this post was submitted on 05 Nov 2024
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When did voting become mandatory?
The only obligation to voting is your right to exercise it how you choose, full stop. It is not anyone's "job" to vote any specific way, this is the entitlement Democratic voters need to get over.
Yeah, Trump won because he convinced his base he was worth voting for. Harris couldn't convince her base that he was a threat and that she was worth voting for.
She did try to win over Republican voters instead of her own, though. 94% of them voted Republican anyway, just like they did in 2020.
But I'm sure you'll tell me that was the voter's fault too. 🙄
Edit: I brought up mandatory voting because it could be legislated that way, just as voting day could be made a federal holiday. And laws could be passed to mandate paid time off to allow essential workers to vote on voting day if absentee/early voting are unavailable. Or what if you were automatically registered to vote on your 18th birthday, none of this registering nonsense.
Damn, those are all great policy ideas that the Democrats could run on, or even implement, since they have been outwardly more supportive of people voting. Funny that they haven't done that in the last couple decades...
... It's almost like the Dems don't want that roughly 60% of people who don't vote to start voting. Wonder why that is...
i didn't say it did.
Fact of the matter is, if you don't exercise your vote, and the result is worse, you exercised your vote badly. There is no difference between not voting, and having a bad outcome, and voting (for the wrong thing) and having a bad outcome. They are the same.
i don't disagree, and in fact, i agree, this is an entitlement that democrats need to get over, because if they did get over it, we would start fucking winning. The republicans are literally an abusive partner right now, and we're just sitting here like "well maybe if i close my eyes he won't hit me" and then being really fucking confused when it doesn't do anything.
As a party, we're literally cannibalizing ourselves over this issue. It's not that deep, just vote for the least bad candidate, and get over it, go do local political lobbying, go vote in primaries, go vote in local elections, whatever the fuck, nobody cares, just do something
she didn't try to win over republican voters, she tried to win over moderate voters. I would say it worked to some degree. But obviously since we got like a 50% turnout, it's really hard to say if anything worked, and frankly, i think the democratic institution is failing right now. If we don't get up and do something about it in the next 4 years, the republicans are going to run uncontested.
it's funny that the image says moderate republicans, and while that's partially true, it's also pushing for support from the moderate left. Which is the vast majority of the party. She was also appealing to the moderate left (most of the dem party)
maybe they should, but in defense of them, running on voting policy, in a federal election is pretty fucking silly. You can't really do much about it on a federal level.
so they can lose repeatedly to the republican party? ok.
I disagree, it's their right to cast (or not cast) their vote how they choose. If someone chose not to vote for Harris because they didn't want even their small part in the Genocide, I don't blame the voter for having a conscience. I blame the Democrats for not giving them a different option, especially considering their opponent.
I don't understand why the voters have to always sacrifice their concerns and wants, but the party doesn't. All Harris had to do was not basically mirror Biden's policy on Israel, and she couldn't do it. That's a failure on the Democrats, not the voters.
This is what a lot of the voting base is tired of hearing. Through their inaction (whether it's justified or not), Democrats have made the majority of voters apathetic. I say this because the voters aren't often represented in the candidates forced on them (Hillary and Bernie, pushing Biden in 2020, trying to push Biden through for 2024 and hiding his declining mental health).
So every election season, almost nothing has improved for the average person, but we're inundated with requests for money from the same party that won't listen to its constituents. You can't just spend decades telling people "vote and get over it," and expect them to keep giving a fuck.
We definitely agree on this part.
And how did that pan out for her? The Democrats keep trying this centrist-moderate policy, and they keep losing, and instead of trying to go left, they just go further right.
Like I said, 60% of eligible voters don't vote, and you can't win with just the majority of your base (since you call them most of the dem party, and I don't disagree), so why are you trying to win over moderates instead of rally new support? Why not give a voice to those who may not be voting because they don't feel represented? (Not saying everyone who doesn't vote does so because of this reason, just picked one at random).
I meant more why haven't they done this at any point during the last few decades? But even then, why not now? How is promising Americans another paid federal holiday a bad idea during a campaign?
Voting rights have been a major topic over the last few years, where were her policies on enshrining the right to vote and stop these voter purges we've been seeing?
And all of this is to say, it can just be lip service. Trump lies constantly, and he does it to hurt people, so why can't Democrats lie to try to help people? No, instead they just try to return to the status quo at the first opportunity they can, while convincing their voters that being centrist is the only way to be a progressive.
Cause they're two sides of the same coin, boss. They have the same donors, they go to the same bars and clubs and restaurants and country clubs together. And miraculously, every time Democrats get power, we hold the status quo, and then the Republicans shove us right, and the Dems hold until we're shifted right again.
The Dems never seem to make any meaningful attempt to move us forward, and if they do, it's handicapped because they have to compromise and work across the aisle.
Trump/Republicans weren't wrong when they said people's perception of reality is more important than actual reality. People keep saying as a country, quantifiably, we are doing better under Biden than we did under Trump.
But polls and articles leading up to the election showed Americans did not feel better off, they did not feel like the economy was working for them, etc.
And Democrats ignored it and kept trying to shove their figures and metrics down our throat, completely disregarding how people felt, and just expecting them to get over it.