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Climate change is the single overriding issue for me. We are beyond out of time to avert damaging levels of warming, and even Biden's climate policies -- by far the most sweeping in the history of the country -- are barely adequate to begin steering us away from the absolute worst. If Trump gets in, and eviscerates federal climate policy, and stacks the EPA with oil lobbyists (again), and fills federal courts with science-denying assholes, and sabotages state and local efforts to decarbonize, and destroys all chance of global cooperation on this issue, and (most importantly) dismantles democracy so that it is effectively impossible to vote for a progressive ever again absent a second civil war, then we will be consigning the entire planet to "nightmare hellscape" levels of climate change with no viable pathway out. A second Trump term would add four billion tons of carbon emissions over the next six years. It would "negate – twice over – all of the savings from deploying wind, solar and other clean technologies around the world over the past five years". And that analysis doesn't account for increased emissions from Trump policies, just a reversal of what Biden has accomplished. Allowing Trump to win again would not just be national, but global suicide.

2 Choices in 2024 #1 The man who is killing student debt, building infrastructure, going after medical debt, and so many more thing to help average Americans. #2 The man who advised us to consume bleach and shine a light inside our bodies to KILL covid, which he said was not not coming here because China shut it down. Also convicted for business fraud, and many other things.

No one despises the Democrats more than those of us who saw Bernie get steamrolled by them when he stated drawing crowds and winning primaries. But many of us older millennials also see the writing on the wall: We can't change a fucking thing about the current system voting GOP, green, or abstaining.

Being progressive, to me, means voting for the candidate that moves the needle toward the world I want to see. We cannot ever change the voting method and fundamental structure of our capitalistic hellscape by holding out for the perfect candidate. They do not exist.

They want us fighting like this, convincing others to not vote, or attacking a system that cannot and will not change by choice. We cannot effect change from a prison cell. Anything other than a vote for Biden will end all other hopeful prospects any progressive voter would have. The GOP literally has a manifesto, like a fucking school shooter would plan out, to turn the US into a Christian Iran.

The path to abolishing the electoral college and going to anything else will only happen when enough states push for the change at the local level. It's why there's such strong attacks at the state level to ban the use of ranked-choice voting. It's why the GOP is ignoring successful, or outright restricting, ballot initiatives to prevent the people from pushing for their own change.

Bottom line, Congress will never change the voting method in this country because those with the power to change it stand to lose the most by doing so. It's only by voting in the best candidates available at the time, within the confines of the system as it stands, that we can hope to enact any meaningful change.

Normally, I'd never tell someone how to vote, but after 4 years of both men, we know how they govern. Now, moreso than in 2016, is not the time to protest vote or refuse to vote on a single issue. We cannot afford, as a country or world, to let the orange menace have another term.

Cold war with a guy who can't control his emotions and goes online to let the world know about it no matter the time of the day...

Do you know how many times I've heard about your president tweeting this or that, in the last four years? Never. Not a single time. What a blessing that was.

Bloody nailed it.

Minor correction - Trump didn't win CO in 2016. Not overly important in the grand scheme of things, I'm just from there and I'd have been ashamed if he had.

The rest of it still stands. I'm involved in local politics and I consistently vote for more progressive candidates, and we've had some victories. In a recent example, a homophobic asshat of a city council member gave up his seat to run for mayor. Not only did he lose that race, the woman who won his former seat is a progressive lesbian.

But you know who I almost never see at council meetings or at events for state level positions? The kind of terminally online leftists who constantly complain about the Democrats being too conservative. Apparently it's more important to put other people's rights and lives at risk to make some kind of stand than it is to try to make any real difference in the ways we can. Maybe someday we'll have an electoral system that allows for more than 2 parties, but we sure as shit won't if people can't be bothered to pay attention to anything but the presidential race.

My state has voted Republican every election since 1968, with a true majority all but twice. So I can actually vote for whoever I like and it won't make a lick of difference.

Isn't the electoral college great?

Someday I'd like to hear a rational explanation about why the worse the Republican is, the more conservative and uncharismatic the Dem has to be.

Like, if all that matters is stopping Republicans...

Why aren't we running someone that people like?

A Bill Clinton or Barack Obama type that actively went after the youth vote, opened a dialog with voters, and took feedback to make their campaigns more appealing?

Historically speaking, that's a slam dunk.

We can keep trying to berate the youth into voting, but the thing about 18 year olds is, there's always 18 year olds. Convince this batch to hold their nose, and we got to convince the next one again. Plus re-convirnce the old batch again. Someone that's 30 right now has spent almost half their life being told that they have no say in who they vote for, they just have to vote against trump.

How are people surprised they feel disenfranchised?

Why can't we try listening to the youth, and trust that as the future party moves further to the left, they stay with the party?

I don’t understand this political strategy in the long-run. If the left always unflinchingly votes for the leftmost candidate then the optimal strategy for the DNC is always to choose someone just 1% to the left of whoever the Republicans are running.

The trumpers aren’t strong because they always vote. They’re strong because everyone knows that, if Trump isn’t on the ballot, they won’t turn out to vote nearly as strongly.

Combine this with the fact that basically every business interest wants right-wing politics and you get the perpetual rightwards slide of the Democratic Party.

Any attempt to use logic, reasoning, common sense, and nuance with people that think that by NOT doing something, you can bring about the change you want in the world…

Is a waste of fucking time.

The argument won't convince them, because their moral stance is simply a justification for laziness. They have no morals, they just don't want to do shit.