I have some much less nice posts currently saved in my drafts that I am clinging on to my self control enough not to post, but I will say this:
This is why you show up and you vote. This is why you show up even when you don't agree with every policy, when you think both candidates are too far to the right, when you think your vote doesn't matter.
We will be spending the next 4+ years living with the consequences of people's decision not to vote or to vote for a third party or to vote for the racist authoritarian rapist felon over an extremely qualified Black/S. Asian woman.
Want a better candidate? Start working on finding and supporting them tomorrow. But in two years, and in four, and in every election in between and after, show up, fulfill your civic responsibility as an American citizen, and vote.
I would vote, but the problem is 1. I live in a state where pretty much everybody and their mother votes for the Democrats anyways, and 2. I don't feel there's much of a point in voting in presidential elections anymore if they're just gonna be decided by a bunch of dickheads in a handful of swing states. Oh, and don't get me started on the assholes in my town who voted for all Rethuglicans for the town council.
I promise that this is not an attack on you, but I want to say a couple of things:
- The way that states become swing states is that reliably blue voters in a blue state stop voting blue, or reliably red voters in a red state stop voting red. A Democrat won Pennsylvania in every election from 1992-2012, and the smallest winning margin during that time was 2.5% in 2004. Pennsylvania now is a swing state at best, leaning red at worst. On the other hand, Virginia and Ohio both used to be swing states only a few elections ago, and now one is pretty reliably blue and the other is pretty reliably red. All it takes it one or two elections of left-of-center people not bothering to vote Dem because they think their state is going to be safe no matter what, and you've got yourself a swing state. I would have argued before this week that NJ was a blue-no-matter-what state, but it swung somewhere in the realm of 5-6 points rightward this election. Still blue, but much less so.
- If you're somewhere that everyone votes Democrat but your town voted Republicans into power locally, showing up to vote seems like a pretty good way that help keep your local area blue, too.
Voting is one of the most low-cost ways that you can express yourself politically. My entire voting experience was somewhere around an hour, and I walk to my polling station. If yours is too far away or election day isn't convenient for you, vote early! Vote by mail! Do whatever is most convenient for you.
But an hour or two of your time (or even four or five) seems like a pretty low cost to have a say in your political representation at the local, state, and federal level.
I get what you're trying to say, but I've been voting since 2008, me having been eligible since 2007, and nothing ever changes. How can I possibly make real change when I'm just one fly in a larger tub of ointment, short of killing Trump supporters?
