SarahTheCoat

My September 2024 election reminder: ideological purity will not win you anything.

I see people on the left saying that they can't possibly vote for Harris because she's too pro-Israel, because she's too far to the right on immigration, because she's too far to the right on criminal justice, because she was a cop (she wasn't), because you think this policy or that policy is too conservative.

Not voting for her only increases the chances that we get a president who is even further to the right.

Those are our two choices. Like it or not, support the American political system or not, we have two choices, and one of them is further to the right on every single policy that you have opinions about.

So if you think Harris is too far to the right on Israel/Gaza, remember: Trump is so much further to the right. You don't like that the Biden administration is providing military aid to Israel (a thing that Harris cannot actually stop even if she wanted to, given that she's not president)? Trump has already proven, on a policy level, to be more pro-Israel. Remember when he moved the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, functionally acknowledging Israeli sovereignty over Jerusalem? He is extremely pro-Israel and has materially proven it. Harris, on the other hand, has been calling for a cease fire since March and has recognized out loud the need for Palestinian sovereignty.

If you're wondering why she hasn't changed U.S. policy on Israel, I would like to remind you once again: she is not currently the President of the United States.

Holding on to your precious ideological purity and not voting for someone whose policies you find distasteful will not result in policies you like. It only increases the risk of policies that are so much further away from what you want.

Voting is public transportation. Voting is harm reduction. Voting is moving us a little bit closer towards the policies we want or, at the very least, keeping us from moving further and further away.

It’s wild the number of posts I come across where people act like voting for or supporting Harris and Walz in the election is tantamount to implicitly supporting genocide. You know what actually helps genocide? Doing nothing while pretending you have the moral high ground. America is deeply tied to Israel and there will be no candidate who is as critical of their actions as we want them to be. We as private citizens do not have the power to make the USA suddenly cease all activity with Israel and demand an uncompromising ceasefire deal. Instead, we have to get our hands dirty and decide what path forward will mitigate as much harm as possible. You have one presidential candidate saying Israel needs to finish the job and another saying that we can’t ignore the tragedies in Gaza while vocally supporting a temporary ceasefire. These are your two picks. Thinking any third party candidate has a shot when none have any wide-reaching name recognition less than 100 days before the election is a fever dream.

The question then becomes, are you willing to say you voted “correctly” by voting for someone who has no shot of winning but is most closely aligned to you? Or are you going to vote for who will do the least harm? The idea that voting for a president involves liking them is a fairy tale. The establishment will always be the enemy of civil rights and safety. You’re voting for which opponent you want in office. The writing is on the wall about which candidate will be less of an uphill battle to fight against, and sidestepping the responsibility of making that decision by throwing away a vote isn’t moral or intellectually groundbreaking - it’s cowardly.

Every time I advocate for voting people are like "no you shouldn't vote! Read this literature, it'll totally change the way you view voting!" And every single time it's the same fucking "you shouldn't vote because both parties are exactly the same so it won't make a difference who wins" bullshit wrapped up in some fancy language

"OP you need to read 'Voting is not Harm Reduction" OP has read Voting is not Harm Reduction. It opens with the acknowledgement that for the most vulnerable people, even a tiny degree of harm reduction can mean life or death and then continues to advocate for not participating in that harm reduction lest you "participate in your own oppression". Pardon me for not finding "vulnerable people should die for my ideology" very convincing.

“Vulnerable people should die for my ideology”

Thank you for summing up my entire issue with anti-vote people in one sentence.

An empty idealogical gesture that doesn’t make anything better, let alone even engage in harm reduction, is not leftism.

Especially if they think there’s nothing that can be done that will make a difference, so they’re just planning to make empty idealogical gestures until circumstances get bad enough that someone else gets forced to start a revolution for them because if they were going to do it instead of ranting about how useless voting is they’d have tried it already.

That’s not leftism and I will never shut up about how that’s not leftism. Because leftism is not about dying an honorable death on a hill that’s stupid.

I don’t even know what to call it. Defeatism maybe.

People who think of themselves as white knights but who are actually empty suits of armor set to crash into the people they claim to protect.

^^^this^^^

Tactical Voting...yes, yes, yes! Maybe you don't like the less-noxious candidate, but you must vote for them to protect the next generation's kids. No pressure, right?

One thing that helped me was to learn as much of the government's actual history as possible. That enabled me to gain a perspective from a higher vantage point, so I could see the story-arc of the political "Long Game"...who's done what over the years, the atrocities, the victories, all of it is part of an over-arching historical tale that we are all a part of. Learning more about it all leads to a much-needed sense of Historical Perspective that many nowadays have no grasp of.

Gaining that perspective turns some of that political stress into a sense of purpose, a sense of fighting the good fight in the trenches with our comrades. It gives Hope, really, because we have seen the pendulum swing, knowing it always swings back. Just how far and how much? That's up to all of us who vote.