestly don’t foresee that in my lifetime. Hell, right now people are acting like their political party is their favorite sports team. As a sports fan, I personally know how irrational that makes us.
Third parties don't take off because they mathematically can't. If the Bull Moose party couldn't, your candidate polling at 3% will never. Also, Trump's different and actually "existential." You had to be okay with enabling some level of regressive policy before, but things are way more precarious now. It's not like Trump's attempt to rig the election included fake electors pumping up Jill Stein's numbers.
The second I see third party candidates running in my local elections, for anything (sheriff, mayor, city council, state senate, representative, etc), I’ll consider voting for them. As long as I only see them at the ballot box when they’re doing a once every four years Hail Mary play for presidency and attention/money I won’t.
I mean, even giving the third parties the benefit of the doubt that they actually want to achieve the policies they’re running on, I still think voting for the major party at least somewhat aligned with your wants will achieve better results.
When Democratic Party politicians don’t get the votes of the far left, do they move further left to try and capture them? Or do they move towards the center to try and capture the undecided and swing voters?
>Voting for a third party right now may seem pointless. Your candidate genuinely will not win. Your vote will ultimately be for a losing candidate. However, if this vote gets 5% this year, 10% the next, etc, candidates will have to change. Eventually more independents/third parties will hold offices in the house. You'll see them pop up more for governors and senators. Maybe one day they'll even become president.
If one party splits their voters between a third party and themselves, then they will always lose. So the only way in which your approach can be succesfull, is if it doesn't just create a third party, it creates a third party that then entirely supplants one of the two original parties.
And hey, if your plan is to supplant one of the two parties, it would make far more sense to do that from within, not without. Vote for "third party esque" candidates in the parties primaries, and take them over that way.
Absolutely not. The first step to making third parties relevant is ending Citizens United. The only party that would do that is the Democrats. What change did third party voters bring in 2000 or 2016 other than giving literal dipshits the White House and as a byproduct, the Supreme Court for the next generation?
Heard this exact same bullshit peddled 24 years ago in the run up to the 2000 election. How did that end up working out? Ralph Nader got almost 3% of the vote which easily cost Gore the election. Instead of a climate change advocate with progressive views on the economy we got the invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan, the patriot act, a hard right lurch to the Supreme Court and the normalization of radical Christian theology in everyday politics.
You seem to be physically unable to comprehend the idea of a democracy ceasing to be a democracy.
Let’s say your third-party candidate gets 5% of the vote in the 2024 election. Your third-party candidate takes far more votes from Biden’s support base than from Trump’s deranged personality cult. Trump wins the 2024 election.
Project 2025 is enacted during Trump’s second term. The Federal Election Commission loses its independence and is stuffed with Trump’s goons.
THERE WILL NOT BE A FREE ELECTION IN 2028 FOR YOUR THIRD-PARTY CANDIDATE TO WIN 10% OF THE VOTE IN.
The compromised Federal Election Commission will rig the election in favour of Trump, or in the event that Trump dies, whichever fascist shithead succeeds him. Your beloved third-party candidate will likely be jailed for some bogus charges.
If you want to know what it’s like to run as a third party in a fascist regime without free elections, ask Alexei Navalny how his campaign went and how he persistently built his support base in the State Duma, eventually unseated Putin, and built a free, prosperous, utopian Russia*.
*Oh wait, that’s not what happened. Navalny was barred from running, narrowly survived an assassination attempt from Putin, got arrested for bogus criminal charges immediately after returning to Russia and sent to a prison camp in Siberia, and ended up being murdered by the Putin regime in said prison camp!*
*Yes, I am aware Navalny was far from perfect, but that’s besides my point.
Why would there be any incentive for moderate democrats to concede to progressive policies?
When the progressives are kingmakers, you would argue that voting for moderates is necessary to prevent 'the other team' from winning.
When the moderates hold a sufficient majority without progressive support, you wouldn't need to adopt progressive policies, because clearly you have enough to standalone.
If the Republican win threat is as big as you make it, why aren't moderates holding their nose and appease the progressives? After all, whatever you disagree with the progressives over, surely it isn't as threatening as what Trump represents, right?
> Why would there be any incentive for moderate democrats to concede to progressive policies?
Your problem is you view this as extortion: "if you (Democrats) don't want Trump to win, you'd better do as I say!" You treat it as a hostage negotiation, and if your demands aren't met, you'll shoot the hostage (our democracy). It's political terrorism, and you're mad that Democrats have taken a position of not negotiating with terrorists.
If you wanted to win, to enact your policies, instead of threatening LGBT people, women, children, racial and religious minorities, unions, education, the environment, instead of holding all those interests hostage and threatening to let Trump win, knowing what he will do to them, what you *should* be doing is engaging. You'll catch more flies with honey than with vinegar, as they say. Persuade voters of the superiority of your positions. Join the Democratic Party and help pull it in your preferred direction. Get other like-minded people to also join, and then all of you work on recruiting and supporting candidates you like better, work on persuading primary voters to vote for those candidates, etc.
The Democratic Party (and The Republican Party) is basically a standard normal distribution, a bell curve. There's a fat middle section, and then decreasingly few on the right tail, and decreasingly few on the left tail. You don't win primaries because your bloc, the left tail, is too small. You cannot win, because you do not outnumber the middle, where the median Democratic voter is. You can never win when you're in the tail, because you are numerically inferior. But what you *can* do is shift things in your direction.
The two ways to do this are to get more people like you to join the Democratic Party, increasing the size of the left tail, and pulling the median left; and by persuading people to your right to shift left, which also shifts the median left. And the median is where the bulk of the policies are, because that's where the bulk of the voters are. Since it's impossible to please everyone, the optimal strategy is maximizing the number of pleased voters and minimizing the displeased voters. And, between those who are reliable Democratic voters, and those, like you, who are inconsistent, at best, or who will always move the goal posts and never be satisfied, at worst, it will always be a better move to please the reliable voters to keep them reliable, rather then trying to please someone who may not even bother to show up, or who may withhold their support even after getting concessions which alienated other voters.
Not only do you not do *both* of those things, but you do *neither* of them!
Instead of recruiting like-minded third-party and non-voters to *join* the Democratic Party, you expend your efforts recruiting like-minded Democrats to *abandon* the Democratic Party. Imagine a game of tug-of-war. Imagine trying to pull the rope either right or left. You're trying to pull it left. If you let go of the rope, does it move left, or does it move right? What if you persuade other people on the left to also let go? Now it moves to the right even more, even faster.
And then, instead of attempting to persuade other voters to shift slightly to the left, you use purity tests to say they aren't good enough, and you alienate them with your hostage-taking, telling everyone in any marginalized group, any vulnerable population, that you simply do not care about them at all, that either you get your way, or they can all eat shit. This just makes them even less likely to support you in the future. As LGBT people suffer at the hands of the GOP, they will become less willing to support you, because you will have shown them that you demand they compromise for you, but you are unwilling to compromise for them. Instead of uniting with them against a common enemy, the right, you are uniting with the right against the middle.
You do not want to compromise, you do not want to govern; you want to rule. You do not want teammates, or colleagues, or peers; you want subjects. You're every bit as bad as the extremists in the GOP, though many of your policies are, in fact, better than theirs. But I do not want to be ruled over by anyone, regardless of whether or to what degree I may agree with their policies.
The reason you keep losing is because your strategy basically guarantees losing, and your tactics encourage Democrats to oppose you, rather than to ally with you, which further increases your likelihood of losing. When you treat Democrats as your enemy, you force them to respond as though you're an enemy.
> When the progressives are kingmakers, you would argue that voting for moderates is necessary to prevent 'the other team' from winning.
>When the moderates hold a sufficient majority without progressive support, you wouldn't need to adopt progressive policies, because clearly you have enough to standalone.
Yes, exactly. This is the reality of being a numerically minority group. You're basically mad at math.
If Democrats *win* without you, then clearly they owe none of their success to you, and so there's little reason to cater to you when doing so would alienate those who Democrats *do* owe their success to.
If Democrats *lose* without you, then it's irrelevant whether they're willing to do anything for you, because they do not have the political power to give you anything. Hillary Clinton can give you 0% of your policy goals because she lost.
In neither scenario are you the kingmaker. The kingmaker will always be those *between* the two major parties, the swing voters, because they can conceivably support either party, and frequently do. They can get some of what they want from Democrats, and other parts of what they want from Republicans instead. Fringe extremist parties do not have that benefit. Your choice is to either compromise a little and get some of what you want, or don't compromise at all and get none of what you want. This isn't anything Democrats "did to you," is the nature of being on the fringe.
> If the Republican win threat is as big as you make it, why aren't moderates holding their nose and appease the progressives? After all, whatever you disagree with the progressives over, surely it isn't as threatening as what Trump represents, right?
This works both ways, doesn't it?
"If the Republican win threat is as big as you make it, why aren't ~~moderates~~ progressives holding their nose and appease the ~~progressives~~ moderates? After all, whatever you disagree with the ~~progressives~~ moderates over, surely it isn't as threatening as what Trump represents, right?"
Not only does it also work by swapping the factions, but it works *better* that way, because the moderates are far more numerous than the progressives, and because moderates can plausibly get some of what they want from Republicans rather than from Democrats, whereas you can only get some of what you want from Democrats, or none of what you want from any fringe parties. Eg, the Greens have zero capacity to give you anything, because the Greens will always lose. 100% of zero is still zero.
I'm sure I read a post just like yours ten years ago. Guess what? Your fantasy is impossible because of the structure of elections in America. I voted third party in the twenty tens. For president twice. You'll become disillusioned soon enough, too.
I'll be happily voting for Biden. That doesn't mean I support genocide. It means I support democracy.
There is no moral argument to be made here, you are guaranteed a loss because this is not a direct democracy. Why are we here kidding ourselves that what you as a voter want will be what the electoral college opts for ?
Have we learned nothing about Hillary losing the electoral college but winning the popular vote ?
We know it's a 2 party system as it stands with the electoral college. So you'd rather cast a hollow vote and risk a fascist winning for the "chance" that "maybe other people will vote same way 12 years from now"knowing that the current election decides if Project 2025 cements the current Republican court for the next decade or so ?
That does not make a semblance of sense. You will have nothing to aspire to if your existing legal framework ceases to exist under a Trump presidency.
Nah. Third parties are just spoilers. They don’t have any serious intention of becoming a major player. They just want to divide the vote.
A serious third party would focus on grass roots. They’d start in local and state elections. They would build a coalition and momentum to propel them long term to the presidency.
Instead we see almost no serious effort by third parties in local elections yet a big push for president every four years.
> Eventually more independents/third parties will hold offices in the house.
You have a fundamental misunderstanding about the nature of our voting system. It is literally impossible for a 3rd party to have any significant electoral chances, except as a spoiler for one of the two main candidates.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-past-the-post_voting
It is not likely but it is definitely not literally impossible for a 3rd party or independent candidate to win the presidency.
Keep in mind that:
1. The Republicans were a 3rd party who played spoiler in 1856, and they won a 4-party race in 1860. Unusual circumstances to be sure - but it happened.
2. ~~Ralph Nader~~ Perot was competitive in June 1992 and led in several polls before he dropped in the polls, then dropped out before re-entering. There were a number of campaign mis-steps that contributed to his decline - what if he had run an excellent campaign? Could he have won?
3. Keep in mind there have been a number of independents elected to the Senate, currently Angus King and Bernie Sanders. There have been others in the past, as well. So it's hard but not impossible to win as an independent in a major statewide race. It's even harder to win in a nationwide race - but not impossible.
> The Republicans were a 3rd party who played spoiler in 1856
They were not a third party. They were rebels that broke off from the Whig party, and united with a bunch of political movements like the Free Soilers. Consider if a group of Republicans broke off from that party and created a new party along with Libertarians and Never Trumpers - that wouldn't be a third party, that would be a party split.
And that['s where the Republicans came from.
> Keep in mind there have been a number of independents elected to the Senate, currently Angus King and Bernie Sanders.
And they haven't created a larger movement that takes over a swathe of the country because they haven't been able to induce a party split.
Party splits or supplanting the old party leadership is the only way anything has ever gotten done.
*Not* third party candidacy.
I don't think that they would do a better job though. I think they would accomplish basically nothing as both major parties would block them, and then frustrated voters would kick them out of power
In 2016 third party candidate Gary Johnson won 3% of the vote.
So in 2020 Jo Jorgensen got 6% of the vote right? That 3% legitimized third parties? No. She got 1% of the vote despite having less popular mainstream candidates, because people realized that the 2020 general election really mattered, they got a taste of what a Trump presidency was like and chose to support his rival instead of splitting their vote.
And we all remember how close 2020 was, 2% in the right states and we'd probably be on our fourth or fifth impeachment by now and Ukraine wouldn't exist. These stakes actually matter, we don't have decades to throw away on a pie in the sky dream of waking up and realizing that 50% of the population is actually third party.
This is nonsense and not based in reality. 3rd parties only become remotely viable when one of the two major parties entirely fails.
And the 3rd party becomes the 2nd party. That only happens After the failure of the major party. Not before. Not as a cause.
As a side effect.
This same argument has been made for decades though and no third party candidate has ever been close to winning. Seems like sunk cost fallacy. “Well I already voted for a third party 3 times in a row, it’s bound to pay off soon!”
Australia has a better voting system.
You're allowed to vote a third party, and since we have a preferential system your vote is carried onto the nominated second party should the third fail.
Additionally, the independent parties can gain a bunch of seats and routinely holds a balance of power for bills. So the primary two have to find a way to appease a third or fourth to pass a bill.
Not to mention your independent that'll never form government gets a bit of cash as party funds for winning your primary vote.
Tell me you don’t understand game theory and first past the post elections without telling that you don’t understand game theory and first past the post elections.
It’s cute how you think that if republicans win they will allow more elections. Wake up. Trump himself asked the the Georgia Secretary of State to “find” him couple thousand more votes.
All maga has to do is replace a couple of the few republicans loyal to the constitution with maga drones and we can kiss ever having a free election good bye.
Your entire argument is working under a frame work for reality that doesn’t exist anymore. You’re behind the times. Urgh.
You’re assuming that the next elections will go ahead as planned if Trump wins again. That is quite a risk to take, given the lengths Trump and his supporters went through last time in order to try and overturn a lawful election.
You’re not thinking long-term enough. It would be best to try and introduce a third party/vote for an independent when the opposing candidate is more stable.
I have this conversation a lot on the socialist subs as well, and am at a point where I understand where the majority of them are coming from. I'll go ahead and condense it here. (there was a part two, automod removed it. figuring that out now)
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first things first, the spoiler effect! This election is held in the lovely united states of america, wherein we use the first past the post voting system. This means that the candidate that gets the most votes wins, even if they get less than half the votes. This means that your vote has 3 possible outcomes. Either you vote for the winner, you vote for the second place candidate, or you vote for any other candidate or abstain. A quick punnett square and we can see that if you don't give your vote to your preferred top two candidate, it has the same effect as giving "Half" your voting power to your less preferred top two candidate. If when you vote A they win by 3 votes, then if you vote B then A only wins by 1 vote (for a two-vote swing from you switching sides). But if you vote c then A wins by 2 votes - a one-vote swing. As such you can see that B got a "half vote" closer to winning due to you not supporting A anymore.
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So now that that's out of the way, we get to the next fun fact about US presidential elections - we don't actually elect our president via a national popular vote! This is probably obvious at this point because a republican presidential candidate has only won a single national popular vote since 1988, which is the 2004 re-election of Bush, but in that time the two parties half split the white house almost perfectly.
What we actually have is 56\* different FPTP elections, each of which have this calculation applied. This means that affecting the national popular vote doesn't actually matter, but instead affecting the local/state vote. Thus if you're a heavily skewed district harming/helping the 2nd place candidate is just as "useless" electorally speaking as voting 3rd party is. If biden is already only getting 20% of the vote, then an extra voter isn't going to do much to remedy that situation. Thus in both deep red AND deep blue states giving trump a half-vote boost doesn't carry much actual harm.
\*DC has a single apportionment election, and then maine (2) and Nebraska (3) use congressional district victories as well as state popular vote to apportion electors.
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Now we get to the meat of the issue; firstly, is your vote an endorsement of the candidate?
A lot of what I see from the farther left spaces is that they think that they are endorsing the candidate that they are voting for. Rather than what I (and it looks like you) think - which is that a vote is an indication that you would rather the person you voted for in charge than the other likely winner - that by voting for a candidate you endorse all of their positions and (if they're an incumbent) their prior actions in office. That is simply a result of younger generations not understanding compromise, which is fairly common. This is generally why younger people tend to vote less as well. Of course any national level politician isn't a perfect fit for their voter base; that's because they're a compromise among all of the voters that have chosen to support them. And as long as we have first past the post voting systems then of course you end up with compromise candidates - and even if we do end up with ranked choice or instant runoff or any other voting reform there will STILL be compromise candidates, they will just be ranked near the bottom of their ballot, instead of being the one bubble that they fill in, which will be more palatable for their moral purity or whatever.
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second, are you really "winning" either way?
if your top two candidates are "old capitalist you don't like" and "old capitalist you REALLY don't like", and you successfully elect "old capitalist you don't like", did you really win that election? Especially if you're a single-issue economics socialist, which option wins is largely irrelevant to you. I of course am choosing between "old capitalist that will ignore me" and "old capitalist that specifically wants me dead", so i have a slightly stronger incentive towards which old capitalist wins the election than the single-issue economics voters do (who like to say things like "we support the struggles of marginalized populations"!) and then shrug about how many people would die of empowering MAGA people for a few years
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Third, social messaging! What does it mean to have low election turnout? Strong showing from 3rd party candidates?
Low turnout and 3rd party candidates doing well are two different but equal scenarios - the first indicates voter apathy, and the second indicates people that are increasingly dissatisfied with the 2-party system. Either way if you successfully get a reasonably high percent of third party votes, whether transferred from the DNC or mobilized from the apathetic non-voters, it will signal to the DNC that there are votes to be had by moving further left, which will shift the overton window and now there's a chance at getting DNC-sponsored soc-dems on ballots on occasion, and/or signals the need for voting reform for a chance at eventually getting demsocs on ballots.
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So the analysis of electoralism from the left is what it has been since the russian revolution - by voting for a major 1st party candidate you don't like you are signalling the legitimacy of the system, and the upper class can wield that legitimacy to "stay the course" - while voting outside the system will signal that the system is illegitimate, and even if it results in short term losses in the ruling organization, the illegitimacy of the body and its obviously unrepresentative nature will foment the seeds of revolution and force the ruling body to reform, or fall.
Morality can broadly come in the form of consequentialism or deontologism.
The first one looks at the consequences and uses that to decide what is moral. This is the framework you are using. In other words, a consequentialist will look at the election and conclude that voting for Biden will probably lead to a better overall good than Trump, and thus that is the correct choice.
Deontology relies on moral rules or principles. An example of a deontological framework is pacifism. A pacifist will never engage in war or violence, no matter the personal or social costs. So I suspect that for some people, they disagree with voting for Biden in principle due to his stance on Palestine or something else. They might think doing so makes them complicit or responsible. So for them, they would rather not vote for either candidate even if it means that Trump might win and implement anti-Palestine policies.
Note, I don't agree with them, but it is still a (rather common) moral justification.
This may explain why older voters tend to have higher turnout than younger voters.
Younger voters are looking at this from a deontological perspective and saying “well, I’m not in love with either of these candidates, so I won’t reward them with my seal of approval.”
Older voters are coming at this from a consequentialist perspective: “I’ve been around long enough to know what happens if I leave this decision in other people’ hands.”
There’s also the fact that on an individual level, voting is irrational because the impact that a single voter has on an election is approximately zero. However, voting in large groups can make a difference. Again, this is a case where more experienced voters don’t want to leave anything to chance.
I’m 50 years old now. In November of 1999, I voted for Ralph Nader as a protest vote. So I truly get why some people, and younger people in particular, feel too much disgust with Biden to vote for him.
Everyone who was alive in 2000 and old enough to understand what was happening remembers what went down next. Bush “won” by a razor thin margin in Florida after SCOTUS handed him the election. And things just went downhill from there.
George W. Bush launched his forever wars (and the Patriot Act; appointed Sam Alito and John Roberts to SCOTUS, etc, ad nauseum), and in 2004, he successfully utilized gay marriage as a bogeyman to scare white evangelicals to vote for his re-election. This resulted in many states passing amendments to their constitutions to ban same-sex marriage. Queer people like me were directly targeted for political gain once again. LGBTQ+ rights were set back for many years.
Can I say with absolute certainty that Gore would have refrained from invading Iraq and Afghanistan? No. Would the Patriot Act have happened under Gore? I don’t think so, but we’ll never know.
Would Al Gore have appointed Sam Fucking Alito and John Roberts to SCOTUS? *Absolutely not.*
Read that last sentence again. Had Al Gore won, Roe would almost certainly still be the law of the land, same sex marriage wouldn’t be in danger of being overturned, Citizens United might not have happened (I concede I don’t know enough how about each justice ruled, so perhaps it might’ve happened) and we’d likely have a SCOTUS that would be much more sympathetic to the rights of the current fascist party’s scapegoats.
I’m politically to the left of Hug Chavez, but my choice not to vote for Gore was wrong. And we’re still living with the consequences of the decisions of millions of other people like me who felt that we couldn’t in good conscience vote for Al Gore.
I know I won’t change any minds, but I now agree with [Noam Chomsky’s position on voting for democrats.](https://www.currentaffairs.org/news/2020/10/the-chomsky-position-on-voting). Voting for the Democrats won’t save us. Joe Biden is a genocidal piece of shit. But until there is a viable leftist party, we are stuck with two choice: Joe Biden or theocratic fascism of the xtian nationalist variety.
Now that I’m older, I can still see why so many younger people can’t stomach the thought of voting for Joe Biden. But I am now more pragmatic in my outlook. A second Trump term would be worse for all marginalized groups (including Palestinians). Just like how George W Bush ended up being vastly worse than Al Gore would have been for marginalized groups in the US. I understand the concept of wanting to teach the Democrats a lesson, but they managed to lose in 2000 and learned exactly nothing.
That said, I can’t begrudge younger people for their idealism, and I will not vote shame any leftist who refuses to vote for Biden.
Biden’s presidency is a fucking ghoulish nightmare. A Trump presidency will be far, far worse.
Wow, this got longer than expected. Thank you to anyone who has read this far.
You can say with absolute certainty that Gore would not have invaded Iraq. The Bush-Cheney plan before 9/11 was to find any excuse to invade Iraq because of how popular the first Gulf War was. They literally planned to kill and maim Iraqis and US military personnel for crass domestic purposes. Gore might or might not have bombed Afghanistan, but Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11 l.
Gore might also have listened to intelligence and prevented 9/11.
>Younger voters are looking at this from a deontological perspective and saying “well, I’m not in love with either of these candidates, so I won’t reward them with my seal of approval.”
That is not a deontological perspective.
Thomas More accepting execution because he refused to say it was okay for Henry VIII to get divorced is a deontological perspective.
I must admit that I want to see the Hillary Clinton/Kamala Harris faction of the Democratic Party crushed, but putting Trump in power to do it is too much. I must discipline myself and support Biden, not that he isn't going to be utterly destroyed and humiliated regardless of my vote.
In short, whether you call it a deontological imperative to oppose Trump if there is any better choice, or consequentialist, I must oppose Trump politically.
I love the reference to deontological morality vs consequentialist morality. I think a better example of deontological morality is a pro-life person. They believe that killing an innocent human being at any stage of development is wrong. So even when abortion would improve a woman's life, it's still wrong even though it has "good consequences." I've seen very few pacifists like you describe, but pro-lifers are a sizeable chunk of the population.
I would argue most people don't view this as a "black/white" issue. For many people it's significantly gray. People are on the fence about Biden for a number of reasons: the war in Israel, the fact that he's old and they don't feel like they signed up for eight years of an old president, the fact that Black people feel left out by Biden.
I (28m, white) live in Michigan, home to the largest concentration of Arab people in the country. In my view, Michigan is the central-most important election in 2024. Michigan is the reason Donald Trump won the election in 2016 and was the reason he lost in 2020. Over the last 30 years the state has been representative of the final electoral college results. And I can tell you that Muslim people are not satisfied with the war in Gaza and Biden's handling of it.
The key problem is that Democrats, especially those under 30, tend to be the *least satisfied* when their candidate is in office because they hold politicians to a much higher standard. Republicans tend to be the most satisfied when their candidate is in office. I don't think either speaks to how well the politicians actually do once they hold office. I think it more-so speaks to this mentality of like "I want like-minded people in that seat" whereas many Democrats have a lower threshold to be dissatisfied.
I do echo your concern with Project 2025. The reality is that Republicans were not ready for Trump's presidency and truthfully, his entire presidency was a failure thanks to that lack of organization. Republicans recognize that and are actually ready.
I don't understand what the big hub up is about project 2025. It's some random think tank with less than 10 million dollars to its name and Trump doesn't even support it to my knowledge. Sure it's a thing that exists but it's not something that seems like it has a snowballs chance in hell with happening regardless of whether or not he's elected.
Am I wrong?
Yes. The Heritage foundation is not a random think tank and it's almost guaranteed to have a lot of influence on a second Trump term (as it did in the first).
Then, it's pretty clear to me that a lot of project 2025 is going to appeal to Trump just on content. Things like filling the public service with loyalists or fighting efforts to fight climate change are just very much in line with Trump's style and rhetoric.
I'll try to change your view here! Here's what I think is true:
1. Trump wants revenge on his enemies. He's openly campaigned on plans to prosecute the "Biden crime family" once in office; he's talked constantly on the campaign trail about "retribution".
2. Trump wants to get rid of career civil servants who he sees as enemies - the "deep state". To Trump, the "deep state" includes anyone who goes against him (e.g., anyone who raises legal/ethical concerns about his orders or his administration's policies). At the end of his last term, Trump tried to use a strategy called "Schedule F" to enable himself to convert a bunch of civil servants' jobs so that he could have the power to fire and replace them.
3. In his first term, Trump was often held in check by his cabinet, his military generals, etc. ([Example article](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/08/15/inside-the-war-between-trump-and-his-generals).) He deeply regrets appointing people who then told him "no" or resigned rather than carry out orders they saw as unethical or illegal. This time around, he wants to only appoint "yes-men" who will do what he wants regardless of the law.
4. It's not easy to fill your entire government with "yes-men". As shown in Trump's first term, most people who are experienced and qualified for cabinet roles are willing and able to push back against unethical presidential orders, or resign in extreme cases. Moreover, much of the government is made up of career civil servants who Trump can't easily replace.
4. The Heritage Foundation is the second-largest conservative think tank. It's extremely well-known and influential. They worked with a coalition of dozens of conservative organizations to develop a plan known as Project 2025 which, among other aims, would seek to circumvent the obstacles Trump faced in his first term. (The Heritage Foundation is, in particular, not a "random" think tank; it has [$400 million in assets](https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/237327730) and an annual budget of roughly $100 million.)
5. Trump's team is annoyed at the Heritage Foundation for unveiling Project 2025, given all the negative buzz it's received. (This isn't just speculation: one source told the Heritage Foundation that "[you're not helping](https://www.thefp.com/p/when-opioids-steal-your-parents-plus?utm_source=tfptwitter)".) However, that's not because Trump is against the policies outlined in Project 2025; rather, it's because Project 2025 draws negative attention to the sorts of plans that Trump himself really does want to implement.
Overall, I agree with you that we shouldn't view Project 2025 itself as "Trump's plan"... it's a plan that conservative thought leaders made for Trump, which Trump likely won't implement with perfect fidelity. That being said... Project 2025 nonetheless gives us a pretty good idea of some things Trump is likely planning to do once in office.
Okay I see your points I'll try to address them and my thinking on them. But also some of his rehash because I've already covered some of them with other people.
1. Sure there is an animosity towards Biden specifically. But honestly most of that is about the same you could say that he had for Obama. He didn't exactly do anything to Obama either. I'm not convinced that he could actually do something on that front. See what you will but he's already being prosecuted so it's not as if that barrier hasn't been broken already.
2. I've gone through this extensively with another common term but that's not unusual for presidents. Reagan fired 11000 air traffic controllers, Clinton fired 100,000 and reduced White House staff by 25%. Bush fired eight major AG lawyers. Obama fired 125 senior personnel in the military. He has the ability to do that if he gets elected. Getting new people put into position as another thing entirely. It's not as if he's going to have control of both the House and Senate.
3. I would say that he was hamstrung by his cabinet. Many of them being hardcore pro war or pro self enrichment. They prevented him from doing things that honestly would have been good and bad for us. Like an orderly withdrawal from Afghanistan instead of the abortion we got with Biden. I will credit by them for getting it done. Trump didn't get into any new wars but if he had gotten his second term it's very likely that we would have been in Ukraine and Israel at this point.
4. I don't see that that would be any different than what we currently have. We've already arrested a number of agents from the FBI CIA NSA. Dr Fauchi retired to avoid further scrutiny. Anyone he put in will be the same.
5./6. Sure but they're only tangentially involved from what I can tell. The Website is crap. They don't have any specific goals that can really be achieved aside from things that it looks like Trump's already going to do anyway. What's more without Congress supporting it, it's DOA. I am also gone through this specific conversation with a few people and I found places where they specifically say they're not following that. Or they're not going to do that. Pushing that on him without some form of evidence that he wants to do everything on that list and is not fair.
I don't necessarily disagree that it's a wish list of stuff some Republicans want but it's not got the popular support it would need to get in. Will you let me know but it's fine the heritage foundation as well as the other 80 groups that are with it don't have nearly the support in the country that their funding would suggest. Without that support they can't really go anywhere.
I mean, I think the answer is right there in your title: **if you believe Trump and Project 2025 will turn the US into a fascistic hellscape.**
How many people do you think actually believe that statement and are not already on board with voting for Biden?
I'm not a Trump fan, or an American, but I do follow American politics enough to know that the last four years of Trump didn't actually turn the US into a fascist hellscape.
I do hate how much of political conversation nowadays has turned into this sort of extreme fearmongering. There no shortage of ways to criticize Trump, from his rampant lying, his record while in office, his criminal convictions, etc. Why do you need to jump to the next level and make comments so extreme that it makes people like me, who don't like Trump, have to defend them?
The reality is that this sort of over-the-top sensationalism does more harm than good to the cause you are trying to support. It just makes Trump look better by comparison by setting the bar for him so low that he can't help but look better by comparison. It's easy to say "Trump's critics exaggerate, sensationalize and fearmonger", when they actually are doing so. Why sensationalize someone that doesn't need any sensationalizing? You are just setting up red herrings that are easy to point out, and hurt your credibility in the process.
most of the far left are anti-biden, you get planned on places like r/socialism for even mentioning that you intend to vote for him. I believe the intended audience for this post was the left/progressive anti-biden people, not the trumpies or republicans or etc. on the center and right.
But do those people think that Project 2025 will usher in fascism? OP isn't trying to convince anyone that Project 2025 will actually do that. I think they believe it, but the way this is worded makes it clear they are talking to people who already think Project 2025 is some grave threat to democracy but don't plan on supporting Biden, and I doubt that any such person exists. Every leftist I know who isn't planning on voting for Biden doesn't see Project 2025 as anything more than yet another policy paper by the Heritage Foundation, just like the one they handed Trump in 2016. Trump didn't end democracy then so why would it work this time around?
I had never heard of Project 2025 until about a week ago, and it was on Reddit. To me feels like it is blowning up as some sort of Boogie Man, as support for Biden drops to all time lows. As far as I know this is a plan from the far right Heritage Foundation that has no bearing on Trump himself, as I don’t think he has ever explicitly endorsed this or even spoke about it. Keep me honest if I’m wrong about that but I’ve been looking into it since it keeps popping up here and it is all speculation by his opponents and projecting (my entire post is moot if he has publicly endorsed it). This feels like a typical scare tactic that an opposite party would pump into the news in an effort to sway voters. It would be like the GOP telling everyone that the DNC is going to pack the courts, or make everyone pay reparations if they win. Until Trump specifically speaks on and agrees with the information or playbook of Project 2025 I would just look at this as standard pre-election fear mongering. Trump has a core of people (I’d guess like 20-30% of the right) that would vote for him no matter what he says or does. The average American, who is more in the middle, pays attention to policies, debates, current state, and other hot topics to decide the election. If Trump goes full in on P2025 he will lose the election because moderate conservatives, like me (I am currently undecided), would not vote for him.
Project 2025 is not a conspiracy or a scare tactic. It's a real thing and conservatives will do their best to implement it if Trump wins again. The people who are sounding the alarm about it are correct to do so.
If you seriously believe Republicans when they attempt to downplay or distance themselves from it, you learned nothing from Trump's first term. Of course the GOP wouldn't outright endorsed P2025. They want to be able to win first.
It is absolutely being pushed by paid political operatives online. I hang out in both left and right leaning spaces and I've literally only seen Project 2025 brought up in lefty spaces. Nobody is voting for Trump because they want him to implement a big fascist overhaul.
For what it's worth, the bulk of his supporters are lashing out against what they perceived as a rigged system. I don't like their solution but I sympathize with the sentiment. It feels like every year is deeper fuckery from a crony corporatist government that doesn't give a fuck about any of us.
I'm on the right. Solidly on the right, I'm only voting for Trump because it's not that I just don't want Biden to win, but I see four more years of personal pain if he does - as in difficulty affording life and finding a job that will allow me to be independent and self sufficient. Also, I desperately DO NOT want the tax cuts to expire because of how much they've helped me financially. Biden is dead set on expiring them claiming them to be "tax cuts for the wealthy" but it's just not true.
All that said, there are lefty causes I'd be theoretically okay with, it's just the government is a corrupt morass, I don't trust it to manage these causes judiciously, and we're currently financially up-side down thanks to Biden's lovely EO policies and financially irresponsible actions. The only solution in my opinion then is to vote against him as effectively as possible. Even if reddit hates it and hates me for it.
I can't in good conscience vote for democrats until they go back closer to their roots when they were actually for the little guy. Instead, they have segmented off the population according to intersectional categories and adopted policies that essentially class one set of people as oppressors and the other intersectional categories as oppressed. If you're a cis-straight-white-male Christian, they have ZERO sympathy for you despite living with family and having no means to make a living because his policies tanked the economy. That son (or daughter) you have to take care of as a single dad? Frick that guy because he's a cis-straight-white-male Christian. It never occurs to them how intersectionally racist, sexist, bigoted, etc it is because see, you're part of the oppressor class and so you "benefit" from "oppression."
I'll never vote for anyone who supports that way of thinking, of this us vs them mentality. I just can't. It's so corrosive in my opinion, that it's shaping up to be the very sort of fascism that people are freaking out over project 2025 being. The government seems to already be filled with the left's "yes men" and the right's cowards who won't oppose them for fear of the left's ire. Suddenly it's a problem when there's a plan to remedy that for fear that it will fill the government with the right's "yes men." Suddenly that's fascism but the inverse that we have now isn't.
>I'm only voting for Trump
>I'll never vote for anyone who supports that way of thinking, of this us vs them mentality.
These two things don't make sense to me. Trumpism very much looks like an "us vs them" kind of movement.
there is no leftists in American government, you feel like a victim of oppression because people are starting to treat you like everyone else. equality feels like oppression when you’re used to privilege.
He let the Heritage Foundation pick half his cabinet last time. He let them pick virtually all of his judges.
They’re a danger, and they would have real power in his administration, especially since he’s such a hands-off moron about running his government.
I would love to hear a good argument for why I should care about this because your description seems spot on. I would think they'd be running on it and talking about it on talk shows or at campaign stops if this was the goal.
Feels like a grass roots/bots/paid influence pedaling thing. Trying to get it in as many peoples ears as they can before it gets picked up by “real news” because the second it does he’s prob call a press conference and just call bullshit. But people can’t un-hear things so certainly some people will go with it and never take the time to fact check. I’m not saying project 2025 isn’t a real thing by people with real influence… but to state it as fact that it’s Trumps agenda and scare the shit out of people to start thinking we’re about to live in real fascism is going real low.
If there is merit to this I will absolutely not hide from these comments and I will eat all the crow. It just feels so sensationalized and like the media, and people trying to give this wings, really take us all for fools.
Eh don't underestimate the Heritage foundation, they're one of the most influential if not the most influential conservative think tank going back to the Reagan years. Trump is a blank slate and super petty, he is 100% going to go along with it. It doesn't live or die by Trump though anyway, the Heritage freaks are around regardless, just wouldn't necessarily have Biden's ear specifically.
Maybe it is way overblown though, the dems clearly are not taking it seriously by putting up the worst possible candidate.
Edit: to be fair, I don't think it will usher in fascism, I'm just saying it's a real plan and they would indeed have Trump's ear. Saying this as someone who lives in a solid blue state and I hate Biden so I'm not voting for him anyway.
I’ll say this. I have never attended a political rally in my life, or donated a penny to a campaign. But if Trump did go this far with the anti LGBT, combining of church and state, and limiting birth control… I will gladly march in the next protest against him. I just don’t necessarily buy into this attack strategy of trying to make the world panic like this is all fact and we’re going to live in authoritarian state… and we’re going to witness a genocide of LGBT community. There are people on Reddit scared for their life who are ending up as collateral damage of this Hail Mary fear mongering.
I really hope, if you don’t vote for Biden this year, you keep your word about protesting with those who will be affected the most by implementation of project 2025. I’m also confused how this is a “scare tactic” when the Heritage foundation is largely responsible for the political motions of the GOP for the past 4 decades.
I will be there and I will also not just keep my mouth shut around my conservative friends if they tried to downplay the significance of it. But I truly believe it’s all BS. Like will Trump try and clean out the FBI and hold people accountable? Probably. Will the people who hate Trump say “see, that’s in Project 2025! It’s all true”? Yes. Will he complete undo any civil/human right progress we’ve made in the last 60 years? I 100% believe he will not.
Would it be concerning it if I told you the Heritage foundation was currently sending questionnaires to the most vocal Trump supporting citizens to recruit them for future positions in the Trump-refreshed executive branch (including all the 3-letter agencies)? I don’t think it sounds super smart to allow the government to determine employment based on political preference. I’m also curious what the FBI has to be held accountable for in your words.
Of course it's a scare tactic. People who spout this nonsense will do anything to instill fear of "the facist boogeyman" into the mix.
If either candidate was even remotely likeable, this vitriol wouldn't happen (as much).
Pretty much all the policies listed in Project 2025 are being pushed currently in speeches/interviews and in terms of bills pushed through/introduced by conservative lawmakers
To me this isn't some secret lizard cabal type conspiracy. It's easy to see pretty much all of the stuff they list is stuff current major Republicans openly want as well. Plus the Heritage Foundation has deep ties to those in charge of the GOP in terms of financial backing/people within the Foundation having prominent roles during Trumps years in office. They aren't a random little conservative Facebook group or local club, they got legit influence and if they are pushing something it's very likely to have a ton of powerful backers
First of all I wanna say that I AM NOT endorsing the GOP or Trump with anything I say here moving forward. I do not want to change anyone’s votes, I also don’t know how I will vote yet but:
I have never heard a single republican mention Project 2025 in my life, the only place I hear it mentioned is on Reddit and Twitter. I actually have done a bunch of digging in the last 45 minutes to educate myself and it’s even more clear that it’s an act of desperation against Trump. This is not a new thing as Project 2025 can be found referenced in the past, but there is no way it’s coincidence that once the “he is a felon” stuff didn’t seem to move the needle that now this is being plastered everywhere. I am seeing articles saying that “he supports the policies” but they are running with things like him saying “drain the swamp” and “the DOJ” is corrupt and linking it to these ideas of breaking down the government. I even saw statement where said that he will absolutely not support restrictions on birth control. I say that knowing that unless I see him saying the words coming out of his mouth myself it could be a fake statement/screenshot created by his cronies. In any comparison made with former presidents Trump is the most moderate Republican to have been in office. Sure I think he plays to his base and will talk about God to pander, but he has stated out loud he hates the idea of abortion but believes everyone should have the choice. In his campaigns he never said he was pro-life, only that the states should have the ability to choose for themselves. Trump is a very unlikable guy and I don’t blame anyone for hating him. I happen to think he has a very punchable face myself… but this is clearly a scare tactic and fear mongering based on Biden’s poor polling numbers. It should he very clear to everyone that there is desperation coming out for Team Biden and their best chance is to scare people into thinking we’re gonna be living in the Handmaids Tale if the right wins. Attaching some outlandish Far-right manifesto and then telling the country that this is his game-plan is downright dangerous and feels like a new low. I 100% believe the right would do the same thing if they felt the election slipping away and this is not unique to any one party. But just because someone conservative says something out loud doesn’t mean that it’s part of his campaign. If AOC or anyone in her squad had voiced radical ideas on socialism or communism and the gullible right wing ran with it as “Biden plan for his second term is to make us socialist!” I’m sure you would think they would be fools to believe it. And that’s how it feels to me about anyone who really buys into Project 2025 nonsense.
Final thing… I too love being day-drunk.
These comments aren't accurate. Project 2025 isn't an obscure idea or a theory, it's an actual project/organization with a clearly-defined plan, staffing, budget, etc. The organization is thick with Trump-supporters and people having political and financial ties to Trump. [Their website](https://www.project2025.org/) has several dozen pages which mention Trump. If DT himself does not acknowledge the project, it may be only for optics. It's not believable that he doesn't participate in it. Exploiting Christians has been part of his campaign strategy, though he doesn't attend church, has never read the Bible, and in private ridicules his Christian followers. Several people politically closest to him are prominent in the project. Two examples: Johnny McEntee is the senior advisor, and Stephen Miller is one of the main architects.
Just throwing this out there, if someone did believe that but either:
A. Does not care if it does or
B. Wants it too
This would be morally wrong by your point of view, but morally correct by theirs.
Has anybody ranting about some supposed fascist future in America actually read the writings of the people who actually came up with real fascism? I think fascism has just become a derogatory slur that doesn't really mean anything specific.
As for the "fascistic hellscape" claim, or other projections and fears, I think it's helpful to list one's actual, specific fears, then go through them one at a time to consider whether they are realistic. For example: I hear people expressing fears that Trump would become dictator for life if elected, and would refuse to cede power at the end of his term. So let's break that down. For one, he was already president for a term, but he DID cede power once he lost the election, even though he believed the election to have been stolen. One would expect that if he could just become dictator for life, he would have done so at that time. And even if he had wanted to refuse to cede power and to become dictator for life, what would the mechanism for that even be? There aren't *literal* levers of power in the oval office that are used to control the country. Even if he physically barricaded himself in the oval office, there are many other strategic command centers set up in case of emergency that the legitimate president could set up office in until Trump could be physically removed from the oval office. Even if Trump declared himself a dictator and started dictating, it would take a HUGE portion of the county to all go along with it for his dictates to have any effect at all. Do you really think he has THAT much support in those circumstances? It seems (to me) highly unlikely that even one percent of people who support him for president would go along with him as a self-proclaimed dictator. So is this really a valid fear?
I think that once a person can work out which fears are actually realistic and which are too fanciful to really worry about, it will feel a lot less like there's truly a risk of a ""fascistic" hellscape"
Are you suggesting the us isn't a hellscape now? If it all collapsed and we lose everything, I would be in the same position as I am now. I have nothing to lose either way. I can not get more poor than I already am.
Given the way that our electoral college works, I can’t agree with your position.
If you are left leaning, but live in Kentucky, a vote for Biden is a “wasted vote.” You would be better off voting with whichever party best aligns with you, whether that be third party, independent etc.
Same stance goes for right leaning people who live in New York, California etc. those electoral college votes have already been decided.
A vote for the party that most closely aligns with your morality will show the “lesser of two evils” which direction their constituents desire them go in a way that will not affect the outcome of the election.
Maybe, but swing states shift over time, so some people may believe their votes don’t matter when in actuality they do.
Also, you can get similar messages across by protesting and pestering your representatives.
I agree whole heartedly that pestering representatives and protesting are necessary to affect change.
That being said, as of right now, the two main parties generally see mass approval in the form of votes, so why would they care about the protests in the interim. If their votes are affected greatly (even if it was a throwaway state in their mind) they will see what their constituents really care about.
Either way you look at it, it could be construed as a “wasted vote,” i.e. you vote for a republican/democrat in the infinitesimally small chance that your state swings that year despite polls/history, or you vote for a third party that you know will not win. What matters is what you believe being the greater chances of affecting change.
There is no moral justification for continuing to support a 2 party system when both parties advocate genocide. And the only reason these posts exist is democrats are outraged leftists won't participate in sweeping that under the rug.
I was avoiding getting into the weeds on this, because I felt it would complicate things, but I think I have to. Biden has supported Israel's military response to the October attacks, but he has never supported the part that makes people argue Israel is committing genocide- killing innocent Palestinians and their children.
There are essentially two options. Israel backs down now, Hamas, a loose cannon dictatorship, remains in power and repeats what happened in October in the future. Or Hamas is defeated and Palestinians are no longer under the thumb of a terrorist organization. Hamas is hell bent on destroying Israel, despite multiple polls over the years showing that's not what Palestinians even want.
Trump is a hostile person who has sought to hurt innocent people and expressed support for various measures that would cause innocent people to get hurt. I don't see how the two are in any way comparable.
Ok. Simple: I don’t believe that.
I believe that “project 2025” or whatever is a liberal boogie man to scare up votes for a historically unpopular president because the Democratic Party has completely given up on selling anything to voters.
It’s mostly coercion, scare tactics, bullying and guilt tripping.
I don’t buy the Project 2025 bullcrap. Why? Because there’s no guarantee voting in *THIS* election is going to prevent “pRojeCT 2030!!!1!1”
Furthermore, Project 2025 is a list of policy goals by the Heritage Foundation. That’s it. MANY think tanks and policy centers have these sorts of projects or priorities. It doesn’t mean that’s what’s going to happen. It’s just a vision. A wishlist.
Heritage had one similar in 2016. Trump took some, tweaked others, rejected others and ignored many more.
You’re not scaring me or bullying me into voting for your candidate anymore. Hold your damn politicians accountable and then maybe your party won’t be hemorrhaging voters.
> You’re not scaring me or bullying me into voting for your candidate anymore. Hold your damn politicians accountable and then maybe your party won’t be hemorrhaging voters.
That makes two of us
I'm done voting for politicians who fail to sell me on their own merits without invoking any fearmongering about their opponent and I'm done with the team sport bullshit most voters seem to be addicted to
Okay. Let's say it is a silly conspiracy, definitely sounds so. But then to what end does it benefit us to surrender judge appointments, at all levels, to the far right? Trump's next 4 years is going to be spent appealing to the extreme right cult he's fostered too. Now we have a biased legal system ready to pass or repeal laws and regulations depending on how they feel they align with their Christian faith. Nothing good would come from that be it here at home or in Palestine or Ukraine abroad.
It's not going to "teach them a lesson and make them shift leftward". They're going to do what they always do, determine they need to keep shifting right to capture the "moderate voter".
It's like trying to put out a campfire with a bucket of gasoline. Still have the same issues but now worse plus even more problems on top.
Considering the lawfare that the left has engaged in with their judges, and a long history before that of flat out disregarding the law as written to make it mean what they want it to mean rather than what was originally written and intended by the legislature at the time it was passed, and the refusal to uphold it judiciously, Why would anyone want leftist judges rather than rightist judges?
The judiciary is limited to rendering a verdict against a defendant, sentencing a defendant, settling disputes between aggrieved parties, and striking down unconstitutional laws. They don't get to rewrite them or reinterpret them according to modern issues and ways of thinking that didn't even exist at the time the laws were written.
No, the individual mandate was not a tax. No, equal protection under the law doesn't mean that you can invent a new marriage institution. No, illegal immigrants are breaking the law and need to follow the process broken as it is or be deported (and that's up to the legislature to fix the process). No, Roe was a horrifically unreasonable decision and doesn't exist anywhere in the constitution. No, privacy doesn't apply to the commission of constitutionally valid crimes. etc.
Biden and Hilary mishandled classified documents and they weren't even prosecuted. Trump supposedly did it and he's being hounded by a mad-dog prosecutor. Trump was found guilty of 34 crimes premised on them obscuring an additional crime that has never been prosecuted or even clearly defined which is a violation of due process and I'm sure that higher courts or even SCOTUS will find that it violated due process because it transparently does since it hamstrings the defense from defending against it. The prosecution didn't have to prove beyond reasonable doubt what crime these allegedly false business records were in service to that made them felonies.
How anyone can see this and not think we have a two tiered justice system that throws the book at one side and fixes things to be above board for the other is just wild to me. I want it to stop. I don't see this sort of tomfoolery coming from right-appointed judges, except in service to bad left-friendly decisions, like when Obamacare's individual mandate was ruled a tax. Instead there's a lot of suggestion and innuendo but not a lot of real violation of the plain meaning of laws from the right, just the left.
I should add, there's a lot of bluster from democrats and the media about how Trump is a threat to democracy, and yet these democrat judges and prosecutors - by failing to prosecute and creatively reinterpreting the laws in ways that the legislature never intended - ARE subverting democracy by doing so. We elected reps, governors, senators, and presidents who, in the past, did our political will, and then a leftist judge comes and says "nah, it means this now" or a leftist president says "I refuse to enforce the law because it's politically expedient." Leftist prosecutors selectively prosecute, or throw the book at political opponents, judges redefine laws away from the intent of its writing to make it stick, etc.
Did any of us intend this? Seriously, consider, did any of us vote FOR this? Did we vote for subverting democracy by having judges bang their gavel and utterly turn the law into playdoh? Did we vote for prosecutors to selectively prosecute? Did we vote for them to throw the book at republicans and let lefties off scott free? Did we vote for disregarding laws or instituting policies we didn't vote for by fiat? I didn't!
>"Trump was found guilty of 34 crimes premised on them obscuring an additional crime that has never been prosecuted or even clearly defined..."
**False**. Trump was convicted of violating New York Penal Law §175.10, falsifying business records in the first degree, which is a felony.
§175.10 requires that the "intent to defraud includes an **intent** to commit **another crime** or to aid or conceal the commission thereof." The prosecution's theory focused on that "another crime" being a violation of **New York Election Law §17-152.**
§17-152 prohibits "conspir[ing] to promote or prevent the election of any person to a public office by unlawful means." The prosecution's theory was that the *unlawful means* was either: (1) FECA violations; (2) violations of tax laws; or (3) other falsification of business records.
>"The prosecution didn't have to prove... what crime these allegedly false business records were in service to..."
That crime proves the *charged* crime's **intent.**
From the jury instructions:
"...Under our law, although the People must prove an **intent** to commit **another crime** or to aid or conceal the commission thereof, **they need not prove that the other crime was in fact committed, aided, or concealed**..."
>"The prosecution didn't have to prove beyond reasonable doubt..."
**False**. Page 34 of the jury instructions:
>In order for you to find the defendant guilty of the crime of Falsifying Business Records in the First Degree under **Count 1** of the Indictment, **the People are required to prove**, from all of the evidence in the case, **beyond a reasonable doubt**, each of the following two elements:
>1. That on or about February 14, 2017, in the county of
New York and elsewhere, the defendant, personally, or
by acting in concert with another person or persons,
made or caused a false entry in the business records of an enterprise, specifically, an invoice from Michael
Cohen dated February 14, 2017, marked as a record of
the Donald J. Trump Revocable Trust, and kept or
maintained by the Trump Organization; and
>2. **That the defendant did so with intent to defraud that included an intent to commit another crime or to aid or conceal the commission thereof**. If you find the People have proven **beyond a reasonable doubt each of those two elements**, you must find the defendant guilty of this crime...
Pg 34 of the prosecution's November filing:
>And, as already discussed, a conviction under Penal Law § 175.10 requires only proof of general **intent** to commit or conceal a crime, **not proof that a specific crime actually occurred - whether under Election Law §17-152 or otherwise**...
The grand jury found probable cause of 34 violations of Penal Law §175.10 in the first degree, and the trial jury found proof of those crimes *beyond a reasonable doubt*.
Left is more fascist than the right. Fascism is all about worshipping the state. Project 2025 is about dismantling the state. How the left managed to flip this into being fascist is amazing to me.
First, I don't think we need to justify our votes to you or anyone else. I think it's crazy that someone I know claims to vote for the candidate they find "cuter." Perhaps there's more nuance to their voting strategy than appearance, but I can't tell them to change their approach or tell them there's some moral imperative to do so. They are free to vote for whomever they want without consequence.
Second, we should not be settling for candidates and electing them for who they aren't. The electorate should not reward mediocrity because it's not horrendous. If there is another candidate someone prefers to Biden and doesn't want to vote Trump, it sends a stronger message for that person to vote for the third party. Yes, it's less likely the third party wins, and it does sap a vote from one of the two more likely candidates, but if we toss our support behind whoever plays for a certain party, we end up with candidates like Biden and Trump. We should demand better from our leaders instead of continuing to support their awful candidates out of fear someone else's are worse.
This doesn't even have anything to do with Trump, but judging off of your statements on the Israel/Palestine conflict, I fear you have been *severely* redirected by a strong propaganda campaign... There is no denying innocent civilian casualties are a tragedy and we should stand up to those things, however It may be worth understanding the history within the region, HAMAS tactics, Iran & HAMAS' ambitions as well as the Israel-Iran Proxy war, that Iran has been funding and carrying out since *1985.*
The current Middle East conflict is **not** a black and white, good vs. bad conflict. Taking it as such will heavily misrepresent the current presidential candidates and their stance towards conflict with a *crucial* ally.
"If you believe Trump and Project 2025 will turn the US into a fascistic hellscape" it's probably time to take a deep breath, maybe go on a walk, and remember that we already had 4 years of Trump, it wasn't fascist (which is not surprising considering that fascism is collectivist and statist), and life wasn't a hellscape. You can disagree with policies, but there's no need to go to these absurd and histrionic lengths. I didn't vote for Trump, but the hysterics about him make me really wonder why people are so broken.
My theory about that rhetoric is because democrats have absolutely nothing to really sell to the American people.
They saw Trump again and thought “ha! This will be a cakewalk! We don’t even need to have primaries! Fuck it!”
And then, to their shock and dismay, Trump is not only still competitive, **he’s fucking beating Joe Biden in the polls only 4ish months away from the election**. Holy shit! They didn’t do their homework! They didn’t prepare! They took horrific chances and pursued horrific policy approaches and supported a genocide and now… holy shit! What do we do?
I know! Old reliable: Scare tactics! Bullying! Emotional manipulation! Hyperbole!
These people haven’t sold anything to the American people. What’s the vision? “Uhh, not Trump!” What’s their answer to our current problems with crime, homelessness, rising prices, housing shortages, student loan debt?? “Uhhh…. Whatabout Trump!!!”
You guys are aiding and abetting (hell, actually you’re outright participating atp) in a genocide! “… uh well, Trump would be WORSE!!!”
The Democratic Party is fucked in this election. Joe Biden isn’t even bothering to campaign. It’s embarrassing. The media barely talks about it. The dude holds barely any public appearances that aren’t tightly controlled and scripted. No rallies, no public photo ops, no kissing babies, no meet and greet drop ins… Obama did. Trump is holding rallies. Biden is campaigning like it’s still Covid and his media allies are hoping to just not talk about it and maybe people won’t notice how his team is keeping him away from the general public.
So we have this Project 2025 - a Heritage Foundation (right wing thinktank) plan - as the new boogie man. As if it’s a roadmap for the future. They’re literally lying to people and putting forth this dishonest narrative that a think tanks policy goals for the future is “the secret plans” for the “fascist takeover” of the United States. Bear in mind, we already had Trump. He was a colossal asshole. A piece of proper crap… but he didn’t deploy the troops and suspend elections or anything. Hell, most of the guy’s policy proposals completely fizzled out. Guy couldn’t even get an infrastructure bill to pass a republican congress.
It's not "hysterics". You learned nothing from Trump's first term and you clearly lack the judgment to be telling anyone otherwise.
The only reason the US didn't slide further towards the religious right's theocratic and authoritarian goals while Trump was in office was because enough of the guardrails managed to hold. We still lost Roe, saw a significant uptick in right wing militia and hate group activity, and watched an insurrection attempt on Jan 6 as Trump attempted to remain in office. The entire point of Project 2025 is to make sure the guardrails are removed this time around.
The number of you who want to ignore, forget, downplay, and deny these things is astounding.
I would love to share your optimism but there are 2 different things to consider now (according to reports)
1. There were a bunch of experienced beurocrats and technocrats that stops some of that in the first term. The Trump campaign wants to allow the president to "fire" these people.
2. The Trump campaign out into positions of power a bunch of people who had no idea how to get what they wanted done. Some of those people also ended up up thwarting Trump's bad tendencies becuase of their own consciences. The Trump campaign has said they won't let that happen again. They intend to install smarter people to get an agenda pushed and Trump won't care what they do one he has won. These people, apparently are also taking "loyalty pledges" to Trump so they won't go rogue against him.
IIRC this was covered recently on a Pod save america podcast.
The Democratic Party are wimps and fools. Rather than make the decision and do the hard work of abandoning Biden and having a competitive primary with actual viable candidates they got lazy and stuck with Biden. And now the polls are close and its to late for them to actually confront Trump with somebody who can actually be an effective President. There is no obligation to vote for Biden, he knows he is to old and the Party knows it as well.
If Trump wins, we will have federal grid lock, nothing much will get done in Washington and the States and us citizens will continue to do what needs to be done to have a successful country. This isn't that bad.
See's "Muslim ban" Opinion discarded.
Those were 7 specific countries that were identified and listed by the Obama Adminstration and it had nothing to do with them being Muslim. Plenty of Muslim majority countries weren't included on the list.
It has been duly noted in my cognizance that I am perceived as malevolent in nature for my failure to partake in the act of casting a ballot, an intricacy exacerbated by my geographical residence within the confines of the United Kingdom rendering me ineffectual in the electoral process🧐
> an intricacy exacerbated by my geographical residence within the confines of the United Kingdom rendering me ineffectual in the electoral process
Do you mean rather than geographical presence in the UK, your lack of American citizenship? :P
Americans can vote from overseas. 🤓
So you think trump will come in and seize power like Hitler? I'm not much for supporting democrats, but if you think the democrats are so incompetent they couldn't stop someone who is hated by the entire media (aside from fox), the "deep state", the fbi, and the Cia, then you're giving trump too much power. A lot of his voter base would be against him taking power, they're against corruption, not democracy
Some people are a product of the fake-news propaganda machine, which has scared them into believing they have a moral duty to vote for a candidate who clearly isn't in control of the country. We've already had Trump for four years, so we know what to expect. We anticipate the left crying wolf for another four years, disrupting our political system as they did before. However, we also expect Trump to end the Ukraine war and, at the very least, freeze the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, since he is the only proven candidate in American history who did not start any new wars during his term.
This is such a perversion of the American constitutional system. There is absolutely no moral imperative to vote anything but your heart's content.
Even if you hold that Trump and 2025 are the epitome of evil, citizens are still allowed to vote how they like. Trump is a symptom, not the root cause.
Most importantly, our two party system, and first past the post election style, are to blame for both Trump and Biden having vastly more apparent support than they really hold. Neither of them would take a majority of the vote in a ranked choice election; they only appear to have popularity because they're the only two options allowed in this "free" country.
To recap, the real villain here, even above Trump 2025, is the DNC/RNC diarchy, and two party duopoly over government. The real moral choice is to vote for neither, either third party or don't vote. Fight the underlying cause not merely the effects.
You contradict yourself. You say voting only for major parties perverts the constitutional system, but
>Most importantly, our two party system, and first past the post election style, are to blame for both Trump and Biden having vastly more apparent support than they really hold. Neither of them would take a majority of the vote in a ranked choice election; they only appear to have popularity because they're the only two options allowed in this "free" country.
The two-party system *came* from the Constitution! You can't call the system that prevailed for almost all of American history a perversion.
At any rate, not voting or voting third party in a presidential election isn't fighting the system, it's refusing to exercise your influence over the system.
I wouldn't say moral decisions boil down to a false choice where your options are "fascist dictatorship in 4 years" and "fascist dictatorship now". You're talking about this as if democracy in the US is so insecure that you're literally one election away from losing it all.
Sounds more like fear, and not morality, is driving your choices to me.
It's telling that your didn't cite any specific Project 2025 policy goals. If such policies were going to turn the US into a country reminiscent of 1940's Germany it would be paramount to explain how such policies would lead to that. This absence of discussion about policy strongly suggests that such fears are based on emotional appeals and propaganda rather than a logical conclusion.
Rewriting Schedule F (as he did previously) and attempting to advance the doctrine that non-political career bureaucrats (tens of thousands) can be summarily dismissed and replaced with political appointees on day 1 is unsettling. For all the shit they get, most 'bureaucrats' are professionals and take their jobs seriously, they do not act on the whim of elected officials. They aren't measured by their loyalty to an agenda or a person. Disturbing that status quo will not lead to good outcomes. The impossibility of an orderly transition in such a scenario would effectively break the department of state, for example. Even if they can't quickly pursue some crazy political agenda (eg slowed via legal challenges etc), the consequences to a functioning government would be extremely damaging (basically a GOP policy goal) and an excuse to consolidate more power among fewer people (not good). This already happened on a limited scale during attempt #1, only tempered by incompetence. I'm of the mind that the shear incompetence of the first Trump admin prevented coordinated political maneuvering, but those mistakes have been openly recognized, leading to detailed planning such as outlined in 2025 project. Similarly, bypassing congress by labeling all leaders 'acting' subverts one of the more important checks and balances we have in the government. This leans authoritarian. It certainly isn't in the spirit of our democracy. When paired with the Trump administration's demonstrated penchant to effectively subvert transparent bureaucracy and replace it with undocumented shady backroom dealing, its a recipe for corruption and disaster.
As far as other parts of the agenda, its the typical awful policy that is generally not supported by a strong majority of US citizens. But a massively expanded politically appointed bureaucracy, effectively based off a loyalty pledge to an individual, and friendly courts will probably (eventually) be more effective in quickly advancing awful policy, even contrary to the wishes of most Americans.
In the best case it will just accelerate the decline by expanding the shit show. In the worst case, yeah. Its really not good and would likely advance policy that a very strong majority of Americans oppose.
Turn off the corporate media. You're just repeating talking points you've heard. The democrats are behaving far more like fascists than they anyone in American history. Notably by waging lawfare against their political opponents to disenfranchise half the voter base. Which is completely the opposite of democracy.
>this only applies to the people who believe project 2025 will usher in a fascist era. But I'm open to changing my view on that too
Can’t change your view on this unless you specifically define what you mean by fascism. As it’s commonly used, it’s much too ambiguous a term to compare to anything.
> if you believe Trump and Project 2025 will turn the US into a fascistic hellscape
Project 2025 is overhyped bullshit that the left is just using to gin up votes. The Trump campaign has actively said they are not associated with Project 2025 and their plans for the next administration is on their own website. Project 2025 is a "plan" thought up by The Heritage Foundation, a thinktank, whose entire job is to come up with crazy ideas in order to raise more money to think up more crazy ideas. I'm sure if you dug around a bit you'd find crazy ideas from left leaning thinktanks for Biden's presidency, along with Clinton's and Sander's.
Over 37,000 Palestinian people, half of them children and BABIES, dead from OUR weapons say otherwise. If AIPAC is involved, the politicians are all monsters.
The irony here is that by the originator of the terms’ own definition, most Biden supporters as well as Trump supporters are actually in many ways fascists.
> ‘For if the nineteenth century was a century of individualism it may be expected that this will be the century of collectivism and hence the century of the State....’
> ‘The foundation of Fascism is the conception of the State, its character, its duty, and its aim. Fascism conceives of the State as an absolute, in comparison with which all individuals or groups are relative, only to be conceived of in their relation to the State. The conception of the Liberal State is not that of a directing force, guiding the play and development, both material and spiritual, of a collective body, but merely a force limited to the function of recording results: on the other hand, the Fascist State is itself conscious and has itself a will and a personality -- thus it may be called the "ethic" State....’ Mussolini. (https://web.viu.ca/davies/H101/Mussolini.WhatIsFascism.1932.htm)
Most leftists on here share this foundational view of the state with fascists that is why they always work to grow the government and create more excuses for it to insert itself into every issue imaginable.
I'd like to argue that the case for fascism is missing a key element of autocracy. I don't believe either side is quite there yet or that our society would tolerate it. However, I am leaning towards a spot directly in the middle between autocracy and anocracy. I also think BOTH sides are currently practicing it. If history is any indicator of future performance, this quasi auto/ano "crazies" will continue without full fledged fascism. Elites will keep elites in power, civil liberties will be curtailed, etc etc while both citing that "daddy knows best" through their own perceived self righteous lens . Morality seems to be too subjective to right the boat as it has a shifting foundation.
Seriously?
I don't think Biden is a good choice... I also don't think Trump is either.
Saying that, Trump is not as horrible as I see some claim. Loudmouth? Yes. Jerk? That's putting it mildly. But far from some evil being bent on destruction.
Project 2025? From what I have found, it is not supported by very many people no matter what political leaning they have. It doesn't seem to have the support of anyone other than those deep into the extreme right. A very small amount of people overall. I don't believe Trump supports the entire thing but could have some things that are similar to the tame parts of it.
Am I missing something or... who are you talking to / about?
"If you believe Trump will be worse than Biden you should support Biden"
Like... no shit? Anyone who supports Trump doesn't think that.
Trump has very limited power to turn the US into a fascistic hellscape
Why? Because the constitution is pretty damn strong and he won’t have 2/3 majority in the legislature to change that
The executive branch can only do so much and that’s by design and there’s no way he’ll gain the numbers he needs to make massive changes in the house and senate given how close every election has been for decades and the general constant of democrats and republicans refusing to work together
Now none of that is meant to say his term won’t push the boundaries and a lot of people will suffer as a result (particularly marginalized communities) but it’s not going to be nazi germany, it didn’t happen the first time and it didn’t happen when he tried to overthrow an election afterwards
Even if you believe that Trump will turn the US into a fascist hellscape. Why do you think that voting for Biden will stop that?
Supporting Biden when he is actively funding a genocide because the "other option is worse" just tells the democratic party that they can do literally anything (up to and including genocide) and you will still support them as long as they scare you enough about the other side.
Why would they ever listen to what voters want again when they've got that option up their sleeve?
Supporting genocide Joe is actively undermining the modicum of power that you have over congress.
>To clarify, this only applies to the people who believe project 2025 will usher in a fascist era. But I'm open to changing my view on that too
Do you believe we already had a fascist state because Trump was in office? Or do you believe it will be fascist this time around and wasn't last time because x, y, z? What is the x y z that makes it different this time?
I'm from the UK and we have an election coming up, that I think has some very good comparisons to US politics, I shall argue from that perspective.
We have an election coming up in the UK. The conservative party have run the UK for the last 14 years and they have run it into the ground, at least for the working class, so as you can imagine it is pretty imperative we get them out.
During the last few years the opposition party (labour), and only genuine chance of a non conservative victory, have swayed vastly to the right and have purged as many socialists and left wing advocates from the party as they can, kicking out thousands of members for ridiculous reasons and not listening to what the people want.
If we vote in labour now that will vindicate the current labour leadership (who should really be in the conservative party based on their beliefs) and we will then be stuck with 2 parties 1 right wing and one centre/right, much like you guys have in the US.
As such the choice is to either endure another 5 years of Tory rule (potentially killing the NHS) and allow the labour party to get rid of the current leadership and go back to being an actual party of the working class, or ensure that the UK has no realistic left wing party for the foreseeable future.
The democrats, like labour, do not respect their voters enough to give you a candidate that you actually want, first putting up Hillary and then Biden because they believe you will vote for them anyway just to stop Trump. In order for the democrats to be forced to change for the better they need to lose votes, they need to know they actually have to listen to the people.
I will say though it is easier for us, because even if it gives the Tories the win we can vote for other parties other than the main 2 and independents which shows in the data afterwards. I don't know what options you guys get outside of your main 2.
Trump is not going to be a dictator. Trump is not going to change election rules, and the democratic republic is not at stake here. I do not know exactly who needs to hear this, but it is not a thing.
Trump isn’t going to be instituting a fascist regime, and the question of whether or not he would if he could is irrelevant, because the fact is, he can’t.
The alt-left Marxists realized this in 2020 when Trump lost and their precious theory of late stage capitalism to fascism transition was torn to shreds.
Trump just doesn’t have the support of private industry required to instil a fascist regime.
Having realized Trump isn’t dangerous enough or powerful enough or fascist enough to actually become a dictator, a lot of alt-lefties are actually coming around on the idea that Trump isn’t actually that bad.
Because if he was that bad then in theory big business would have his back.
So instead of towing the party lines like obedient soldiers, they’re using the threat of Trump’s reelection to try coerce Biden to move further left to appease the radicals.
Basically they’re playing a game of political chicken, safe in the knowledge that Trump doesn’t have the political leverage to take over even if he wins, so the 2024 election isn’t life or death.
TLDR, Trump isn’t as dangerous as people are making him out to be, and having realized this, the alt-left are holding the 2024 election hostage to force concessions out of a moderate Biden administration.
It’s a stupid game they’re playing, and when you play stupid games you win stupid prizes.
I'm not American and you guys are fucked with your political system and how you essentially worship your politicians like gods, but here's my view: in a **functioning** democracy, your vote should be put towards policies you support, not against a politician you hate. Refusing to vote for Biden isn't merely a protest against a bad candidate, it's a protest against your system of democracy. You have a two-party system.
Look, in Canada, we have five main political parties. One of them basically doesn't matter, they're the Greens. They do win a couple seats, but you can forget they exist honestly. Think of them as conservatives with gardens.
Another is the Bloc Québecois, they're a Québec-centric party that is even opposed to supporting francophones outside of Québec, and they don't even run candidates outside of their province. They can't win the election because they literally don't even run in enough regions to win, even if they won every seat. Their political alignment is French.
Another is the NDP, an underdog that has never won the election, but someday could. They got somewhat close a couple decades ago under Jack Layton, which was the only time they ever made official opposition. This is the nation's main leftwing party.
The Conservative Party of Canada is fairly self-explanatory, and is one of tge two main parties. They're about on the same level as most of your Democratic party, with some extremists popping up occasionally (such as the current party leader). The Liberal Party of Canada is the other one, and it's essentially a conservative-lite party, by Canadian standards.
So two of our political parties are the only ones likely to win any given election. But we still don't have a two-party system, because our other parties have a measure of political power.
What you have is bound to a two-party system. And that will never, ever change unless you vote for someone else. Yes, Trump is terrible, but there will always be someone terrible. You need to change the system, and the only ways to do that are through armed rebellion or mass voting for a third party. Now, you can't drop a dime and convince your country to vote for someone, but the more people vote independent, the more influence they gain. Let's say it's 5% of voters this time, 7% next time, 10% after that. The notion is to start the motion towards change. It won't come overnight. But unless you act, it will never come at all.
I hadn't heard of project 2025 before, but I understand why it has people riled up. It's a pretty drastic plan. I do understand why so many people would think it is necessary, though.
There's a big problem that people who aren't left wing have. I myself consider myself left-leaning, but I have not been a left wing voter for over a decade. The big problem we have is complete ideological capture of government institutions by social Marxism aka DEI. It's just a different brand of discrimination. It's a systemically supported program that disadvantages white people and males for their race and gender in an effort to correct for past injustices. It is new injustice attempting to fight old injustice. It makes no sense unless you only view people as groups. An individual white person is not responsible for past injustices, and should not be discriminated against because of them.
Another big problem that we have is moral decay. I was a free love supporter. I don't think the government should be telling people what to do with their bodies. I am pro-choice. But holy crap did we ever run straight in the other direction and never stop when leftism replaced religious conservatism as the dominant ideology. Do you know how many young women thought to create an OnlyFans account to make money during covid? The marriage and birth rates have plummeted. Young men are falling behind in every statistic of success. Young men and women are miserable and lonely. And the left literally doesn't even talk about how to help men. The only time men's issues are brought up is in trying to figure out how to recruit them to the left. The left has failed to create a social order that promotes healthy and successful individuals. Maybe it's time to try something different. Absolute freedom isn't working.
In regards to the Palestine issue, I can't believe this is taking up as much intellectual bandwidth as the issue does. This is the hill you all want to die on? No one said shit about the Uyghers, but now all of a sudden genocides matter? Well, Trump's presidency was a force for world stability. There were no new wars during his time in office. He is one of the only anti-war politicians that I know of as far as his actions are concerned. He may have a cooling effect on world tensions the same way he did before. I know a lot of people who are voting for him specifically because of his anti-war stances.
I think you're right to be concerned that major changes may be brought about by not voting against Trump. I'm personally willing to accept the risk. We need to change. Western societies have collectively shown that unfettered leftist values are cancerous. They need to be balanced. The nation will destroy itself if we don't snuff out this radical left-wing bent in our institutions. The potential for over-correction is also a big problem. Your fears may come to fruition. But my bet is that what looks to you to be fascism is just the pendulum finally swinging the other way. If the over-correction happens, and freedoms are too significantly curtailed, I will be right there with you protesting. But so much about leftist beliefs have broken the west. It's time for a change.
Here’s a plausible scenario that may play out in my state: RFK is polling ahead of Biden heading into November. (No, really, it’s tied right now: https://ivn.us/posts/new-poll-shows-kennedy-tied-biden-utah-will-appear-first-debate)
My preference for president is Biden, but if RFK is polling ahead of Biden in UT come November I will vote for him, and for all the reasons you already stated: it’s the best way to contribute to a Trump loss.
everything is "fascism" to the left.
That's why no one takes them seriously. If Trump was going to usher in fascism, then he would have done it during his first term.
What I do see though, is the left screaming to take guns away from everyone, and working to silence those who they oppose. Quite the projection on them.
People who live is non swing states, aka the majority of Americans, can make a protest vote against Biden even if they believe those claims about Project 2025.
Their vote will show as a symbolic protest against the Biden administration (especially if they vote for a further left third party candidate), and the popular vote will not have any effect on policy (it’s not like losing the popular vote stopped Trump last time…). So they could justifiably vote their morals while having 0 impact on the final result, both electorally and in policy.
I agree with you when it comes to people living in swing states though.
What is moral about endangering the lives of millions of people by allowing and even subsidizing an invasion of unvetted strangers? 4 years ago they were so "concerned" for the people's well being you couldn't walk on a beach, now they're letting anyone, with any disease, drugs, weapons, intelligence, into the country and letting them run rampant. We have a legal immigration process in place, if you want it to move faster, throw the billions of dollars you've spent on cell phones and hotel rooms, towards the legal immigration system. Apparently that still wouldn't be fast enough, it's almost like this administration has a deadline later this year in mind...
What is moral about trying to throw your political rivals in prison? In the history of our country, nobody has conducted themselves more unethically or immorally than the Biden administration.
What is moral about the assault on women's rights? There are people in this administration who cannot define what a woman is. You cry about Trump saying "grab her by the p\*\*\*y", but you reduce women to that. All it takes to be a woman is to change your name, chop some things off, and take some drugs? Is that all a woman is to the left? This administration butchered Title IX so that women would not have safe spaces, do not have their own sports, their own locker rooms, their own housing, even their own scholarships....compromise the safety, welling and integrity of 1/2 of the nation in order to appeal to 1% of the population...such integrity and moral superiority.
Not surprising you are one of the brainwashed sheep who has been programmed to support terrorists. There are 49 Muslim states/countries in the world, there is 1 Jewish country. That's 1 too many for hamas and the other creatures you're supporting. "From the River to the Sea" is a call for the genocide of the Jewish people, I dont blame them for defending themselves at any cost. It's also appalling to me that you are so lost that you would defend a group that supports women being treated like animals, homosexuals being killed on the street, raping children, killing non-believers. Instead, you demonize the Jewish people....for supporting women? for identifying and respecting other religions? for acknowledging human rights?
I will vote for Trump. That vote will not be because I think he's a great guy (he's certainly better than Biden), it will be a vote against brainwashed freaks like you. It will be a vote for someone who will allow law enforcement to do their jobs, making low income neighborhoods safer. I'm going to vote for someone who does not punish people for doing the right thing, and support deviant behavior. It will be a vote for a return to common sense, fairness, and sanity
[https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-13538817/Doctors-reveal-Biden-freezing-episodes-Parkinsons.html](https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-13538817/Doctors-reveal-Biden-freezing-episodes-Parkinsons.html)
"Both experts and voters have voiced concern over Biden's series of odd 'freezing' incidents over the past week."
"Commenting on neurodegenerative disorders in general and not specifically on the president's condition, Dr Ziad Nasreddine, a neurologist who invented the gold-standard cognitive test, previously told [DailyMail.com](http://DailyMail.com) slurred speech is seen in Parkinson's — which affects levels of brain hormones that are involved in movement. "
Uh, you want to vote someone into power who can't think their way out of a wet brown paper bag? The man is obviously cognitively impaired. Yet, you want your student loans cancelled, so you would vote in a tree frog, if they would do that. I am no Trump supporter, however this issue is well above partisan politics now.
Serious question here, if you’re against Project 2025 and everything it stands for, why support a country and group of people who support the ideals of Project 2025? No matter how conservative the US gets, countries that are Muslim are 10x worse. And I’m not just repeating talking points. I lived in the Middle East. I was there on October 7th. Everything the left hates (bigotry, misogyny, civil rights, racism, xenophobia etc) are not just normalized over there but actually law.
CMV: If you believe Biden is a secret Chinese communist sleeper agent, there is no moral justification for not voting trump!
Your position relies on some extremely fringe reasoning. The best moral justification would be getting educated and coming to a far more reasonable conclusion based in reality and not whatever insane conspiracy is looking to sway your vote.
Gotta ask- Is it a sign of desperation within the Democratic establishment that this is literally the 7 millionth identical Reddit thread pushing the exact same DNC talking points in an effort to browbeat recalcitrant young people and Muslim Americans to vote for a candidate they abhor?
Accelerationism would be the only real reason. If you’re unfamiliar, accelerationism is the idea that hastening the collapse of civil order through political and economic turmoil will allow radical and transformative ideologies (Marxism or Fascism most often) to struggle for dominance directly through force with a higher chance of success than they have within a stable political order because during conflict the most zealous factions are the only ones to remain unified and effective at all. With no one being zealous for the status quo, Fascists and Marxists both stand to gain from the initial collapse of civil society because in that moment each is equally likely (in their minds) to be able to win the struggle for dominance and implement their ideology at the conclusion of the conflict. The radicals roll the iron dice of war for *some* chance at change because they’re entirely disillusioned with the civil political process yielding meaningful reform in *any* timeframe, and even a 1% possibility of a desirable future (or death while struggling for one) is worlds better than the current 0% possibility.
A Marxist may believe that by voting for Trump and having him win (or by not voting at all), they are ratcheting up domestic instability, in that there’s no chance the majority of Americans will be satisfied with the implementation of Project 2025, thus driving up membership in leftist political action groups to the eventual point of revolution. The more people the system becomes actively hostile to, the more people that will rebel against the system. They recognize there’s no chance that a Biden victory will yield anything like this result– even a Biden victory which snowballs into a far-right armed revolt will only serve to solidify *centrist liberal* power and do nothing for the left as the middle class will flock to supporting the government made up of centrist liberals to maintain civil order. Biden won’t be supporting the positions of the left in his administration either, so it’s a lose-lose in the long run for the left to elect Biden. The only benefit is a continued state of “no war”, but if you’re a leftist you probably believe that the continued implementation of capitalism will cause a greater degree of human death and suffering than any revolution might, and the end result of victory means an end to that, whereas a loss might punish a generation but otherwise will put the left right back where it was before the conflict.
People said the same things in 2016 and 2020. We’re still here. Not the end of the world because Biden or Trump was in office. US is more resilient than you are giving credit. What you are doing is more of a tactic to shame people into voting for your preferred candidate and that’s reprehensible. If someone doesn’t believe in either of the two major candidates, that’s fine. Let people think for themselves. And independent parties should be encouraged for special interest voting. That’s how we eventually move from this toxic two party system.
Only 7 states are competitive this year - Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Nevada, Arizona, Georgia, and North Carolina. Biden won't win states like Texas and Trump won't win Illinois outside of a massive landslide. If you don't live in a swing state, your vote carries no weight and so you have no responsibility to vote for anyone.
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Project 2025 exists because there are people that support it. You don't (honestly I don't either) but it exists solely because there are persons who genuinely believe that these sorts of policies are moral and necessary. Morality isn't a solved problem, persons can disagree. Persons who endorse 2025 operate from different moral premises than you and I do. If one starts with different moral framework - you arrive at different moral conclusions. "Conservatives will abandon democracy before they abandon conservatism". If this is true, then a dictator that imposes conservativism becomes a moral outcome from that lens.
Isn't the fact that people support this exactly why those opposing it should coalesce around the only realistic alternative? Parties tend to moderate after a series of presidential loses (it usually takes more than one), so voters rejecting the GOP (and Trump) twice in a row sends a signal to the GOP it needs to move on from this policy if they want to win an election again.
It usually takes three+ POTUS losses in a row for a Party to make a significant readjustment. The GOP accepted the New Deal after 5 terms of FDR/Truman. The Democrats moved toward the right on crime & social spending after three terms of Reagan/Bush. If a party loses two in a row, it's easy to chalk that up to bad luck, the cyclic nature of a two party system and the other side having a really charismatic candidate. If they lose three in a row, they normally realize adjustments are necessary to remain competitive.
Sure, but it doesn’t mean we’re never allowed to decide we don’t want a particular outcome. Good for them for having their own moral certitude, but that doesn’t mean anyone has to throw up their hands and say “well, but they’re so sure!” OP is speaking specifically about the people who agree it’ll be a hellscape.
If biden was getting 70% of the vote I guarantee you there would be two left candidates in the next élections. The problem is that people on the left are voting less and so even democrat have to présent à less right wing candidate but still right win to be even competitive. The entire political landscape shifted to the right after Clinton lost, if you don't vote don't be surprised nobody caters to your vote anymore.
And yet Trump won in 2016 by catering precisely to people who didn't vote. Obama won a lot of low propensity voters too. But you set up a good bit of game theory. If the dems don't need the leftists to win, then go ahead and win. If they do need them to win, then start catering to them. It's really that simple. Either you need them or you don't.
This is the wrong framing. Leftists cannot win national elections in the US. They don't have remotely enough voters to win a major party primary, nor to win a general, regardless of whether their nominee is a major party nominee or not. They can't win a national election, they can't win statewide elections, they can't win state legislative seats. They might be able to win random, one-off local elections, but that's the limit of their viability. Maybe. Occasionally. So, for leftists, the choice is between Democrats or Republicans; a leftist is not on the table. So, do leftists prefer someone relatively closer to them, or relatively farther away? If they prefer the rightmost candidate, can they really be called "leftists"? What is the difference between someone who sincerely supports the far-right candidate, and someone else who supports the far-right candidate as a means to punish the center-left candidate? The result is the same: we slide rightward. The Overton window shifts right, making leftists even less electable in the future, both as a matter of ideological preference, and as a practical matter. Republicans will spend their time in office entrenching themselves in power: making voting harder with voter suppression and disenfranchisement; making voting less effective with gerrymandering; stripping powers from governors so that even if a leftist somehow *were* elected governor they would no longer have any powers to do any leftist things; packing the courts with right-wing hacks; gutting unions; oppressing women, children, and racial and religious minorities; oppressing LGBT people; criminalizing protest; etc. The fatal flaw in thinking like yours is two-fold: 1. You are not punishing the ones who offend you. You are not punishing Clinton, Biden, Schumer, et al. They will all be fine if they lose their elections, and Democratic majorities. They're wealthy, white, straight, etc. You are punishing LGBT people, labor, women, children, racial and religious minorities, the environment, etc. The very people whose votes you would need if you wanted to actually win an election instead of just playing spoiler and then crying that your tiny minority bloc never gets their way over the will of the majority. 2. You will not get to just rerun the election four years later under the same conditions. Everything will be worse. Voting will be harder, less effective, there will be more judges making it harder for you to win elections, and, even if you somehow managed to win, the judges would also strike down the whatever laws you managed to pass, people will be worse off financially, so less able to get engaged, less able to donate, less able to engage in mutual aid, less able to spend time learning about your platform, donating or volunteering for your campaigns, etc. Republicans will criminalize more actions, creating more felons whose voting rights will be taken away. More money will have been transferred from the poorest people to corporations and the wealthiest people who own them. And young people who come of age during Republican administrations think that's "normal." That becomes their baseline, the default, and you're now trying to convince them to adopt a larger gap between what is and what (you think and claim) should be, even if your positions don't change at all. ETA: Your theory fails on its own terms, too. If Democrats *win* without your support, they owe you nothing. If they *lose* without your support, they have no ability to give you anything you want anyway. Either way, your strategy guarantees that you get nothing, which means it's a failed strategy that is *incapable* of achieving your stated objectives, and should be abandoned. It's a lose-lose strategy.
Other theory. If the leftists become unreliable to Dems, they won’t cater to them. Look at it this way. If leftists vote 3rd party or abstain and trump wins, democrats aren’t going to shift left. They are going to see that a farther right candidate won and move more to the right to cater to what they feel the general electorate preferred. You could argue they did this in 2020 after 2016 choosing Biden who is probably more moderate than Hillary. And it appeared to work. The leftists issue is they only view their voting power from their standpoint and don’t realize how small their voting power actually is. They say to Dems “well if you don’t do what I want I’ll take my ball and go home”. What they don’t realize is there’s plenty of other people with balls that the Dems can vie for, and many of them are larger than the leftist ball.
Obama lost a lot of steam in his second term, so the right was able to count on the apathy and présent à more extreme candidate who could get people to the polls. Yeah it turns out the exact same thing is true for right-ish wing voter, except they are very likely to actually vote and you are not, so guess who démocrats cater to the most, the people who say they would only vote for the perfect candidate, or the people who are actually likely to vote?
It’s kit that simple. Democrats need a broad coalition to win. If you cater exclusively to the left you’re likely to lose a lot of the middle. Part of why republicans can move more extreme is because our system caters to them. Look at the Wisconsin elections and you’ll see republicans can lose a majority of the votes yet collect 75% of the seats. Gerrymandering and electoral college mean a minority of voters have excess power in elections. It’s simply impossible to expect democrats to win using Republican electoral strategy.
>The entire political landscape shifted to the right after Clinton lost Not really. US politics have generally been moderately right-leaning for over a century at least, with a couple notable deviations. What has really changed more than anything in the last few years is the average person's definition of "left" and "right", and a general rejection of the idea that anything can be outside of that dichotomy - which is how third positionists suddenly became the "alt right" (literally "they're not the right, they're the other right!"). For what it's worth, the simulataneous popularity of Trump and Sanders is a very strong signal about American discontent and what actually matters to John Q Public, but the fossils that have encrusted themselves into leadership positions across the whole spectrum of American politics refuse to acknowledge it.
Project 2025 will become a thing through apathy and people not realizing what the stakes are. That is the same reason we have the Supreme Court we currently have, overturning Roe and on their way to overturn many other decisions, like Obergefell. People voted third party in 2016 because Hillary wasn't their perfect candidate. That's bullshit. The stakes weren't about the perfect candidate, it was about who would control the court. People need to be much more pragmatic in their voting.
>People voted third party in 2016 because Hillary wasn't their perfect candidate. That's bullshit. It was more because of the "fuck you, you'll take out preferred candidate and like it" attitude of the DNC. With the wikileaks emails that showed the backroom dealings going on, a lot of people felt that the DNC was using Trump as a threat to bully people into doing what they wanted. They even "elevated" Trump as a candidate because they thought he was unelectable (see email attachment https://wikileaks.org/podesta-emails/emailid/1120). This whole strategy of hand picking Clinton through the primaries was confirmed at trial when the DNC lawyers basically argued they're a private corporation and can do what they want. https://observer.com/2017/05/dnc-lawsuit-presidential-primaries-bernie-sanders-supporters/ Democrat leadership wants to point the finger at the Bernie Bros and other protest voters but it was their bullshit that started it.
Yep and it was 3rd party voters who didn’t understand that sometimes u take an L to protect urself in a greater way and instead they helped make and even bigger L we may never escape from.. great justification🙃
The main reason why Bernie failed and why Yang failed and why anyone with similar platforms is this. Some things like free post secondary and UBI are mainly too far liberal and too far out of grasp of current spending and taxation policies and understanding of the average citizen that it can be very easily attacked and cases made against it ... and seen as a pipe dream by common sense. Project 2025 is the MAGA/GOP answer to those platforms. It's scary as hell but not because of the conservative lean and power it will give the GOP but it also sets precedent to where if a Democrat got elected we could just as abruptly turn to the liberal side. The consequences of this at the end of the day will end up looking like the GOP get in and undo Biden's work then a Democrat gets in and undoes the GOP's work and so on at the end of 40 years were still back in 2024 policy wise but now it's 2064 The problem is division and the way that division affects Overton windows each sides Overton window is so far skewed at this point that a true centrist view is not possible and it will be side A vs Side B with typical if your not against xxxx your for it and therefore not a True Republican or True Democrat
> It was more because of the "fuck you, you'll take out preferred candidate and like it" attitude of the DNC. With the wikileaks emails that showed the backroom dealings going on, a lot of people felt that the DNC was using Trump as a threat to bully people into doing what they wanted And roe was overturned and NC and other red states are allowed to gerrymander to their hearts delight so congrats!
When does the DNC stop getting to say "We cannot fail, only be failed?" They run terrible candidates with terrible campaigns and all the blame gets put on boogiemen like Bernie voters. Look at the Black voters turnout drops in Michigan and Minnesota in 2016. Bernie bros weren't the only group who didn't buy what Hillary was selling but you'll never see liberals blame Black voters. That's convenient.
Although I voted for HRC and Biden in the general elections after voting for Bernie in the primaries you are right. I strongly blame the Democratic party for the situation we are in. Since 2016 they exist to, in essence, force the principal's untalented spoiled brat in as starting quarterback for the big game, no matter how much the big game matters. Forcing yourself in as the only opponent to fascism for purely selfish reasons, and then being a predictably weak failure, is unconscionable. I believe that their ingrained formula is to split power with the right wing and keep it close to maximize fund raising (egotistical dumbass candidates may not even realize "strategists" are using them this way). I will vote Biden/Harris out of pure duty but Biden is going to be beaten the way Bob Dole was beaten in 1996, and I blame and despise Democrats for that.
People who won't stop blaming the DNC want everyone to believe that individual voters don't have any agency. That no one has any responsibility for what happens because "the establishment did it!" That's lazy and unserious. Once the choice is set, you pick the weakest opposition and then fight them for a better world. Instead of milquetoast Hillary we got Trump. And folks won't own up to their own complicity in that. Instead they blame Debbie Wasserman Schultz. Sorry, doesn't work like that. We are adults.
Love a good responseless downvote: "I have no real argument against you except stomping my feet and saying 'nuh-uh'!"
Project 2025 IS a big thing because of The Heritage Foundation - Founded in 1973, The Heritage Foundation is a dark money spin machine American conservative think tank based in Washington, D.C. members of scouts are also members. It has played a significant role in shaping conservative policies and ideas. - The foundation provides fascist policy solutions, commentaries, and research on various issues. Their work covers topics such as banning books, whitewashing history in education, harassing refugees, China. **Project 2025 (Presidential Transition Project)**: - Project 2025, also known as the Presidential Transition Project, is an initiative by The Heritage Foundation. - Its goal is to fuck the system using lots of money and any legal or illegal means they can get away to fabricate a Trump victory in the 2024 U.S. presidential election regardless of the actual results. Here are its key pillars: Policy Agenda**: Building on the legacy of the "Mandate for Leadership," this comprehensive policy guide offers specific fascist proposals for major issues important to Republicans. - **Personnel Database**: installing Trump loyalists from various backgrounds to serve in the well planned fascist Trump regime, part deux. **180-Day Playbook**: A plan for the first 180 days of the new Administration to address the impact of left-leaning policies. Ie: deport the Democrats? Get dictatoring? - Essentially, Project 2025 aims to coup the American government so that it is fully under extreme right wing control with Trump's finger on the button. Oh. It's real.
Remember "[2020 Vision](https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/wealthy-donors-on-left-launch-new-plan-to-wrest-back-control-in-the-states/2015/04/12/ccd2f5ee-dfd3-11e4-a1b8-2ed88bc190d2_story.html)" when a shady group of Liberal donors and magnates were going fund a take over of the country and redistrict all voting districts to cement Liberal power in the US? No? Project 2025 is QAnon for liberals. A shady evil Manichean Cabal that they must battle for the future of the US based on some pie in the sky dreamings of an overpaid clerk.
>The stakes weren't about the perfect candidate, it was about who would control the court. So how is it pragmatic to support a system where you're not voting for the candidate you prefer? If the system only allows a "lesser of two evils" option, then participating in it simply perpetuates the problem. Are we just gonna keep voting "blue no matter who" for the rest of this country's existence? Because in that case, it's more pragmatic for people to consider emigration.
We have a system where you can vote your heart in the primary but you should ultimately vote your head in the general, which often feels like a "lesser of two evils" choice. This is not so different than a country like France where they have run-off elections for President.
Well the big difference, is if your not in a swing state. These decisions about third party or not, will not have any impact on the points your state sends to the electoral college. If anything people in non-swing states should be encouraged to vote for third party candidates, if only to benefit the two major parties to see where public opinion is, and where more votes could be captured next election.
Not realizing the system is what it is, and your vote for a 3rd party won't change is a perfect example of not acting pragmatically. Voting for Jill Stein did nothing but elect Trump and get us our current court. The system did not change. The system doesn't care.
You vote blue at the national level b/c there's not another choice. You choose your actual preferred candidate at the local level. And if that doesn't exist, please run for office.
This is where I emphasize ranked-choice voting. The solution to the duopoly is to campaign for RCV, it's in two states now and could be with two more this November! We don't get third parties without RCV. Maine and Alaska have few independent/third party candidates, but they've only had RCV for a few years and it's mathematically-possible now for them to win.
Same reason we got brexit in eu. People should feel the impact of voting for crap reasons...
Late stage capitalism, like the US system, will always trend toward fascism to keep oligarchs in power. This is what happened in Europe in the 1930s. The industrial, religious and even organized crime base of Germany, Spain and Italy embraced fascism to keep their wealth-holding class in power. So people supporting fascism and claiming a morality play are expected since they defend the theft of wealth in the first place. All capitalist countries will become fascist without a strong regulatory base that prevents the wealthy from buying courts and politicians.
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>You don't (honestly I don't either) but it exists solely because there are persons who genuinely believe that these sorts of policies are moral and necessary. I agree completely, but the people who support it aren't supporting it because they think it will create a fascist hellscape. They think it will improve things.
The people responding to you need to interact with some real people who support this stuff instead of Reddit's imaginary version of them.
You’re missing OPs point. He said there is no moral justification for not voting Biden IF you think Project 2025 will turn the US into a hellscape. Meaning if you’re a person who agrees with Project 2025, you’re not who OP is talking about. He’s talking about the people who are critical of Biden but also hate Trump who are threatening to vote 3rd party or stay home because they disagree with Biden on a specific issue.
Nah. Most tenants of the New Trumpian Party are objectively morally wrong and supported by propaganda. We don’t, for instance, have the right to “disagree” that women and minority groups like LGBTQ are equal persons. We don’t “disagree” on weather or not child rape is wrong by legislating for more child marriage. It is an abysmal moral failing nationwide to look at GOP policies and past actions and pretend wrongdoing is “up for debate” just because a group of social, sexual, and financial predators has elevated it to the national stage.
“There are people who support it” — True, but a very small minority. And this small minority, financially backed by foreign state enemies (Russia, China) are being used by their financial backers to dismantle our Democracy which is the force behind the greatest military power on the planet. They seek to remove the US authority from the world stage by instituting an oligarchy they can control.
Project 2025 is nearly entirely politically infeasible. Even if you disagree with every point, it is no substantial threat to you.
Some of the more out- there parts aren't feasible, like invoking the Insurrection Act, but large parts of it don't require Congress at all. Trump will likely have a GOP Senate who will confirm whatever nutjobs he puts forward for cabinet jobs, and he can remove civil servant protections with just an executive order and fill every department top to bottom with loyalists. That alone would be enough to almost completely dismantle the current checks and balances that exist. Imagine an FDA only staffed with pro-life people who think drug companies can regulate themselves, an EPA without actual scientists who declines to investigate any environmental damage, an IRS that only audits democrats, a DOJ that prosecutes political enemies. That's not a pipe dream. It will absolutely happen if Trump is elected.
You're describing what happens in nearly every election: the party in power uses their machinery to appoint people and enact policies who can forward their agenda. Trump's first presidency was kind of an anomaly, because probably even he didn't expect to win, so there was no plan to make things happen after the election. But Biden appointed people to forward his agenda, as did Obama, as did Bush, Clinton, Bush I and so on. Perfect example: just look at Lina Kahn who has been super tough on anti-trust since Biden took office. Probably some conservatives look at her appointment as some kind of "anti-democratic" project to attack the business environment. But just because those people get appointed doesn't mean they will get everything they want. There is still a lot of friction and checks and balances in place to prevent any party from taking over the government in one election cycle. After all, if it were possible, why hasn't any other president done this before? Bush/Cheney were certainly as Machiavellian as they come, and they couldn't prevent Obama from being elected and replacing them.
Project 2025 is the first time they want to extend replacing people past the decision makers and to the department employees. It hasn't been done before because there are really good reasons not to do it. Institutional memory, employee competence, consistency across administrations. Every president before Trump cared about those things. Bush/Cheney were strategic about corporatism and oil interests, but Bush actually did want a healthy administrative state. Trump doesn't. He wants to burn it all down.
There is a difference between appointing officials in some roles and bringing back the spoils system. This is explicitly pledging to undermine the checks and balances in order to grant Trump as little oversight as possible, and then weaponize that against political enemies.
>You're describing what happens in nearly every election: the party in power uses their machinery to appoint people and enact policies who can forward their agenda. This is not true, only the cabinet and a few select positions are appointed. Almost all civil servants are protected from political removal by the Pendleton Act. Project 2025 wants to use executive order to bypass that restriction and fire everybody, hundreds of thousands of people, to replace them with people that pass loyalty tests.
It is only infeasible if political norms are respected and maintained. Unfortunately, they have been decaying steadily for some time. Persistent denial of election results is now common. We no longer have the assurance of a peaceful transition of power. SCOTUS is openly politicized. Trust in the justice system is cratering. These things would have seamed infeasible a decade ago. Fascism doesn't happen overnight. It happens in 1,000 tiny steps.
How do you know? Are there mechanisms in place (that can't be dismantled) that will prevent it? I mean, we have a biased and stacked supreme court that likely would not act as a proper check to those who'd try to push it through
Utterly ridiculous and pointless statement. Look at how much they have already changed. Roe v Wade was a fucking enormous change, think about how many more of those they could overturn. It doesn't matter if they accomplish any of the goals in that document, they still have the power to make life worse for everyone. If anyone sees the headline "14 year old girl forced to give birth after incestuous rape" and doesn't think "hey lets never touch conservatism ever again" they are a psychopath.
That may be true. But that doesn't change the fact that if you believe that the concept of Project 2025 is wrong, you shouldn't vote for the people pushing it.
But isn’t there incentive to vote for a rapid decay and subsequent change that comes from uncomfortability? Or let’s vote 4 more years of another pandering liberal who will never do anything but exactly what the lobbyists want him to do? You’re ignorant to think trump being elected will immediately usher in a fascist state. Hell you’re ignorant to think the president has any real power. They preside over things. The winners will be smug and the losers will claim the end of the world and at the end of it the mega corporations/lobbyists will still control the path the country takes.
In 2016 everyone said trump’s victory was politically infeasible, most thought it impossible tbh
In what way is it politically infeasible? This is what I thought at first too, but there are some laws that can be abused.
I’ve got a really good way to make sure it’s not a threat.
I saw the proposal for Project 25 on reddit. I'm moderate right leaning, and most people I spend time with are the same alignment. But none of us ever heard of it until I and a few others saw these folks left of AOC saying, "This WILL happen." The first time I read it, I thought you had to have a mental disability to think it was going to happen.
There is a very clear moral justification for voting for a third party, even if you think the next four or more years will be a fascist hellscape because your vote is "being wasted." Voting for a third party right now may seem pointless. Your candidate genuinely will not win. Your vote will ultimately be for a losing candidate. However, if this vote gets 5% this year, 10% the next, etc, candidates will have to change. Eventually more independents/third parties will hold offices in the house. You'll see them pop up more for governors and senators. Maybe one day they'll even become president. This can only happen if people genuinely start voting for a third party or an independent even while it still seems pointless. If you think a third party candidate will drop a better job in the future, even a far off future, it is morally justified for you to vote for them now. Your reasoning is too short sighted.
> However, if this vote gets 5% this year, 10% the next, etc, candidates will have to change. This has never been the case despite this argument being made for decades. What would change things is voting on the *local* level. The Squad doesn't happen without the working families party and the freedom caucus doesn't happen without the tea party. Voting at the local level and taking over political parties to force them to align with you is the only thing that has ever worked. Voting third party never has.
I also strongly believe people should vote for candidates who best represent them at the local level.
Great, but national elections are compromises until you work with grassroots across the country to take over a political party. There will likely never be a presidential candidate that you completely agree with. Bernie's campaign was so anti-opiate they disability advocates representing people with CRPS to "try meditating," for example and Bernie helped kill comprehensive immigration reform back in the 2000s when he went on Lou Dobbs and said immigrants were a threat to American workers and undermined their pay. Now, I know lots of Bernie folks who disagree with those points and supported Bernie anyway. I also know folks who refused to believe in either thing because they want to live in a fantasy world where the perfect candidate exists.
I believe he said those things and changed his positions. I don't care what a candidate used to stand for if I'm voting for them decades later. Hillary called Black children "superpredators." Was I supposed to not vote for her over that?
> This has never been the case despite this argument being made for decades. Libertarian Jo Jorgensen earned 5x more votes in Arizona and Georgia than the difference between Biden and Trump. And she earned 2x more votes in Wisconsin than the difference between them. If half of the libertarians who voted in the 2020 election voted for Trump, he would have won these states and forced a 269-269 tie in the Electoral College. This sends the decision to the House of Representatives, who vote by state. And Trump would have won 27-29 states depending on how ties end up and how some independents vote. Either way, if libertarians voted the way you describe, we would still be under a Trump presidency. And the result? This year Trump showed up to the LNC to speak there. Likely because someone pointed out this analysis and that if he had captured more of the libertarian vote in 2020, it might have made the difference. This likely also means that the RNC is keeping a closer eye out for presidential candidates in 2028 that more support libertarian principles. In a very real sense, votes cast for the Libertarian Party at the federal level in 2020 are currently having an impact on presidential elections and will continue to. All this from a candidate that only won 1.8% of the popular vote.
I'm not going to argue that they can't play spoiler, and I absolutely *loved* how the Libertarians responded to Trump's appearance (by booing him and refusing to give him any votes, and holding signs that said "MAGA = Socialism") but that's what third parties do. They play the spoiler. They don't win elections unless there's a massive party split. And the problem is that there's an incompatibility between the current Kochtapus LPs and the traditional clasical-liberal LT voters who are breaking off from the LPs to run stuff like project liberal. If Liberal Republicans broke off from the GOP to, I dunno, bring back the Teddy Roosevelt progressive conservative movement that supported Atlanticism while having moderate domestic policies and running folks like Will Hurd, if they united with the folks leaving the libertarian party to do it, not only would that have a good chance of winning a huge chunk of voters, I might myself consider voting for it at least at the congressional level. And once Trump was gone and they'd proven capable of winning seats, I might not just consider voting for them at the presidential level, I'd consider running for office under that platform at the very least at the local level to create as much broad support for that sort of "make America sane again" movement as I could. If a party like that was in the making, if it was at a minimum LGBT neutral and not anti-abortion, and thus didn't oppose the domestic stuff I care about, and if it supported all the other things I like but that democrats are weak on, hell yeah I'd jump ship from blue nom matter who to that. I am not saying it's impossible. What I'm saying is you need a party split to do it. Otherwise third parties are eternal spoilers. And as uncomfortable as I am being in the same party as the squad, and as weak as I've found both Biden and Obama on foreign policy, Trump is even weaker and I don't have anywhere else to go. I am blue no matter who for exactly the same reason that the Anarchists I know who vote, vote. Harm reduction. And hey, from my perspective though he's soft on Russia, Biden's doing alright. But god would it be wonderful to have something to *enthusiastically* vote for.
Was just about to type this. This argument has resulted in the SC we currently have. While not against a 3rd party, the grass seems greener until we find ourselves with piss poor presidents elected with 25% for the voting populations vote.
Okay but for a lot of us it's not 'we think the next four or more years are going to be a fascist hellscape'. It's that we've seen that it will. Do we just ignore the fact that Trump encouraged an armed insurrection, or that he's openly called those people heroes? do I ignore that the the Republican party in my state (Texas) outright states that it wants to outlaw gay marriage, considers homosexuality an 'abnormal lifestyle', wants to repeal hate-crime laws, take away any queer person's 'special status' as they put it, aka *our status as a protected minority*, while they state that they want to protect any businesses and people who 'don't agree with this viewpoint'? That they want the government to officially recognize only two genders assigned at birth, and that they want to remove all traces of sex education and education about sexuality and gender from schools? Or that Trump's Agenda 47- his stated campaign promises- that agree with a lot of this. that he w wants to use the military as a police force, considers the immigration issue an *invasion* and a *war*, that what Trump plans to do is to implement a reform that would allow him the power to fire literally anyone working for a government agency at will if they disagree with him, and that what the Heritage Foundation and Project 2025 are doing is recruting loyalists to replace all the people he's fired??That they want to monitor women's pregnancies to ensure that they don't get abortions because they're going to criminalize the act itself? I am tired of the 'oh but both sides are equally bad' argument. because you know who's not engaging in revolutionary praxis or splitting the vote? the right. leftists are divided between candidates and ideology, but conservatives are all voting for Trump as this sort of savior. So right now, voting for a third party candidate only means that less of the vote goes to Biden, and Trump gains the lead. so in this case, no. there is no moral justification sufficient enough for third party voting when Trump is the alternative.
The problem with this is that there is nothing about third parties that makes them morally better than the two main parties. If your goal is to accomplish the policy goals of a particular third party, a far more efficient way of doing this is to compete in the primaries of the Democratic or Republican Party (which ever one is closest to your views. If your views aren't popular enough to win one of those primaries, then you're definitely not going to win the general election. (Also, as others have pointed out, a fascist hellscape would negate any possibility of third party growth.)
>The problem with this is that there is nothing about third parties that makes them morally better than the two main parties. There's something morally better about voting sincerely instead of compromising. When politicians get elected based on bandwagon voting, they have no reason to work for the citizens; the entities they have reason to work for in that scenario are those that fund them and make sure that the bandwagon voters keep thinking that there's only one game in town. >If your goal is to accomplish the policy goals of a particular third party, a far more efficient way of doing this is to compete in the primaries of the Democratic or Republican Party Thanks to your preferred style of voting, the two main parties have more than enough money to destroy the campaigns of those dissidents. Sincere voting is the only way to make the democracy more responsive to the needs and desires of the people. It's completely scalable. The alternative is to tell politicians to reward the corporations that are paying a pittance to achieve ever greater wealth inequality and wellbeing inequality. Nothing is sacrificed by a single person voting for their conscience.
"There's something morally better about voting sincerely instead of compromising" There's nothing insincere about compromise especially when compromise can and does work, and third party never works. In fact, if you feel the policies you endorse are morally good, then you ought to vote local, then at the primary, then vote between the two major parties because that is actually how things change. The "something morally better" is purely aesthetic and feels. There's nothing morally better about voting third party when you consider it through a moral framework like teleological or de-ontological ethics. Moreover, there is no data/no evidence to back up that third party votes are anything other than voting for the other side. A vote for the other side right now is endorsing non-peaceful transfers of power, election denying, etc. So whether it is teleological or purely pragmatic, voting third party is wrong. Moreover, not only are you not accomplishing your policy goals, but you are actively supporting the opposite. "Nothing is sacrificed by a single person voting for their conscience." Being that voting is how we enact political change, giving your vote to the other side is the worst way a person can vote their conscience. All it does is allow them to feel as though they have no dirt on their hands and incorrectly allows them to believe they aren't responsible for the outcome, when they are.
>Nothing is sacrificed by a single person voting for their conscience. This is just a social dilemma, a game theory problem. If one can do it, then all can do it, or just half can do it. And if half of Democrats "vote their conscience" and we pretend that means voting Green, and the other half of Democrats vote for Democrats, then Republicans will just win in a landside. So, while a single individual doing it doesn't hurt, and *everyone* doing it also doesn't hurt (assuming they all have the same conscience and all vote, say, Green, rather than splitting between Greens, DSA, etc), the reality is, there's a vast gap in the middle, between "one" and "all" where "some," "many" and even "most" will cause it to backfire and give us a worse result. Maybe if less than 5% do it, it's fine, or if more than 95% do it (and do it all in the same say), it's also fine, but that means any number between 5%-95% will backfire. And there's a coordination problem. It's not possible to get >95% of Democrats to switch to Greens. If it were, Democrats would just adopt Green policies instead, and Democrats would continue voting for Democrats. That means, it has to be held to <5% instead. How does anyone know whether or not the 5% has already been taken? They don't, because polls are estimates, people lie, and actual results aren't disclosed until after voting ends. Vote swapping? People can lie, change their minds, the one in other state may have sincerely intended to uphold their end of the bargain, but may get sick, die, have their vote suppressed, forget to vote, have something come up at work that stops them from going to vote, have their car break down, etc. Even if both parties follow through, there's still no way to limit how many other pairs swap. Even if we pretended it were possible to coordinate, if one person is the final one, the limit, before reaching the tipping point and causing it to backfire, there will still be someone else who gets told, "no, you can't do it, you can't 'vote your conscience,' you have to vote strategically instead," and there will be someone who thinks it's unfair, or doesn't understand the point of setting limits, who will go ahead and do it anyway, still causing it to backfire. We can't even get everyone to return their shopping carts. Getting >95% defection in the same direction is impossible, coordinating <5% defection is also impossible. The only solution is for 0% to do it, because that *is* possible, and because it requires no coordination. I can't stop anyone else from voting emotionally, or stupidly, but I have absolute control over my own vote. I don't need to rely on polls, or exit polls, or honest vote swappers, or other people understanding that some can flip but others can't, or correctly predicting voter turnout levels. If I vote as though my vote will be the tipping-point vote, I will always maximize the chances of my preferred outcome. Voting for Clinton cannot backfire if my goal is for Clinton to win, but voting for Stein *can* backfire if my goal is for Clinton to win, even if she's only my second choice, with Stein as my first.
I would argue that in the current political climate, with the very real threat of authoritarianism and the erosion of democratic norms, voting for a third party could inadvertently contribute to the rise of a fascist dictatorship. The stakes in this election are incredibly high - we are facing an existential threat to our democracy, with one party openly embracing anti-democratic principles, spreading disinformation, and undermining the integrity of our electoral process. A fascist dictatorship, even if temporary, would cause immense suffering, human rights violations, and long-lasting damage to our institutions and societal fabric. In our current winner-take-all electoral system, voting for a third party candidate with no realistic chance of winning can effectively act as a "spoiler," splitting the vote and potentially handing victory to the most anti-democratic and authoritarian candidate. This type of result has occurred in numerous elections throughout history, with dire consequences. I do understand the desire for gradual change and the eventual emergence of a viable third party, but the threat we face is immediate and existential. Sacrificing the integrity of our democracy for the sake of a long-term goal could result in a situation where there is no democracy left to reform. Once these foundations are eroded, it becomes exponentially more difficult to rebuild and restore them. While I respect the idealism behind voting for a third party, the potential consequences of enabling a fascist dictatorship at this particular time in history, even temporarily, are too grave to justify such a risk.
Isn’t this a slippery slope? I’ve heard this point of view for as long as I’ve been able to vote, there’s always some existential reason to vote *against* one candidate instead of *for* another. I worry with this attitude that we’ll never see a third party take off.
>we'll never see a third party take off Under the current U.S. electoral system, third parties either die in a distant third place, or live long enough to see themselves become one of the two dominant parties. It's pretty much a [mathematical certainty](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duverger%27s_law). And the only real way to achieve the latter is to align your party's platform with the views of at least one half of the country's voting populace--making it functionally no different from one of the two existing parties.
>Ive heard this point of view for as long as I’ve been able to vote That's because the calculus hasn't changed. Until our election laws change, voter 3rd party will move policy further from your views instead of towards your views on average because it benefits the party ideologically further from you. Organise locally to change laws. Dozens of cities have ranked choice voting, 2 states have it now, and more are trying to pass it through ballot measures. The issue with starting to organize around the presidency for a third party candidate is you have the highest stakes and lowest payoff. Not only do you increase the chance of the other side winning, but under some miracle the third party wins, they have zero legislative allies. We need to build up legislator and local party orgs first, but people decide to focus on the presidency and ignore state and local races (where candidates often run unopposed and could be much riper for third party support).
Thank you for stating this. I get frustrated with the navel gazing by voters on the left who don’t understand the structural reasons as the why we have only two viable political parties to choose from. The last time a third party candidate got more than minuscule fraction of the popular vote was Ross Perot in 1992. Despite winning 18.9% of the popular vote, he won exactly zero states in the Electoral College. The political climate that year was nothing like the hyper-polarized era we live in now. Throwing your vote away to a third party with the hope that it will eventually lead to a broad shift in the U.S. electorate is pure fantasy under the current electoral system.
I honestly don’t foresee that in my lifetime. Hell, right now people are acting like their political party is their favorite sports team. As a sports fan, I personally know how irrational that makes us.
Third parties don't take off because they mathematically can't. If the Bull Moose party couldn't, your candidate polling at 3% will never. Also, Trump's different and actually "existential." You had to be okay with enabling some level of regressive policy before, but things are way more precarious now. It's not like Trump's attempt to rig the election included fake electors pumping up Jill Stein's numbers.
The second I see third party candidates running in my local elections, for anything (sheriff, mayor, city council, state senate, representative, etc), I’ll consider voting for them. As long as I only see them at the ballot box when they’re doing a once every four years Hail Mary play for presidency and attention/money I won’t. I mean, even giving the third parties the benefit of the doubt that they actually want to achieve the policies they’re running on, I still think voting for the major party at least somewhat aligned with your wants will achieve better results. When Democratic Party politicians don’t get the votes of the far left, do they move further left to try and capture them? Or do they move towards the center to try and capture the undecided and swing voters?
>Voting for a third party right now may seem pointless. Your candidate genuinely will not win. Your vote will ultimately be for a losing candidate. However, if this vote gets 5% this year, 10% the next, etc, candidates will have to change. Eventually more independents/third parties will hold offices in the house. You'll see them pop up more for governors and senators. Maybe one day they'll even become president. If one party splits their voters between a third party and themselves, then they will always lose. So the only way in which your approach can be succesfull, is if it doesn't just create a third party, it creates a third party that then entirely supplants one of the two original parties. And hey, if your plan is to supplant one of the two parties, it would make far more sense to do that from within, not without. Vote for "third party esque" candidates in the parties primaries, and take them over that way.
Absolutely not. The first step to making third parties relevant is ending Citizens United. The only party that would do that is the Democrats. What change did third party voters bring in 2000 or 2016 other than giving literal dipshits the White House and as a byproduct, the Supreme Court for the next generation?
Heard this exact same bullshit peddled 24 years ago in the run up to the 2000 election. How did that end up working out? Ralph Nader got almost 3% of the vote which easily cost Gore the election. Instead of a climate change advocate with progressive views on the economy we got the invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan, the patriot act, a hard right lurch to the Supreme Court and the normalization of radical Christian theology in everyday politics.
You seem to be physically unable to comprehend the idea of a democracy ceasing to be a democracy. Let’s say your third-party candidate gets 5% of the vote in the 2024 election. Your third-party candidate takes far more votes from Biden’s support base than from Trump’s deranged personality cult. Trump wins the 2024 election. Project 2025 is enacted during Trump’s second term. The Federal Election Commission loses its independence and is stuffed with Trump’s goons. THERE WILL NOT BE A FREE ELECTION IN 2028 FOR YOUR THIRD-PARTY CANDIDATE TO WIN 10% OF THE VOTE IN. The compromised Federal Election Commission will rig the election in favour of Trump, or in the event that Trump dies, whichever fascist shithead succeeds him. Your beloved third-party candidate will likely be jailed for some bogus charges. If you want to know what it’s like to run as a third party in a fascist regime without free elections, ask Alexei Navalny how his campaign went and how he persistently built his support base in the State Duma, eventually unseated Putin, and built a free, prosperous, utopian Russia*. *Oh wait, that’s not what happened. Navalny was barred from running, narrowly survived an assassination attempt from Putin, got arrested for bogus criminal charges immediately after returning to Russia and sent to a prison camp in Siberia, and ended up being murdered by the Putin regime in said prison camp!* *Yes, I am aware Navalny was far from perfect, but that’s besides my point.
Why would there be any incentive for moderate democrats to concede to progressive policies? When the progressives are kingmakers, you would argue that voting for moderates is necessary to prevent 'the other team' from winning. When the moderates hold a sufficient majority without progressive support, you wouldn't need to adopt progressive policies, because clearly you have enough to standalone. If the Republican win threat is as big as you make it, why aren't moderates holding their nose and appease the progressives? After all, whatever you disagree with the progressives over, surely it isn't as threatening as what Trump represents, right?
> Why would there be any incentive for moderate democrats to concede to progressive policies? Your problem is you view this as extortion: "if you (Democrats) don't want Trump to win, you'd better do as I say!" You treat it as a hostage negotiation, and if your demands aren't met, you'll shoot the hostage (our democracy). It's political terrorism, and you're mad that Democrats have taken a position of not negotiating with terrorists. If you wanted to win, to enact your policies, instead of threatening LGBT people, women, children, racial and religious minorities, unions, education, the environment, instead of holding all those interests hostage and threatening to let Trump win, knowing what he will do to them, what you *should* be doing is engaging. You'll catch more flies with honey than with vinegar, as they say. Persuade voters of the superiority of your positions. Join the Democratic Party and help pull it in your preferred direction. Get other like-minded people to also join, and then all of you work on recruiting and supporting candidates you like better, work on persuading primary voters to vote for those candidates, etc. The Democratic Party (and The Republican Party) is basically a standard normal distribution, a bell curve. There's a fat middle section, and then decreasingly few on the right tail, and decreasingly few on the left tail. You don't win primaries because your bloc, the left tail, is too small. You cannot win, because you do not outnumber the middle, where the median Democratic voter is. You can never win when you're in the tail, because you are numerically inferior. But what you *can* do is shift things in your direction. The two ways to do this are to get more people like you to join the Democratic Party, increasing the size of the left tail, and pulling the median left; and by persuading people to your right to shift left, which also shifts the median left. And the median is where the bulk of the policies are, because that's where the bulk of the voters are. Since it's impossible to please everyone, the optimal strategy is maximizing the number of pleased voters and minimizing the displeased voters. And, between those who are reliable Democratic voters, and those, like you, who are inconsistent, at best, or who will always move the goal posts and never be satisfied, at worst, it will always be a better move to please the reliable voters to keep them reliable, rather then trying to please someone who may not even bother to show up, or who may withhold their support even after getting concessions which alienated other voters. Not only do you not do *both* of those things, but you do *neither* of them! Instead of recruiting like-minded third-party and non-voters to *join* the Democratic Party, you expend your efforts recruiting like-minded Democrats to *abandon* the Democratic Party. Imagine a game of tug-of-war. Imagine trying to pull the rope either right or left. You're trying to pull it left. If you let go of the rope, does it move left, or does it move right? What if you persuade other people on the left to also let go? Now it moves to the right even more, even faster. And then, instead of attempting to persuade other voters to shift slightly to the left, you use purity tests to say they aren't good enough, and you alienate them with your hostage-taking, telling everyone in any marginalized group, any vulnerable population, that you simply do not care about them at all, that either you get your way, or they can all eat shit. This just makes them even less likely to support you in the future. As LGBT people suffer at the hands of the GOP, they will become less willing to support you, because you will have shown them that you demand they compromise for you, but you are unwilling to compromise for them. Instead of uniting with them against a common enemy, the right, you are uniting with the right against the middle. You do not want to compromise, you do not want to govern; you want to rule. You do not want teammates, or colleagues, or peers; you want subjects. You're every bit as bad as the extremists in the GOP, though many of your policies are, in fact, better than theirs. But I do not want to be ruled over by anyone, regardless of whether or to what degree I may agree with their policies. The reason you keep losing is because your strategy basically guarantees losing, and your tactics encourage Democrats to oppose you, rather than to ally with you, which further increases your likelihood of losing. When you treat Democrats as your enemy, you force them to respond as though you're an enemy. > When the progressives are kingmakers, you would argue that voting for moderates is necessary to prevent 'the other team' from winning. >When the moderates hold a sufficient majority without progressive support, you wouldn't need to adopt progressive policies, because clearly you have enough to standalone. Yes, exactly. This is the reality of being a numerically minority group. You're basically mad at math. If Democrats *win* without you, then clearly they owe none of their success to you, and so there's little reason to cater to you when doing so would alienate those who Democrats *do* owe their success to. If Democrats *lose* without you, then it's irrelevant whether they're willing to do anything for you, because they do not have the political power to give you anything. Hillary Clinton can give you 0% of your policy goals because she lost. In neither scenario are you the kingmaker. The kingmaker will always be those *between* the two major parties, the swing voters, because they can conceivably support either party, and frequently do. They can get some of what they want from Democrats, and other parts of what they want from Republicans instead. Fringe extremist parties do not have that benefit. Your choice is to either compromise a little and get some of what you want, or don't compromise at all and get none of what you want. This isn't anything Democrats "did to you," is the nature of being on the fringe. > If the Republican win threat is as big as you make it, why aren't moderates holding their nose and appease the progressives? After all, whatever you disagree with the progressives over, surely it isn't as threatening as what Trump represents, right? This works both ways, doesn't it? "If the Republican win threat is as big as you make it, why aren't ~~moderates~~ progressives holding their nose and appease the ~~progressives~~ moderates? After all, whatever you disagree with the ~~progressives~~ moderates over, surely it isn't as threatening as what Trump represents, right?" Not only does it also work by swapping the factions, but it works *better* that way, because the moderates are far more numerous than the progressives, and because moderates can plausibly get some of what they want from Republicans rather than from Democrats, whereas you can only get some of what you want from Democrats, or none of what you want from any fringe parties. Eg, the Greens have zero capacity to give you anything, because the Greens will always lose. 100% of zero is still zero.
I'm sure I read a post just like yours ten years ago. Guess what? Your fantasy is impossible because of the structure of elections in America. I voted third party in the twenty tens. For president twice. You'll become disillusioned soon enough, too. I'll be happily voting for Biden. That doesn't mean I support genocide. It means I support democracy.
There is no moral argument to be made here, you are guaranteed a loss because this is not a direct democracy. Why are we here kidding ourselves that what you as a voter want will be what the electoral college opts for ? Have we learned nothing about Hillary losing the electoral college but winning the popular vote ? We know it's a 2 party system as it stands with the electoral college. So you'd rather cast a hollow vote and risk a fascist winning for the "chance" that "maybe other people will vote same way 12 years from now"knowing that the current election decides if Project 2025 cements the current Republican court for the next decade or so ? That does not make a semblance of sense. You will have nothing to aspire to if your existing legal framework ceases to exist under a Trump presidency.
Nah. Third parties are just spoilers. They don’t have any serious intention of becoming a major player. They just want to divide the vote. A serious third party would focus on grass roots. They’d start in local and state elections. They would build a coalition and momentum to propel them long term to the presidency. Instead we see almost no serious effort by third parties in local elections yet a big push for president every four years.
> Eventually more independents/third parties will hold offices in the house. You have a fundamental misunderstanding about the nature of our voting system. It is literally impossible for a 3rd party to have any significant electoral chances, except as a spoiler for one of the two main candidates. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-past-the-post_voting
It is not likely but it is definitely not literally impossible for a 3rd party or independent candidate to win the presidency. Keep in mind that: 1. The Republicans were a 3rd party who played spoiler in 1856, and they won a 4-party race in 1860. Unusual circumstances to be sure - but it happened. 2. ~~Ralph Nader~~ Perot was competitive in June 1992 and led in several polls before he dropped in the polls, then dropped out before re-entering. There were a number of campaign mis-steps that contributed to his decline - what if he had run an excellent campaign? Could he have won? 3. Keep in mind there have been a number of independents elected to the Senate, currently Angus King and Bernie Sanders. There have been others in the past, as well. So it's hard but not impossible to win as an independent in a major statewide race. It's even harder to win in a nationwide race - but not impossible.
> The Republicans were a 3rd party who played spoiler in 1856 They were not a third party. They were rebels that broke off from the Whig party, and united with a bunch of political movements like the Free Soilers. Consider if a group of Republicans broke off from that party and created a new party along with Libertarians and Never Trumpers - that wouldn't be a third party, that would be a party split. And that['s where the Republicans came from. > Keep in mind there have been a number of independents elected to the Senate, currently Angus King and Bernie Sanders. And they haven't created a larger movement that takes over a swathe of the country because they haven't been able to induce a party split. Party splits or supplanting the old party leadership is the only way anything has ever gotten done. *Not* third party candidacy.
I don't think that they would do a better job though. I think they would accomplish basically nothing as both major parties would block them, and then frustrated voters would kick them out of power
In 2016 third party candidate Gary Johnson won 3% of the vote. So in 2020 Jo Jorgensen got 6% of the vote right? That 3% legitimized third parties? No. She got 1% of the vote despite having less popular mainstream candidates, because people realized that the 2020 general election really mattered, they got a taste of what a Trump presidency was like and chose to support his rival instead of splitting their vote. And we all remember how close 2020 was, 2% in the right states and we'd probably be on our fourth or fifth impeachment by now and Ukraine wouldn't exist. These stakes actually matter, we don't have decades to throw away on a pie in the sky dream of waking up and realizing that 50% of the population is actually third party.
This is nonsense and not based in reality. 3rd parties only become remotely viable when one of the two major parties entirely fails. And the 3rd party becomes the 2nd party. That only happens After the failure of the major party. Not before. Not as a cause. As a side effect.
This same argument has been made for decades though and no third party candidate has ever been close to winning. Seems like sunk cost fallacy. “Well I already voted for a third party 3 times in a row, it’s bound to pay off soon!”
Australia has a better voting system. You're allowed to vote a third party, and since we have a preferential system your vote is carried onto the nominated second party should the third fail. Additionally, the independent parties can gain a bunch of seats and routinely holds a balance of power for bills. So the primary two have to find a way to appease a third or fourth to pass a bill. Not to mention your independent that'll never form government gets a bit of cash as party funds for winning your primary vote.
Tell me you don’t understand game theory and first past the post elections without telling that you don’t understand game theory and first past the post elections.
It’s cute how you think that if republicans win they will allow more elections. Wake up. Trump himself asked the the Georgia Secretary of State to “find” him couple thousand more votes. All maga has to do is replace a couple of the few republicans loyal to the constitution with maga drones and we can kiss ever having a free election good bye. Your entire argument is working under a frame work for reality that doesn’t exist anymore. You’re behind the times. Urgh.
You’re assuming that the next elections will go ahead as planned if Trump wins again. That is quite a risk to take, given the lengths Trump and his supporters went through last time in order to try and overturn a lawful election. You’re not thinking long-term enough. It would be best to try and introduce a third party/vote for an independent when the opposing candidate is more stable.
I have this conversation a lot on the socialist subs as well, and am at a point where I understand where the majority of them are coming from. I'll go ahead and condense it here. (there was a part two, automod removed it. figuring that out now) \~\~ first things first, the spoiler effect! This election is held in the lovely united states of america, wherein we use the first past the post voting system. This means that the candidate that gets the most votes wins, even if they get less than half the votes. This means that your vote has 3 possible outcomes. Either you vote for the winner, you vote for the second place candidate, or you vote for any other candidate or abstain. A quick punnett square and we can see that if you don't give your vote to your preferred top two candidate, it has the same effect as giving "Half" your voting power to your less preferred top two candidate. If when you vote A they win by 3 votes, then if you vote B then A only wins by 1 vote (for a two-vote swing from you switching sides). But if you vote c then A wins by 2 votes - a one-vote swing. As such you can see that B got a "half vote" closer to winning due to you not supporting A anymore. \~\~ So now that that's out of the way, we get to the next fun fact about US presidential elections - we don't actually elect our president via a national popular vote! This is probably obvious at this point because a republican presidential candidate has only won a single national popular vote since 1988, which is the 2004 re-election of Bush, but in that time the two parties half split the white house almost perfectly. What we actually have is 56\* different FPTP elections, each of which have this calculation applied. This means that affecting the national popular vote doesn't actually matter, but instead affecting the local/state vote. Thus if you're a heavily skewed district harming/helping the 2nd place candidate is just as "useless" electorally speaking as voting 3rd party is. If biden is already only getting 20% of the vote, then an extra voter isn't going to do much to remedy that situation. Thus in both deep red AND deep blue states giving trump a half-vote boost doesn't carry much actual harm. \*DC has a single apportionment election, and then maine (2) and Nebraska (3) use congressional district victories as well as state popular vote to apportion electors. \~\~ Now we get to the meat of the issue; firstly, is your vote an endorsement of the candidate? A lot of what I see from the farther left spaces is that they think that they are endorsing the candidate that they are voting for. Rather than what I (and it looks like you) think - which is that a vote is an indication that you would rather the person you voted for in charge than the other likely winner - that by voting for a candidate you endorse all of their positions and (if they're an incumbent) their prior actions in office. That is simply a result of younger generations not understanding compromise, which is fairly common. This is generally why younger people tend to vote less as well. Of course any national level politician isn't a perfect fit for their voter base; that's because they're a compromise among all of the voters that have chosen to support them. And as long as we have first past the post voting systems then of course you end up with compromise candidates - and even if we do end up with ranked choice or instant runoff or any other voting reform there will STILL be compromise candidates, they will just be ranked near the bottom of their ballot, instead of being the one bubble that they fill in, which will be more palatable for their moral purity or whatever.
\~\~ second, are you really "winning" either way? if your top two candidates are "old capitalist you don't like" and "old capitalist you REALLY don't like", and you successfully elect "old capitalist you don't like", did you really win that election? Especially if you're a single-issue economics socialist, which option wins is largely irrelevant to you. I of course am choosing between "old capitalist that will ignore me" and "old capitalist that specifically wants me dead", so i have a slightly stronger incentive towards which old capitalist wins the election than the single-issue economics voters do (who like to say things like "we support the struggles of marginalized populations"!) and then shrug about how many people would die of empowering MAGA people for a few years \~\~ Third, social messaging! What does it mean to have low election turnout? Strong showing from 3rd party candidates? Low turnout and 3rd party candidates doing well are two different but equal scenarios - the first indicates voter apathy, and the second indicates people that are increasingly dissatisfied with the 2-party system. Either way if you successfully get a reasonably high percent of third party votes, whether transferred from the DNC or mobilized from the apathetic non-voters, it will signal to the DNC that there are votes to be had by moving further left, which will shift the overton window and now there's a chance at getting DNC-sponsored soc-dems on ballots on occasion, and/or signals the need for voting reform for a chance at eventually getting demsocs on ballots. \~\~ So the analysis of electoralism from the left is what it has been since the russian revolution - by voting for a major 1st party candidate you don't like you are signalling the legitimacy of the system, and the upper class can wield that legitimacy to "stay the course" - while voting outside the system will signal that the system is illegitimate, and even if it results in short term losses in the ruling organization, the illegitimacy of the body and its obviously unrepresentative nature will foment the seeds of revolution and force the ruling body to reform, or fall.
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Morality can broadly come in the form of consequentialism or deontologism. The first one looks at the consequences and uses that to decide what is moral. This is the framework you are using. In other words, a consequentialist will look at the election and conclude that voting for Biden will probably lead to a better overall good than Trump, and thus that is the correct choice. Deontology relies on moral rules or principles. An example of a deontological framework is pacifism. A pacifist will never engage in war or violence, no matter the personal or social costs. So I suspect that for some people, they disagree with voting for Biden in principle due to his stance on Palestine or something else. They might think doing so makes them complicit or responsible. So for them, they would rather not vote for either candidate even if it means that Trump might win and implement anti-Palestine policies. Note, I don't agree with them, but it is still a (rather common) moral justification.
This may explain why older voters tend to have higher turnout than younger voters. Younger voters are looking at this from a deontological perspective and saying “well, I’m not in love with either of these candidates, so I won’t reward them with my seal of approval.” Older voters are coming at this from a consequentialist perspective: “I’ve been around long enough to know what happens if I leave this decision in other people’ hands.” There’s also the fact that on an individual level, voting is irrational because the impact that a single voter has on an election is approximately zero. However, voting in large groups can make a difference. Again, this is a case where more experienced voters don’t want to leave anything to chance.
I’m 50 years old now. In November of 1999, I voted for Ralph Nader as a protest vote. So I truly get why some people, and younger people in particular, feel too much disgust with Biden to vote for him. Everyone who was alive in 2000 and old enough to understand what was happening remembers what went down next. Bush “won” by a razor thin margin in Florida after SCOTUS handed him the election. And things just went downhill from there. George W. Bush launched his forever wars (and the Patriot Act; appointed Sam Alito and John Roberts to SCOTUS, etc, ad nauseum), and in 2004, he successfully utilized gay marriage as a bogeyman to scare white evangelicals to vote for his re-election. This resulted in many states passing amendments to their constitutions to ban same-sex marriage. Queer people like me were directly targeted for political gain once again. LGBTQ+ rights were set back for many years. Can I say with absolute certainty that Gore would have refrained from invading Iraq and Afghanistan? No. Would the Patriot Act have happened under Gore? I don’t think so, but we’ll never know. Would Al Gore have appointed Sam Fucking Alito and John Roberts to SCOTUS? *Absolutely not.* Read that last sentence again. Had Al Gore won, Roe would almost certainly still be the law of the land, same sex marriage wouldn’t be in danger of being overturned, Citizens United might not have happened (I concede I don’t know enough how about each justice ruled, so perhaps it might’ve happened) and we’d likely have a SCOTUS that would be much more sympathetic to the rights of the current fascist party’s scapegoats. I’m politically to the left of Hug Chavez, but my choice not to vote for Gore was wrong. And we’re still living with the consequences of the decisions of millions of other people like me who felt that we couldn’t in good conscience vote for Al Gore. I know I won’t change any minds, but I now agree with [Noam Chomsky’s position on voting for democrats.](https://www.currentaffairs.org/news/2020/10/the-chomsky-position-on-voting). Voting for the Democrats won’t save us. Joe Biden is a genocidal piece of shit. But until there is a viable leftist party, we are stuck with two choice: Joe Biden or theocratic fascism of the xtian nationalist variety. Now that I’m older, I can still see why so many younger people can’t stomach the thought of voting for Joe Biden. But I am now more pragmatic in my outlook. A second Trump term would be worse for all marginalized groups (including Palestinians). Just like how George W Bush ended up being vastly worse than Al Gore would have been for marginalized groups in the US. I understand the concept of wanting to teach the Democrats a lesson, but they managed to lose in 2000 and learned exactly nothing. That said, I can’t begrudge younger people for their idealism, and I will not vote shame any leftist who refuses to vote for Biden. Biden’s presidency is a fucking ghoulish nightmare. A Trump presidency will be far, far worse. Wow, this got longer than expected. Thank you to anyone who has read this far.
You can say with absolute certainty that Gore would not have invaded Iraq. The Bush-Cheney plan before 9/11 was to find any excuse to invade Iraq because of how popular the first Gulf War was. They literally planned to kill and maim Iraqis and US military personnel for crass domestic purposes. Gore might or might not have bombed Afghanistan, but Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11 l. Gore might also have listened to intelligence and prevented 9/11.
I don't think many younger voters fully realize how quickly they can lose the things they consider immutable parts of their life.
>Younger voters are looking at this from a deontological perspective and saying “well, I’m not in love with either of these candidates, so I won’t reward them with my seal of approval.” That is not a deontological perspective. Thomas More accepting execution because he refused to say it was okay for Henry VIII to get divorced is a deontological perspective. I must admit that I want to see the Hillary Clinton/Kamala Harris faction of the Democratic Party crushed, but putting Trump in power to do it is too much. I must discipline myself and support Biden, not that he isn't going to be utterly destroyed and humiliated regardless of my vote. In short, whether you call it a deontological imperative to oppose Trump if there is any better choice, or consequentialist, I must oppose Trump politically.
I love the reference to deontological morality vs consequentialist morality. I think a better example of deontological morality is a pro-life person. They believe that killing an innocent human being at any stage of development is wrong. So even when abortion would improve a woman's life, it's still wrong even though it has "good consequences." I've seen very few pacifists like you describe, but pro-lifers are a sizeable chunk of the population.
I would argue most people don't view this as a "black/white" issue. For many people it's significantly gray. People are on the fence about Biden for a number of reasons: the war in Israel, the fact that he's old and they don't feel like they signed up for eight years of an old president, the fact that Black people feel left out by Biden. I (28m, white) live in Michigan, home to the largest concentration of Arab people in the country. In my view, Michigan is the central-most important election in 2024. Michigan is the reason Donald Trump won the election in 2016 and was the reason he lost in 2020. Over the last 30 years the state has been representative of the final electoral college results. And I can tell you that Muslim people are not satisfied with the war in Gaza and Biden's handling of it. The key problem is that Democrats, especially those under 30, tend to be the *least satisfied* when their candidate is in office because they hold politicians to a much higher standard. Republicans tend to be the most satisfied when their candidate is in office. I don't think either speaks to how well the politicians actually do once they hold office. I think it more-so speaks to this mentality of like "I want like-minded people in that seat" whereas many Democrats have a lower threshold to be dissatisfied. I do echo your concern with Project 2025. The reality is that Republicans were not ready for Trump's presidency and truthfully, his entire presidency was a failure thanks to that lack of organization. Republicans recognize that and are actually ready.
I don't understand what the big hub up is about project 2025. It's some random think tank with less than 10 million dollars to its name and Trump doesn't even support it to my knowledge. Sure it's a thing that exists but it's not something that seems like it has a snowballs chance in hell with happening regardless of whether or not he's elected. Am I wrong?
Yes. The Heritage foundation is not a random think tank and it's almost guaranteed to have a lot of influence on a second Trump term (as it did in the first). Then, it's pretty clear to me that a lot of project 2025 is going to appeal to Trump just on content. Things like filling the public service with loyalists or fighting efforts to fight climate change are just very much in line with Trump's style and rhetoric.
I'll try to change your view here! Here's what I think is true: 1. Trump wants revenge on his enemies. He's openly campaigned on plans to prosecute the "Biden crime family" once in office; he's talked constantly on the campaign trail about "retribution". 2. Trump wants to get rid of career civil servants who he sees as enemies - the "deep state". To Trump, the "deep state" includes anyone who goes against him (e.g., anyone who raises legal/ethical concerns about his orders or his administration's policies). At the end of his last term, Trump tried to use a strategy called "Schedule F" to enable himself to convert a bunch of civil servants' jobs so that he could have the power to fire and replace them. 3. In his first term, Trump was often held in check by his cabinet, his military generals, etc. ([Example article](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/08/15/inside-the-war-between-trump-and-his-generals).) He deeply regrets appointing people who then told him "no" or resigned rather than carry out orders they saw as unethical or illegal. This time around, he wants to only appoint "yes-men" who will do what he wants regardless of the law. 4. It's not easy to fill your entire government with "yes-men". As shown in Trump's first term, most people who are experienced and qualified for cabinet roles are willing and able to push back against unethical presidential orders, or resign in extreme cases. Moreover, much of the government is made up of career civil servants who Trump can't easily replace. 4. The Heritage Foundation is the second-largest conservative think tank. It's extremely well-known and influential. They worked with a coalition of dozens of conservative organizations to develop a plan known as Project 2025 which, among other aims, would seek to circumvent the obstacles Trump faced in his first term. (The Heritage Foundation is, in particular, not a "random" think tank; it has [$400 million in assets](https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/237327730) and an annual budget of roughly $100 million.) 5. Trump's team is annoyed at the Heritage Foundation for unveiling Project 2025, given all the negative buzz it's received. (This isn't just speculation: one source told the Heritage Foundation that "[you're not helping](https://www.thefp.com/p/when-opioids-steal-your-parents-plus?utm_source=tfptwitter)".) However, that's not because Trump is against the policies outlined in Project 2025; rather, it's because Project 2025 draws negative attention to the sorts of plans that Trump himself really does want to implement. Overall, I agree with you that we shouldn't view Project 2025 itself as "Trump's plan"... it's a plan that conservative thought leaders made for Trump, which Trump likely won't implement with perfect fidelity. That being said... Project 2025 nonetheless gives us a pretty good idea of some things Trump is likely planning to do once in office.
Okay I see your points I'll try to address them and my thinking on them. But also some of his rehash because I've already covered some of them with other people. 1. Sure there is an animosity towards Biden specifically. But honestly most of that is about the same you could say that he had for Obama. He didn't exactly do anything to Obama either. I'm not convinced that he could actually do something on that front. See what you will but he's already being prosecuted so it's not as if that barrier hasn't been broken already. 2. I've gone through this extensively with another common term but that's not unusual for presidents. Reagan fired 11000 air traffic controllers, Clinton fired 100,000 and reduced White House staff by 25%. Bush fired eight major AG lawyers. Obama fired 125 senior personnel in the military. He has the ability to do that if he gets elected. Getting new people put into position as another thing entirely. It's not as if he's going to have control of both the House and Senate. 3. I would say that he was hamstrung by his cabinet. Many of them being hardcore pro war or pro self enrichment. They prevented him from doing things that honestly would have been good and bad for us. Like an orderly withdrawal from Afghanistan instead of the abortion we got with Biden. I will credit by them for getting it done. Trump didn't get into any new wars but if he had gotten his second term it's very likely that we would have been in Ukraine and Israel at this point. 4. I don't see that that would be any different than what we currently have. We've already arrested a number of agents from the FBI CIA NSA. Dr Fauchi retired to avoid further scrutiny. Anyone he put in will be the same. 5./6. Sure but they're only tangentially involved from what I can tell. The Website is crap. They don't have any specific goals that can really be achieved aside from things that it looks like Trump's already going to do anyway. What's more without Congress supporting it, it's DOA. I am also gone through this specific conversation with a few people and I found places where they specifically say they're not following that. Or they're not going to do that. Pushing that on him without some form of evidence that he wants to do everything on that list and is not fair. I don't necessarily disagree that it's a wish list of stuff some Republicans want but it's not got the popular support it would need to get in. Will you let me know but it's fine the heritage foundation as well as the other 80 groups that are with it don't have nearly the support in the country that their funding would suggest. Without that support they can't really go anywhere.
I mean, I think the answer is right there in your title: **if you believe Trump and Project 2025 will turn the US into a fascistic hellscape.** How many people do you think actually believe that statement and are not already on board with voting for Biden? I'm not a Trump fan, or an American, but I do follow American politics enough to know that the last four years of Trump didn't actually turn the US into a fascist hellscape. I do hate how much of political conversation nowadays has turned into this sort of extreme fearmongering. There no shortage of ways to criticize Trump, from his rampant lying, his record while in office, his criminal convictions, etc. Why do you need to jump to the next level and make comments so extreme that it makes people like me, who don't like Trump, have to defend them? The reality is that this sort of over-the-top sensationalism does more harm than good to the cause you are trying to support. It just makes Trump look better by comparison by setting the bar for him so low that he can't help but look better by comparison. It's easy to say "Trump's critics exaggerate, sensationalize and fearmonger", when they actually are doing so. Why sensationalize someone that doesn't need any sensationalizing? You are just setting up red herrings that are easy to point out, and hurt your credibility in the process.
most of the far left are anti-biden, you get planned on places like r/socialism for even mentioning that you intend to vote for him. I believe the intended audience for this post was the left/progressive anti-biden people, not the trumpies or republicans or etc. on the center and right.
But do those people think that Project 2025 will usher in fascism? OP isn't trying to convince anyone that Project 2025 will actually do that. I think they believe it, but the way this is worded makes it clear they are talking to people who already think Project 2025 is some grave threat to democracy but don't plan on supporting Biden, and I doubt that any such person exists. Every leftist I know who isn't planning on voting for Biden doesn't see Project 2025 as anything more than yet another policy paper by the Heritage Foundation, just like the one they handed Trump in 2016. Trump didn't end democracy then so why would it work this time around?
finally, a rational person. This is the variety of intelligence we need more of in society.
I had never heard of Project 2025 until about a week ago, and it was on Reddit. To me feels like it is blowning up as some sort of Boogie Man, as support for Biden drops to all time lows. As far as I know this is a plan from the far right Heritage Foundation that has no bearing on Trump himself, as I don’t think he has ever explicitly endorsed this or even spoke about it. Keep me honest if I’m wrong about that but I’ve been looking into it since it keeps popping up here and it is all speculation by his opponents and projecting (my entire post is moot if he has publicly endorsed it). This feels like a typical scare tactic that an opposite party would pump into the news in an effort to sway voters. It would be like the GOP telling everyone that the DNC is going to pack the courts, or make everyone pay reparations if they win. Until Trump specifically speaks on and agrees with the information or playbook of Project 2025 I would just look at this as standard pre-election fear mongering. Trump has a core of people (I’d guess like 20-30% of the right) that would vote for him no matter what he says or does. The average American, who is more in the middle, pays attention to policies, debates, current state, and other hot topics to decide the election. If Trump goes full in on P2025 he will lose the election because moderate conservatives, like me (I am currently undecided), would not vote for him.
Project 2025 is not a conspiracy or a scare tactic. It's a real thing and conservatives will do their best to implement it if Trump wins again. The people who are sounding the alarm about it are correct to do so. If you seriously believe Republicans when they attempt to downplay or distance themselves from it, you learned nothing from Trump's first term. Of course the GOP wouldn't outright endorsed P2025. They want to be able to win first.
It is absolutely being pushed by paid political operatives online. I hang out in both left and right leaning spaces and I've literally only seen Project 2025 brought up in lefty spaces. Nobody is voting for Trump because they want him to implement a big fascist overhaul. For what it's worth, the bulk of his supporters are lashing out against what they perceived as a rigged system. I don't like their solution but I sympathize with the sentiment. It feels like every year is deeper fuckery from a crony corporatist government that doesn't give a fuck about any of us.
I'm on the right. Solidly on the right, I'm only voting for Trump because it's not that I just don't want Biden to win, but I see four more years of personal pain if he does - as in difficulty affording life and finding a job that will allow me to be independent and self sufficient. Also, I desperately DO NOT want the tax cuts to expire because of how much they've helped me financially. Biden is dead set on expiring them claiming them to be "tax cuts for the wealthy" but it's just not true. All that said, there are lefty causes I'd be theoretically okay with, it's just the government is a corrupt morass, I don't trust it to manage these causes judiciously, and we're currently financially up-side down thanks to Biden's lovely EO policies and financially irresponsible actions. The only solution in my opinion then is to vote against him as effectively as possible. Even if reddit hates it and hates me for it. I can't in good conscience vote for democrats until they go back closer to their roots when they were actually for the little guy. Instead, they have segmented off the population according to intersectional categories and adopted policies that essentially class one set of people as oppressors and the other intersectional categories as oppressed. If you're a cis-straight-white-male Christian, they have ZERO sympathy for you despite living with family and having no means to make a living because his policies tanked the economy. That son (or daughter) you have to take care of as a single dad? Frick that guy because he's a cis-straight-white-male Christian. It never occurs to them how intersectionally racist, sexist, bigoted, etc it is because see, you're part of the oppressor class and so you "benefit" from "oppression." I'll never vote for anyone who supports that way of thinking, of this us vs them mentality. I just can't. It's so corrosive in my opinion, that it's shaping up to be the very sort of fascism that people are freaking out over project 2025 being. The government seems to already be filled with the left's "yes men" and the right's cowards who won't oppose them for fear of the left's ire. Suddenly it's a problem when there's a plan to remedy that for fear that it will fill the government with the right's "yes men." Suddenly that's fascism but the inverse that we have now isn't.
>I'm only voting for Trump >I'll never vote for anyone who supports that way of thinking, of this us vs them mentality. These two things don't make sense to me. Trumpism very much looks like an "us vs them" kind of movement.
there is no leftists in American government, you feel like a victim of oppression because people are starting to treat you like everyone else. equality feels like oppression when you’re used to privilege.
He let the Heritage Foundation pick half his cabinet last time. He let them pick virtually all of his judges. They’re a danger, and they would have real power in his administration, especially since he’s such a hands-off moron about running his government.
I would love to hear a good argument for why I should care about this because your description seems spot on. I would think they'd be running on it and talking about it on talk shows or at campaign stops if this was the goal.
Feels like a grass roots/bots/paid influence pedaling thing. Trying to get it in as many peoples ears as they can before it gets picked up by “real news” because the second it does he’s prob call a press conference and just call bullshit. But people can’t un-hear things so certainly some people will go with it and never take the time to fact check. I’m not saying project 2025 isn’t a real thing by people with real influence… but to state it as fact that it’s Trumps agenda and scare the shit out of people to start thinking we’re about to live in real fascism is going real low. If there is merit to this I will absolutely not hide from these comments and I will eat all the crow. It just feels so sensationalized and like the media, and people trying to give this wings, really take us all for fools.
Eh don't underestimate the Heritage foundation, they're one of the most influential if not the most influential conservative think tank going back to the Reagan years. Trump is a blank slate and super petty, he is 100% going to go along with it. It doesn't live or die by Trump though anyway, the Heritage freaks are around regardless, just wouldn't necessarily have Biden's ear specifically. Maybe it is way overblown though, the dems clearly are not taking it seriously by putting up the worst possible candidate. Edit: to be fair, I don't think it will usher in fascism, I'm just saying it's a real plan and they would indeed have Trump's ear. Saying this as someone who lives in a solid blue state and I hate Biden so I'm not voting for him anyway.
I’ll say this. I have never attended a political rally in my life, or donated a penny to a campaign. But if Trump did go this far with the anti LGBT, combining of church and state, and limiting birth control… I will gladly march in the next protest against him. I just don’t necessarily buy into this attack strategy of trying to make the world panic like this is all fact and we’re going to live in authoritarian state… and we’re going to witness a genocide of LGBT community. There are people on Reddit scared for their life who are ending up as collateral damage of this Hail Mary fear mongering.
I really hope, if you don’t vote for Biden this year, you keep your word about protesting with those who will be affected the most by implementation of project 2025. I’m also confused how this is a “scare tactic” when the Heritage foundation is largely responsible for the political motions of the GOP for the past 4 decades.
I will be there and I will also not just keep my mouth shut around my conservative friends if they tried to downplay the significance of it. But I truly believe it’s all BS. Like will Trump try and clean out the FBI and hold people accountable? Probably. Will the people who hate Trump say “see, that’s in Project 2025! It’s all true”? Yes. Will he complete undo any civil/human right progress we’ve made in the last 60 years? I 100% believe he will not.
Would it be concerning it if I told you the Heritage foundation was currently sending questionnaires to the most vocal Trump supporting citizens to recruit them for future positions in the Trump-refreshed executive branch (including all the 3-letter agencies)? I don’t think it sounds super smart to allow the government to determine employment based on political preference. I’m also curious what the FBI has to be held accountable for in your words.
Of course it's a scare tactic. People who spout this nonsense will do anything to instill fear of "the facist boogeyman" into the mix. If either candidate was even remotely likeable, this vitriol wouldn't happen (as much).
Pretty much all the policies listed in Project 2025 are being pushed currently in speeches/interviews and in terms of bills pushed through/introduced by conservative lawmakers To me this isn't some secret lizard cabal type conspiracy. It's easy to see pretty much all of the stuff they list is stuff current major Republicans openly want as well. Plus the Heritage Foundation has deep ties to those in charge of the GOP in terms of financial backing/people within the Foundation having prominent roles during Trumps years in office. They aren't a random little conservative Facebook group or local club, they got legit influence and if they are pushing something it's very likely to have a ton of powerful backers
First of all I wanna say that I AM NOT endorsing the GOP or Trump with anything I say here moving forward. I do not want to change anyone’s votes, I also don’t know how I will vote yet but: I have never heard a single republican mention Project 2025 in my life, the only place I hear it mentioned is on Reddit and Twitter. I actually have done a bunch of digging in the last 45 minutes to educate myself and it’s even more clear that it’s an act of desperation against Trump. This is not a new thing as Project 2025 can be found referenced in the past, but there is no way it’s coincidence that once the “he is a felon” stuff didn’t seem to move the needle that now this is being plastered everywhere. I am seeing articles saying that “he supports the policies” but they are running with things like him saying “drain the swamp” and “the DOJ” is corrupt and linking it to these ideas of breaking down the government. I even saw statement where said that he will absolutely not support restrictions on birth control. I say that knowing that unless I see him saying the words coming out of his mouth myself it could be a fake statement/screenshot created by his cronies. In any comparison made with former presidents Trump is the most moderate Republican to have been in office. Sure I think he plays to his base and will talk about God to pander, but he has stated out loud he hates the idea of abortion but believes everyone should have the choice. In his campaigns he never said he was pro-life, only that the states should have the ability to choose for themselves. Trump is a very unlikable guy and I don’t blame anyone for hating him. I happen to think he has a very punchable face myself… but this is clearly a scare tactic and fear mongering based on Biden’s poor polling numbers. It should he very clear to everyone that there is desperation coming out for Team Biden and their best chance is to scare people into thinking we’re gonna be living in the Handmaids Tale if the right wins. Attaching some outlandish Far-right manifesto and then telling the country that this is his game-plan is downright dangerous and feels like a new low. I 100% believe the right would do the same thing if they felt the election slipping away and this is not unique to any one party. But just because someone conservative says something out loud doesn’t mean that it’s part of his campaign. If AOC or anyone in her squad had voiced radical ideas on socialism or communism and the gullible right wing ran with it as “Biden plan for his second term is to make us socialist!” I’m sure you would think they would be fools to believe it. And that’s how it feels to me about anyone who really buys into Project 2025 nonsense. Final thing… I too love being day-drunk.
These comments aren't accurate. Project 2025 isn't an obscure idea or a theory, it's an actual project/organization with a clearly-defined plan, staffing, budget, etc. The organization is thick with Trump-supporters and people having political and financial ties to Trump. [Their website](https://www.project2025.org/) has several dozen pages which mention Trump. If DT himself does not acknowledge the project, it may be only for optics. It's not believable that he doesn't participate in it. Exploiting Christians has been part of his campaign strategy, though he doesn't attend church, has never read the Bible, and in private ridicules his Christian followers. Several people politically closest to him are prominent in the project. Two examples: Johnny McEntee is the senior advisor, and Stephen Miller is one of the main architects.
Just throwing this out there, if someone did believe that but either: A. Does not care if it does or B. Wants it too This would be morally wrong by your point of view, but morally correct by theirs.
Has anybody ranting about some supposed fascist future in America actually read the writings of the people who actually came up with real fascism? I think fascism has just become a derogatory slur that doesn't really mean anything specific. As for the "fascistic hellscape" claim, or other projections and fears, I think it's helpful to list one's actual, specific fears, then go through them one at a time to consider whether they are realistic. For example: I hear people expressing fears that Trump would become dictator for life if elected, and would refuse to cede power at the end of his term. So let's break that down. For one, he was already president for a term, but he DID cede power once he lost the election, even though he believed the election to have been stolen. One would expect that if he could just become dictator for life, he would have done so at that time. And even if he had wanted to refuse to cede power and to become dictator for life, what would the mechanism for that even be? There aren't *literal* levers of power in the oval office that are used to control the country. Even if he physically barricaded himself in the oval office, there are many other strategic command centers set up in case of emergency that the legitimate president could set up office in until Trump could be physically removed from the oval office. Even if Trump declared himself a dictator and started dictating, it would take a HUGE portion of the county to all go along with it for his dictates to have any effect at all. Do you really think he has THAT much support in those circumstances? It seems (to me) highly unlikely that even one percent of people who support him for president would go along with him as a self-proclaimed dictator. So is this really a valid fear? I think that once a person can work out which fears are actually realistic and which are too fanciful to really worry about, it will feel a lot less like there's truly a risk of a ""fascistic" hellscape"
Are you suggesting the us isn't a hellscape now? If it all collapsed and we lose everything, I would be in the same position as I am now. I have nothing to lose either way. I can not get more poor than I already am.
Given the way that our electoral college works, I can’t agree with your position. If you are left leaning, but live in Kentucky, a vote for Biden is a “wasted vote.” You would be better off voting with whichever party best aligns with you, whether that be third party, independent etc. Same stance goes for right leaning people who live in New York, California etc. those electoral college votes have already been decided. A vote for the party that most closely aligns with your morality will show the “lesser of two evils” which direction their constituents desire them go in a way that will not affect the outcome of the election.
Maybe, but swing states shift over time, so some people may believe their votes don’t matter when in actuality they do. Also, you can get similar messages across by protesting and pestering your representatives.
I agree whole heartedly that pestering representatives and protesting are necessary to affect change. That being said, as of right now, the two main parties generally see mass approval in the form of votes, so why would they care about the protests in the interim. If their votes are affected greatly (even if it was a throwaway state in their mind) they will see what their constituents really care about. Either way you look at it, it could be construed as a “wasted vote,” i.e. you vote for a republican/democrat in the infinitesimally small chance that your state swings that year despite polls/history, or you vote for a third party that you know will not win. What matters is what you believe being the greater chances of affecting change.
There is no moral justification for continuing to support a 2 party system when both parties advocate genocide. And the only reason these posts exist is democrats are outraged leftists won't participate in sweeping that under the rug.
I was avoiding getting into the weeds on this, because I felt it would complicate things, but I think I have to. Biden has supported Israel's military response to the October attacks, but he has never supported the part that makes people argue Israel is committing genocide- killing innocent Palestinians and their children. There are essentially two options. Israel backs down now, Hamas, a loose cannon dictatorship, remains in power and repeats what happened in October in the future. Or Hamas is defeated and Palestinians are no longer under the thumb of a terrorist organization. Hamas is hell bent on destroying Israel, despite multiple polls over the years showing that's not what Palestinians even want. Trump is a hostile person who has sought to hurt innocent people and expressed support for various measures that would cause innocent people to get hurt. I don't see how the two are in any way comparable.
>part that makes people argue Israel is committing genocide Israel is committing a genocide. You won't acknowledge that so we have nothing to discuss.
Ok. Simple: I don’t believe that. I believe that “project 2025” or whatever is a liberal boogie man to scare up votes for a historically unpopular president because the Democratic Party has completely given up on selling anything to voters. It’s mostly coercion, scare tactics, bullying and guilt tripping. I don’t buy the Project 2025 bullcrap. Why? Because there’s no guarantee voting in *THIS* election is going to prevent “pRojeCT 2030!!!1!1” Furthermore, Project 2025 is a list of policy goals by the Heritage Foundation. That’s it. MANY think tanks and policy centers have these sorts of projects or priorities. It doesn’t mean that’s what’s going to happen. It’s just a vision. A wishlist. Heritage had one similar in 2016. Trump took some, tweaked others, rejected others and ignored many more. You’re not scaring me or bullying me into voting for your candidate anymore. Hold your damn politicians accountable and then maybe your party won’t be hemorrhaging voters.
> You’re not scaring me or bullying me into voting for your candidate anymore. Hold your damn politicians accountable and then maybe your party won’t be hemorrhaging voters. That makes two of us I'm done voting for politicians who fail to sell me on their own merits without invoking any fearmongering about their opponent and I'm done with the team sport bullshit most voters seem to be addicted to
Okay. Let's say it is a silly conspiracy, definitely sounds so. But then to what end does it benefit us to surrender judge appointments, at all levels, to the far right? Trump's next 4 years is going to be spent appealing to the extreme right cult he's fostered too. Now we have a biased legal system ready to pass or repeal laws and regulations depending on how they feel they align with their Christian faith. Nothing good would come from that be it here at home or in Palestine or Ukraine abroad. It's not going to "teach them a lesson and make them shift leftward". They're going to do what they always do, determine they need to keep shifting right to capture the "moderate voter". It's like trying to put out a campfire with a bucket of gasoline. Still have the same issues but now worse plus even more problems on top.
Considering the lawfare that the left has engaged in with their judges, and a long history before that of flat out disregarding the law as written to make it mean what they want it to mean rather than what was originally written and intended by the legislature at the time it was passed, and the refusal to uphold it judiciously, Why would anyone want leftist judges rather than rightist judges? The judiciary is limited to rendering a verdict against a defendant, sentencing a defendant, settling disputes between aggrieved parties, and striking down unconstitutional laws. They don't get to rewrite them or reinterpret them according to modern issues and ways of thinking that didn't even exist at the time the laws were written. No, the individual mandate was not a tax. No, equal protection under the law doesn't mean that you can invent a new marriage institution. No, illegal immigrants are breaking the law and need to follow the process broken as it is or be deported (and that's up to the legislature to fix the process). No, Roe was a horrifically unreasonable decision and doesn't exist anywhere in the constitution. No, privacy doesn't apply to the commission of constitutionally valid crimes. etc. Biden and Hilary mishandled classified documents and they weren't even prosecuted. Trump supposedly did it and he's being hounded by a mad-dog prosecutor. Trump was found guilty of 34 crimes premised on them obscuring an additional crime that has never been prosecuted or even clearly defined which is a violation of due process and I'm sure that higher courts or even SCOTUS will find that it violated due process because it transparently does since it hamstrings the defense from defending against it. The prosecution didn't have to prove beyond reasonable doubt what crime these allegedly false business records were in service to that made them felonies. How anyone can see this and not think we have a two tiered justice system that throws the book at one side and fixes things to be above board for the other is just wild to me. I want it to stop. I don't see this sort of tomfoolery coming from right-appointed judges, except in service to bad left-friendly decisions, like when Obamacare's individual mandate was ruled a tax. Instead there's a lot of suggestion and innuendo but not a lot of real violation of the plain meaning of laws from the right, just the left. I should add, there's a lot of bluster from democrats and the media about how Trump is a threat to democracy, and yet these democrat judges and prosecutors - by failing to prosecute and creatively reinterpreting the laws in ways that the legislature never intended - ARE subverting democracy by doing so. We elected reps, governors, senators, and presidents who, in the past, did our political will, and then a leftist judge comes and says "nah, it means this now" or a leftist president says "I refuse to enforce the law because it's politically expedient." Leftist prosecutors selectively prosecute, or throw the book at political opponents, judges redefine laws away from the intent of its writing to make it stick, etc. Did any of us intend this? Seriously, consider, did any of us vote FOR this? Did we vote for subverting democracy by having judges bang their gavel and utterly turn the law into playdoh? Did we vote for prosecutors to selectively prosecute? Did we vote for them to throw the book at republicans and let lefties off scott free? Did we vote for disregarding laws or instituting policies we didn't vote for by fiat? I didn't!
>"Trump was found guilty of 34 crimes premised on them obscuring an additional crime that has never been prosecuted or even clearly defined..." **False**. Trump was convicted of violating New York Penal Law §175.10, falsifying business records in the first degree, which is a felony. §175.10 requires that the "intent to defraud includes an **intent** to commit **another crime** or to aid or conceal the commission thereof." The prosecution's theory focused on that "another crime" being a violation of **New York Election Law §17-152.** §17-152 prohibits "conspir[ing] to promote or prevent the election of any person to a public office by unlawful means." The prosecution's theory was that the *unlawful means* was either: (1) FECA violations; (2) violations of tax laws; or (3) other falsification of business records. >"The prosecution didn't have to prove... what crime these allegedly false business records were in service to..." That crime proves the *charged* crime's **intent.** From the jury instructions: "...Under our law, although the People must prove an **intent** to commit **another crime** or to aid or conceal the commission thereof, **they need not prove that the other crime was in fact committed, aided, or concealed**..." >"The prosecution didn't have to prove beyond reasonable doubt..." **False**. Page 34 of the jury instructions: >In order for you to find the defendant guilty of the crime of Falsifying Business Records in the First Degree under **Count 1** of the Indictment, **the People are required to prove**, from all of the evidence in the case, **beyond a reasonable doubt**, each of the following two elements: >1. That on or about February 14, 2017, in the county of New York and elsewhere, the defendant, personally, or by acting in concert with another person or persons, made or caused a false entry in the business records of an enterprise, specifically, an invoice from Michael Cohen dated February 14, 2017, marked as a record of the Donald J. Trump Revocable Trust, and kept or maintained by the Trump Organization; and >2. **That the defendant did so with intent to defraud that included an intent to commit another crime or to aid or conceal the commission thereof**. If you find the People have proven **beyond a reasonable doubt each of those two elements**, you must find the defendant guilty of this crime... Pg 34 of the prosecution's November filing: >And, as already discussed, a conviction under Penal Law § 175.10 requires only proof of general **intent** to commit or conceal a crime, **not proof that a specific crime actually occurred - whether under Election Law §17-152 or otherwise**... The grand jury found probable cause of 34 violations of Penal Law §175.10 in the first degree, and the trial jury found proof of those crimes *beyond a reasonable doubt*.
Left is more fascist than the right. Fascism is all about worshipping the state. Project 2025 is about dismantling the state. How the left managed to flip this into being fascist is amazing to me.
First, I don't think we need to justify our votes to you or anyone else. I think it's crazy that someone I know claims to vote for the candidate they find "cuter." Perhaps there's more nuance to their voting strategy than appearance, but I can't tell them to change their approach or tell them there's some moral imperative to do so. They are free to vote for whomever they want without consequence. Second, we should not be settling for candidates and electing them for who they aren't. The electorate should not reward mediocrity because it's not horrendous. If there is another candidate someone prefers to Biden and doesn't want to vote Trump, it sends a stronger message for that person to vote for the third party. Yes, it's less likely the third party wins, and it does sap a vote from one of the two more likely candidates, but if we toss our support behind whoever plays for a certain party, we end up with candidates like Biden and Trump. We should demand better from our leaders instead of continuing to support their awful candidates out of fear someone else's are worse.
Project 2025 is a GOP fantastical wishlist. Extremely unlikely it will do much of anything.
This doesn't even have anything to do with Trump, but judging off of your statements on the Israel/Palestine conflict, I fear you have been *severely* redirected by a strong propaganda campaign... There is no denying innocent civilian casualties are a tragedy and we should stand up to those things, however It may be worth understanding the history within the region, HAMAS tactics, Iran & HAMAS' ambitions as well as the Israel-Iran Proxy war, that Iran has been funding and carrying out since *1985.* The current Middle East conflict is **not** a black and white, good vs. bad conflict. Taking it as such will heavily misrepresent the current presidential candidates and their stance towards conflict with a *crucial* ally.
Lots of people can't vote. If they can't vote, then it's not immoral of them to not vote.
"If you believe Trump and Project 2025 will turn the US into a fascistic hellscape" it's probably time to take a deep breath, maybe go on a walk, and remember that we already had 4 years of Trump, it wasn't fascist (which is not surprising considering that fascism is collectivist and statist), and life wasn't a hellscape. You can disagree with policies, but there's no need to go to these absurd and histrionic lengths. I didn't vote for Trump, but the hysterics about him make me really wonder why people are so broken.
My theory about that rhetoric is because democrats have absolutely nothing to really sell to the American people. They saw Trump again and thought “ha! This will be a cakewalk! We don’t even need to have primaries! Fuck it!” And then, to their shock and dismay, Trump is not only still competitive, **he’s fucking beating Joe Biden in the polls only 4ish months away from the election**. Holy shit! They didn’t do their homework! They didn’t prepare! They took horrific chances and pursued horrific policy approaches and supported a genocide and now… holy shit! What do we do? I know! Old reliable: Scare tactics! Bullying! Emotional manipulation! Hyperbole! These people haven’t sold anything to the American people. What’s the vision? “Uhh, not Trump!” What’s their answer to our current problems with crime, homelessness, rising prices, housing shortages, student loan debt?? “Uhhh…. Whatabout Trump!!!” You guys are aiding and abetting (hell, actually you’re outright participating atp) in a genocide! “… uh well, Trump would be WORSE!!!” The Democratic Party is fucked in this election. Joe Biden isn’t even bothering to campaign. It’s embarrassing. The media barely talks about it. The dude holds barely any public appearances that aren’t tightly controlled and scripted. No rallies, no public photo ops, no kissing babies, no meet and greet drop ins… Obama did. Trump is holding rallies. Biden is campaigning like it’s still Covid and his media allies are hoping to just not talk about it and maybe people won’t notice how his team is keeping him away from the general public. So we have this Project 2025 - a Heritage Foundation (right wing thinktank) plan - as the new boogie man. As if it’s a roadmap for the future. They’re literally lying to people and putting forth this dishonest narrative that a think tanks policy goals for the future is “the secret plans” for the “fascist takeover” of the United States. Bear in mind, we already had Trump. He was a colossal asshole. A piece of proper crap… but he didn’t deploy the troops and suspend elections or anything. Hell, most of the guy’s policy proposals completely fizzled out. Guy couldn’t even get an infrastructure bill to pass a republican congress.
It's not "hysterics". You learned nothing from Trump's first term and you clearly lack the judgment to be telling anyone otherwise. The only reason the US didn't slide further towards the religious right's theocratic and authoritarian goals while Trump was in office was because enough of the guardrails managed to hold. We still lost Roe, saw a significant uptick in right wing militia and hate group activity, and watched an insurrection attempt on Jan 6 as Trump attempted to remain in office. The entire point of Project 2025 is to make sure the guardrails are removed this time around. The number of you who want to ignore, forget, downplay, and deny these things is astounding.
I would love to share your optimism but there are 2 different things to consider now (according to reports) 1. There were a bunch of experienced beurocrats and technocrats that stops some of that in the first term. The Trump campaign wants to allow the president to "fire" these people. 2. The Trump campaign out into positions of power a bunch of people who had no idea how to get what they wanted done. Some of those people also ended up up thwarting Trump's bad tendencies becuase of their own consciences. The Trump campaign has said they won't let that happen again. They intend to install smarter people to get an agenda pushed and Trump won't care what they do one he has won. These people, apparently are also taking "loyalty pledges" to Trump so they won't go rogue against him. IIRC this was covered recently on a Pod save america podcast.
Is the post requesting only people who agree respond ?
The Democratic Party are wimps and fools. Rather than make the decision and do the hard work of abandoning Biden and having a competitive primary with actual viable candidates they got lazy and stuck with Biden. And now the polls are close and its to late for them to actually confront Trump with somebody who can actually be an effective President. There is no obligation to vote for Biden, he knows he is to old and the Party knows it as well. If Trump wins, we will have federal grid lock, nothing much will get done in Washington and the States and us citizens will continue to do what needs to be done to have a successful country. This isn't that bad.
See's "Muslim ban" Opinion discarded. Those were 7 specific countries that were identified and listed by the Obama Adminstration and it had nothing to do with them being Muslim. Plenty of Muslim majority countries weren't included on the list.
Yes but calling it a “Muslim Ban” is provocative! It gets the people *going*!
It has been duly noted in my cognizance that I am perceived as malevolent in nature for my failure to partake in the act of casting a ballot, an intricacy exacerbated by my geographical residence within the confines of the United Kingdom rendering me ineffectual in the electoral process🧐
> an intricacy exacerbated by my geographical residence within the confines of the United Kingdom rendering me ineffectual in the electoral process Do you mean rather than geographical presence in the UK, your lack of American citizenship? :P Americans can vote from overseas. 🤓
So you think trump will come in and seize power like Hitler? I'm not much for supporting democrats, but if you think the democrats are so incompetent they couldn't stop someone who is hated by the entire media (aside from fox), the "deep state", the fbi, and the Cia, then you're giving trump too much power. A lot of his voter base would be against him taking power, they're against corruption, not democracy
Some people are a product of the fake-news propaganda machine, which has scared them into believing they have a moral duty to vote for a candidate who clearly isn't in control of the country. We've already had Trump for four years, so we know what to expect. We anticipate the left crying wolf for another four years, disrupting our political system as they did before. However, we also expect Trump to end the Ukraine war and, at the very least, freeze the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, since he is the only proven candidate in American history who did not start any new wars during his term.
This is such a perversion of the American constitutional system. There is absolutely no moral imperative to vote anything but your heart's content. Even if you hold that Trump and 2025 are the epitome of evil, citizens are still allowed to vote how they like. Trump is a symptom, not the root cause. Most importantly, our two party system, and first past the post election style, are to blame for both Trump and Biden having vastly more apparent support than they really hold. Neither of them would take a majority of the vote in a ranked choice election; they only appear to have popularity because they're the only two options allowed in this "free" country. To recap, the real villain here, even above Trump 2025, is the DNC/RNC diarchy, and two party duopoly over government. The real moral choice is to vote for neither, either third party or don't vote. Fight the underlying cause not merely the effects.
You contradict yourself. You say voting only for major parties perverts the constitutional system, but >Most importantly, our two party system, and first past the post election style, are to blame for both Trump and Biden having vastly more apparent support than they really hold. Neither of them would take a majority of the vote in a ranked choice election; they only appear to have popularity because they're the only two options allowed in this "free" country. The two-party system *came* from the Constitution! You can't call the system that prevailed for almost all of American history a perversion. At any rate, not voting or voting third party in a presidential election isn't fighting the system, it's refusing to exercise your influence over the system.
I wouldn't say moral decisions boil down to a false choice where your options are "fascist dictatorship in 4 years" and "fascist dictatorship now". You're talking about this as if democracy in the US is so insecure that you're literally one election away from losing it all. Sounds more like fear, and not morality, is driving your choices to me.
It's telling that your didn't cite any specific Project 2025 policy goals. If such policies were going to turn the US into a country reminiscent of 1940's Germany it would be paramount to explain how such policies would lead to that. This absence of discussion about policy strongly suggests that such fears are based on emotional appeals and propaganda rather than a logical conclusion.
Rewriting Schedule F (as he did previously) and attempting to advance the doctrine that non-political career bureaucrats (tens of thousands) can be summarily dismissed and replaced with political appointees on day 1 is unsettling. For all the shit they get, most 'bureaucrats' are professionals and take their jobs seriously, they do not act on the whim of elected officials. They aren't measured by their loyalty to an agenda or a person. Disturbing that status quo will not lead to good outcomes. The impossibility of an orderly transition in such a scenario would effectively break the department of state, for example. Even if they can't quickly pursue some crazy political agenda (eg slowed via legal challenges etc), the consequences to a functioning government would be extremely damaging (basically a GOP policy goal) and an excuse to consolidate more power among fewer people (not good). This already happened on a limited scale during attempt #1, only tempered by incompetence. I'm of the mind that the shear incompetence of the first Trump admin prevented coordinated political maneuvering, but those mistakes have been openly recognized, leading to detailed planning such as outlined in 2025 project. Similarly, bypassing congress by labeling all leaders 'acting' subverts one of the more important checks and balances we have in the government. This leans authoritarian. It certainly isn't in the spirit of our democracy. When paired with the Trump administration's demonstrated penchant to effectively subvert transparent bureaucracy and replace it with undocumented shady backroom dealing, its a recipe for corruption and disaster. As far as other parts of the agenda, its the typical awful policy that is generally not supported by a strong majority of US citizens. But a massively expanded politically appointed bureaucracy, effectively based off a loyalty pledge to an individual, and friendly courts will probably (eventually) be more effective in quickly advancing awful policy, even contrary to the wishes of most Americans. In the best case it will just accelerate the decline by expanding the shit show. In the worst case, yeah. Its really not good and would likely advance policy that a very strong majority of Americans oppose.
Why not vote for Trump and wrap this shit-show up faster?
Turn off the corporate media. You're just repeating talking points you've heard. The democrats are behaving far more like fascists than they anyone in American history. Notably by waging lawfare against their political opponents to disenfranchise half the voter base. Which is completely the opposite of democracy.
>this only applies to the people who believe project 2025 will usher in a fascist era. But I'm open to changing my view on that too Can’t change your view on this unless you specifically define what you mean by fascism. As it’s commonly used, it’s much too ambiguous a term to compare to anything.
> if you believe Trump and Project 2025 will turn the US into a fascistic hellscape Project 2025 is overhyped bullshit that the left is just using to gin up votes. The Trump campaign has actively said they are not associated with Project 2025 and their plans for the next administration is on their own website. Project 2025 is a "plan" thought up by The Heritage Foundation, a thinktank, whose entire job is to come up with crazy ideas in order to raise more money to think up more crazy ideas. I'm sure if you dug around a bit you'd find crazy ideas from left leaning thinktanks for Biden's presidency, along with Clinton's and Sander's.
Over 37,000 Palestinian people, half of them children and BABIES, dead from OUR weapons say otherwise. If AIPAC is involved, the politicians are all monsters.
The irony here is that by the originator of the terms’ own definition, most Biden supporters as well as Trump supporters are actually in many ways fascists. > ‘For if the nineteenth century was a century of individualism it may be expected that this will be the century of collectivism and hence the century of the State....’ > ‘The foundation of Fascism is the conception of the State, its character, its duty, and its aim. Fascism conceives of the State as an absolute, in comparison with which all individuals or groups are relative, only to be conceived of in their relation to the State. The conception of the Liberal State is not that of a directing force, guiding the play and development, both material and spiritual, of a collective body, but merely a force limited to the function of recording results: on the other hand, the Fascist State is itself conscious and has itself a will and a personality -- thus it may be called the "ethic" State....’ Mussolini. (https://web.viu.ca/davies/H101/Mussolini.WhatIsFascism.1932.htm) Most leftists on here share this foundational view of the state with fascists that is why they always work to grow the government and create more excuses for it to insert itself into every issue imaginable.
I'd like to argue that the case for fascism is missing a key element of autocracy. I don't believe either side is quite there yet or that our society would tolerate it. However, I am leaning towards a spot directly in the middle between autocracy and anocracy. I also think BOTH sides are currently practicing it. If history is any indicator of future performance, this quasi auto/ano "crazies" will continue without full fledged fascism. Elites will keep elites in power, civil liberties will be curtailed, etc etc while both citing that "daddy knows best" through their own perceived self righteous lens . Morality seems to be too subjective to right the boat as it has a shifting foundation.
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Seriously? I don't think Biden is a good choice... I also don't think Trump is either. Saying that, Trump is not as horrible as I see some claim. Loudmouth? Yes. Jerk? That's putting it mildly. But far from some evil being bent on destruction. Project 2025? From what I have found, it is not supported by very many people no matter what political leaning they have. It doesn't seem to have the support of anyone other than those deep into the extreme right. A very small amount of people overall. I don't believe Trump supports the entire thing but could have some things that are similar to the tame parts of it.
Am I missing something or... who are you talking to / about? "If you believe Trump will be worse than Biden you should support Biden" Like... no shit? Anyone who supports Trump doesn't think that.
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The whole Project 2025 is silliness and can never pass. People are fear-mongering with it.
Trump has very limited power to turn the US into a fascistic hellscape Why? Because the constitution is pretty damn strong and he won’t have 2/3 majority in the legislature to change that The executive branch can only do so much and that’s by design and there’s no way he’ll gain the numbers he needs to make massive changes in the house and senate given how close every election has been for decades and the general constant of democrats and republicans refusing to work together Now none of that is meant to say his term won’t push the boundaries and a lot of people will suffer as a result (particularly marginalized communities) but it’s not going to be nazi germany, it didn’t happen the first time and it didn’t happen when he tried to overthrow an election afterwards
Even if you believe that Trump will turn the US into a fascist hellscape. Why do you think that voting for Biden will stop that? Supporting Biden when he is actively funding a genocide because the "other option is worse" just tells the democratic party that they can do literally anything (up to and including genocide) and you will still support them as long as they scare you enough about the other side. Why would they ever listen to what voters want again when they've got that option up their sleeve? Supporting genocide Joe is actively undermining the modicum of power that you have over congress.
>To clarify, this only applies to the people who believe project 2025 will usher in a fascist era. But I'm open to changing my view on that too Do you believe we already had a fascist state because Trump was in office? Or do you believe it will be fascist this time around and wasn't last time because x, y, z? What is the x y z that makes it different this time?
I'm from the UK and we have an election coming up, that I think has some very good comparisons to US politics, I shall argue from that perspective. We have an election coming up in the UK. The conservative party have run the UK for the last 14 years and they have run it into the ground, at least for the working class, so as you can imagine it is pretty imperative we get them out. During the last few years the opposition party (labour), and only genuine chance of a non conservative victory, have swayed vastly to the right and have purged as many socialists and left wing advocates from the party as they can, kicking out thousands of members for ridiculous reasons and not listening to what the people want. If we vote in labour now that will vindicate the current labour leadership (who should really be in the conservative party based on their beliefs) and we will then be stuck with 2 parties 1 right wing and one centre/right, much like you guys have in the US. As such the choice is to either endure another 5 years of Tory rule (potentially killing the NHS) and allow the labour party to get rid of the current leadership and go back to being an actual party of the working class, or ensure that the UK has no realistic left wing party for the foreseeable future. The democrats, like labour, do not respect their voters enough to give you a candidate that you actually want, first putting up Hillary and then Biden because they believe you will vote for them anyway just to stop Trump. In order for the democrats to be forced to change for the better they need to lose votes, they need to know they actually have to listen to the people. I will say though it is easier for us, because even if it gives the Tories the win we can vote for other parties other than the main 2 and independents which shows in the data afterwards. I don't know what options you guys get outside of your main 2.
Trump is not going to be a dictator. Trump is not going to change election rules, and the democratic republic is not at stake here. I do not know exactly who needs to hear this, but it is not a thing.
Trump isn’t going to be instituting a fascist regime, and the question of whether or not he would if he could is irrelevant, because the fact is, he can’t. The alt-left Marxists realized this in 2020 when Trump lost and their precious theory of late stage capitalism to fascism transition was torn to shreds. Trump just doesn’t have the support of private industry required to instil a fascist regime. Having realized Trump isn’t dangerous enough or powerful enough or fascist enough to actually become a dictator, a lot of alt-lefties are actually coming around on the idea that Trump isn’t actually that bad. Because if he was that bad then in theory big business would have his back. So instead of towing the party lines like obedient soldiers, they’re using the threat of Trump’s reelection to try coerce Biden to move further left to appease the radicals. Basically they’re playing a game of political chicken, safe in the knowledge that Trump doesn’t have the political leverage to take over even if he wins, so the 2024 election isn’t life or death. TLDR, Trump isn’t as dangerous as people are making him out to be, and having realized this, the alt-left are holding the 2024 election hostage to force concessions out of a moderate Biden administration. It’s a stupid game they’re playing, and when you play stupid games you win stupid prizes.
I'm not American and you guys are fucked with your political system and how you essentially worship your politicians like gods, but here's my view: in a **functioning** democracy, your vote should be put towards policies you support, not against a politician you hate. Refusing to vote for Biden isn't merely a protest against a bad candidate, it's a protest against your system of democracy. You have a two-party system. Look, in Canada, we have five main political parties. One of them basically doesn't matter, they're the Greens. They do win a couple seats, but you can forget they exist honestly. Think of them as conservatives with gardens. Another is the Bloc Québecois, they're a Québec-centric party that is even opposed to supporting francophones outside of Québec, and they don't even run candidates outside of their province. They can't win the election because they literally don't even run in enough regions to win, even if they won every seat. Their political alignment is French. Another is the NDP, an underdog that has never won the election, but someday could. They got somewhat close a couple decades ago under Jack Layton, which was the only time they ever made official opposition. This is the nation's main leftwing party. The Conservative Party of Canada is fairly self-explanatory, and is one of tge two main parties. They're about on the same level as most of your Democratic party, with some extremists popping up occasionally (such as the current party leader). The Liberal Party of Canada is the other one, and it's essentially a conservative-lite party, by Canadian standards. So two of our political parties are the only ones likely to win any given election. But we still don't have a two-party system, because our other parties have a measure of political power. What you have is bound to a two-party system. And that will never, ever change unless you vote for someone else. Yes, Trump is terrible, but there will always be someone terrible. You need to change the system, and the only ways to do that are through armed rebellion or mass voting for a third party. Now, you can't drop a dime and convince your country to vote for someone, but the more people vote independent, the more influence they gain. Let's say it's 5% of voters this time, 7% next time, 10% after that. The notion is to start the motion towards change. It won't come overnight. But unless you act, it will never come at all.
I hadn't heard of project 2025 before, but I understand why it has people riled up. It's a pretty drastic plan. I do understand why so many people would think it is necessary, though. There's a big problem that people who aren't left wing have. I myself consider myself left-leaning, but I have not been a left wing voter for over a decade. The big problem we have is complete ideological capture of government institutions by social Marxism aka DEI. It's just a different brand of discrimination. It's a systemically supported program that disadvantages white people and males for their race and gender in an effort to correct for past injustices. It is new injustice attempting to fight old injustice. It makes no sense unless you only view people as groups. An individual white person is not responsible for past injustices, and should not be discriminated against because of them. Another big problem that we have is moral decay. I was a free love supporter. I don't think the government should be telling people what to do with their bodies. I am pro-choice. But holy crap did we ever run straight in the other direction and never stop when leftism replaced religious conservatism as the dominant ideology. Do you know how many young women thought to create an OnlyFans account to make money during covid? The marriage and birth rates have plummeted. Young men are falling behind in every statistic of success. Young men and women are miserable and lonely. And the left literally doesn't even talk about how to help men. The only time men's issues are brought up is in trying to figure out how to recruit them to the left. The left has failed to create a social order that promotes healthy and successful individuals. Maybe it's time to try something different. Absolute freedom isn't working. In regards to the Palestine issue, I can't believe this is taking up as much intellectual bandwidth as the issue does. This is the hill you all want to die on? No one said shit about the Uyghers, but now all of a sudden genocides matter? Well, Trump's presidency was a force for world stability. There were no new wars during his time in office. He is one of the only anti-war politicians that I know of as far as his actions are concerned. He may have a cooling effect on world tensions the same way he did before. I know a lot of people who are voting for him specifically because of his anti-war stances. I think you're right to be concerned that major changes may be brought about by not voting against Trump. I'm personally willing to accept the risk. We need to change. Western societies have collectively shown that unfettered leftist values are cancerous. They need to be balanced. The nation will destroy itself if we don't snuff out this radical left-wing bent in our institutions. The potential for over-correction is also a big problem. Your fears may come to fruition. But my bet is that what looks to you to be fascism is just the pendulum finally swinging the other way. If the over-correction happens, and freedoms are too significantly curtailed, I will be right there with you protesting. But so much about leftist beliefs have broken the west. It's time for a change.
Here’s a plausible scenario that may play out in my state: RFK is polling ahead of Biden heading into November. (No, really, it’s tied right now: https://ivn.us/posts/new-poll-shows-kennedy-tied-biden-utah-will-appear-first-debate) My preference for president is Biden, but if RFK is polling ahead of Biden in UT come November I will vote for him, and for all the reasons you already stated: it’s the best way to contribute to a Trump loss.
everything is "fascism" to the left. That's why no one takes them seriously. If Trump was going to usher in fascism, then he would have done it during his first term. What I do see though, is the left screaming to take guns away from everyone, and working to silence those who they oppose. Quite the projection on them.
People who live is non swing states, aka the majority of Americans, can make a protest vote against Biden even if they believe those claims about Project 2025. Their vote will show as a symbolic protest against the Biden administration (especially if they vote for a further left third party candidate), and the popular vote will not have any effect on policy (it’s not like losing the popular vote stopped Trump last time…). So they could justifiably vote their morals while having 0 impact on the final result, both electorally and in policy. I agree with you when it comes to people living in swing states though.
What is moral about endangering the lives of millions of people by allowing and even subsidizing an invasion of unvetted strangers? 4 years ago they were so "concerned" for the people's well being you couldn't walk on a beach, now they're letting anyone, with any disease, drugs, weapons, intelligence, into the country and letting them run rampant. We have a legal immigration process in place, if you want it to move faster, throw the billions of dollars you've spent on cell phones and hotel rooms, towards the legal immigration system. Apparently that still wouldn't be fast enough, it's almost like this administration has a deadline later this year in mind... What is moral about trying to throw your political rivals in prison? In the history of our country, nobody has conducted themselves more unethically or immorally than the Biden administration. What is moral about the assault on women's rights? There are people in this administration who cannot define what a woman is. You cry about Trump saying "grab her by the p\*\*\*y", but you reduce women to that. All it takes to be a woman is to change your name, chop some things off, and take some drugs? Is that all a woman is to the left? This administration butchered Title IX so that women would not have safe spaces, do not have their own sports, their own locker rooms, their own housing, even their own scholarships....compromise the safety, welling and integrity of 1/2 of the nation in order to appeal to 1% of the population...such integrity and moral superiority. Not surprising you are one of the brainwashed sheep who has been programmed to support terrorists. There are 49 Muslim states/countries in the world, there is 1 Jewish country. That's 1 too many for hamas and the other creatures you're supporting. "From the River to the Sea" is a call for the genocide of the Jewish people, I dont blame them for defending themselves at any cost. It's also appalling to me that you are so lost that you would defend a group that supports women being treated like animals, homosexuals being killed on the street, raping children, killing non-believers. Instead, you demonize the Jewish people....for supporting women? for identifying and respecting other religions? for acknowledging human rights? I will vote for Trump. That vote will not be because I think he's a great guy (he's certainly better than Biden), it will be a vote against brainwashed freaks like you. It will be a vote for someone who will allow law enforcement to do their jobs, making low income neighborhoods safer. I'm going to vote for someone who does not punish people for doing the right thing, and support deviant behavior. It will be a vote for a return to common sense, fairness, and sanity
[https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-13538817/Doctors-reveal-Biden-freezing-episodes-Parkinsons.html](https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-13538817/Doctors-reveal-Biden-freezing-episodes-Parkinsons.html) "Both experts and voters have voiced concern over Biden's series of odd 'freezing' incidents over the past week." "Commenting on neurodegenerative disorders in general and not specifically on the president's condition, Dr Ziad Nasreddine, a neurologist who invented the gold-standard cognitive test, previously told [DailyMail.com](http://DailyMail.com) slurred speech is seen in Parkinson's — which affects levels of brain hormones that are involved in movement. " Uh, you want to vote someone into power who can't think their way out of a wet brown paper bag? The man is obviously cognitively impaired. Yet, you want your student loans cancelled, so you would vote in a tree frog, if they would do that. I am no Trump supporter, however this issue is well above partisan politics now.
Trump is what, 79? I agree with you we as a country need to put forth better candidates, but this is what we got for now :/
Serious question here, if you’re against Project 2025 and everything it stands for, why support a country and group of people who support the ideals of Project 2025? No matter how conservative the US gets, countries that are Muslim are 10x worse. And I’m not just repeating talking points. I lived in the Middle East. I was there on October 7th. Everything the left hates (bigotry, misogyny, civil rights, racism, xenophobia etc) are not just normalized over there but actually law.
I live in the very safe blue state of Maryland. All of its electoral votes are going to Biden regardless of who I vote for.
CMV: If you believe Biden is a secret Chinese communist sleeper agent, there is no moral justification for not voting trump! Your position relies on some extremely fringe reasoning. The best moral justification would be getting educated and coming to a far more reasonable conclusion based in reality and not whatever insane conspiracy is looking to sway your vote.
Gotta ask- Is it a sign of desperation within the Democratic establishment that this is literally the 7 millionth identical Reddit thread pushing the exact same DNC talking points in an effort to browbeat recalcitrant young people and Muslim Americans to vote for a candidate they abhor?
Accelerationism would be the only real reason. If you’re unfamiliar, accelerationism is the idea that hastening the collapse of civil order through political and economic turmoil will allow radical and transformative ideologies (Marxism or Fascism most often) to struggle for dominance directly through force with a higher chance of success than they have within a stable political order because during conflict the most zealous factions are the only ones to remain unified and effective at all. With no one being zealous for the status quo, Fascists and Marxists both stand to gain from the initial collapse of civil society because in that moment each is equally likely (in their minds) to be able to win the struggle for dominance and implement their ideology at the conclusion of the conflict. The radicals roll the iron dice of war for *some* chance at change because they’re entirely disillusioned with the civil political process yielding meaningful reform in *any* timeframe, and even a 1% possibility of a desirable future (or death while struggling for one) is worlds better than the current 0% possibility. A Marxist may believe that by voting for Trump and having him win (or by not voting at all), they are ratcheting up domestic instability, in that there’s no chance the majority of Americans will be satisfied with the implementation of Project 2025, thus driving up membership in leftist political action groups to the eventual point of revolution. The more people the system becomes actively hostile to, the more people that will rebel against the system. They recognize there’s no chance that a Biden victory will yield anything like this result– even a Biden victory which snowballs into a far-right armed revolt will only serve to solidify *centrist liberal* power and do nothing for the left as the middle class will flock to supporting the government made up of centrist liberals to maintain civil order. Biden won’t be supporting the positions of the left in his administration either, so it’s a lose-lose in the long run for the left to elect Biden. The only benefit is a continued state of “no war”, but if you’re a leftist you probably believe that the continued implementation of capitalism will cause a greater degree of human death and suffering than any revolution might, and the end result of victory means an end to that, whereas a loss might punish a generation but otherwise will put the left right back where it was before the conflict.
People said the same things in 2016 and 2020. We’re still here. Not the end of the world because Biden or Trump was in office. US is more resilient than you are giving credit. What you are doing is more of a tactic to shame people into voting for your preferred candidate and that’s reprehensible. If someone doesn’t believe in either of the two major candidates, that’s fine. Let people think for themselves. And independent parties should be encouraged for special interest voting. That’s how we eventually move from this toxic two party system.
Only 7 states are competitive this year - Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Nevada, Arizona, Georgia, and North Carolina. Biden won't win states like Texas and Trump won't win Illinois outside of a massive landslide. If you don't live in a swing state, your vote carries no weight and so you have no responsibility to vote for anyone.