Thread by @N7IRL

I'm getting really fucking tired of voting being discussed in terms of who owes who what.

No one owes anyone anything, except that our elected politicians owe us doing the best fucking job they can.

Who owes who what is irrelevant outside of that.

The idea of witholding votes because you don't owe a certain politician, or that you owe the frontrunner a vote, are completely goddamn irrelevant.

It's a primary. People run, someone wins, then people do or do not vote for them.

Sometimes the best candidate in the primary wins, sometimes not.

None of that has anything to do with who owes who what.

We go through the primary process, someone gets the nomination, then you decide if you're voting for the nominee.

Sometimes that's going to mean you're voting for someone you can avidly support.

Sometimes that means holding your nose.

It's not about who's "owed" a vote.

It's entirely about what you think that nominee is going to do, versus what their opponent will do.

If you're in the position of voting for someone you can support without hesitation, that's great.

But in the long term, in the big picture you're voting based on what you think that person is going to do if put in that position even when you don't feel eager about doing so.

The point of the primary is that this is supposed to be where each candidate makes the case for what they plan to do.

Here's where any semblance of "owing" anyone comes in.

The candidates owe us making the best possible case for themselves.

What got fucked up this time around got fucked up on multiple levels.

The DNC and the Dem establishment pushed someone who has absolutely NOT made a real case for himself.

All while going *signal lost* on another candidate who actually tried to make a strong case.

And trying their level best to oppose another candidate who made a powerful case for himself but whose campaign seemed to believe they don't need to make that case EVERYWHERE, all in the face of that DNC opposition.

And bending the rules for a dude whose case was "Money".

And between that and every other candidate simply running into the point at which they'd spent and spent and it wasn't enough...we got stuck with the candidate who made the least case for himself.

NOW would probably be a great time to start making that case.

But the question of who should be voting for him is not a matter of who is owed votes from whom.

He will get votes from people who think that in contrast to Trump he will push the country in a better direction.

The framing of people saying they're not voting for him because they don't "owe" him votes is nonsense, as is the framing that they MUST vote for him or it's their fault Trump wins.

If Biden is the nominee, it's his responsibility to the voters to make a case that he can lead.

But don't NOT vote out of spite. If you feel he didn't make the case well enough, and you feel that where he might lead the country is NOT better than what we have now? Then vote your conscience. Not out of some sense your vote is being demanded.

I get that this time around we actually had one of the few times where we had progressive aims represented.

And instead we get another centrist at a time where it's increasingly clear that centrism isn't going to save us.

But so much of the stuff around the individual candidates is people pouring themselves into identifying with people who are, at the end of the day, POLITICIANS.

They're a politician you like. They may even be a good person. You are still just ONE constituent, one voter.

The reality is that even if you met them and they were very nice and very personable unless you're around them all the time you're one among millions of faces.

Their campaign isn't your goddamn family. They're not your dad, mom, aunt, uncle, grandpa, or grandma.

Whatever meaning, whatever sense of belonging, whatever notion of a movement you convinced yourself of?

You supported a politician running for public office. The deeper meaning you ascribed to that is something you sold yourself.

I was disappointed when Castro dropped out, because we'd lost a progressive voice.

I was disappointed when Warren dropped out, for the same reason.

And I'm disappointed that it's come to Bernie dropping out, because now we don't have a progressive running.

And now that we have the most milquetoast possible centrist apparently getting the nomination?

I'm not exactly fucking happy about it.

But having to vote for a milquetoast centrist has been MULTIPLE DECADES OF ELECTIONS.

And if the option is putting that centrist into the White House or have four more years of the blithering shitpile in there now?

I'll take four years of ineffective, impotent bullshit over actively catering to fascists.

But that's MY reasoning.

If that's not good enough for you, that's fine.

But again, vote based on what YOU need the nominee to have proven to you.

Vote based on what YOU expect each party's nominee to do and which future you think will be better.

Who you owe is YOURSELF.

If you can justify voting for Biden or if can't bring yourself to vote for a man credibly accused of rape, that is YOUR decision to make.

Just don't act out of some kneejerk spite that others demand you vote a certain way.

Now me, I also consider how others are going to be impacted by whoever wins.

Which for me is a very strong reason to see even a weak, ineffective Dem as better than what we have now.

It's not a great choice to be forced to have to make, I don't have to like it.

I mean, again...having the best available choice not be good enough is NOT SOMETHING NEW FOR A SOCIALIST-LEANING PERSON IN THIS GODDAMN COUNTRY.

But as Alexandra pointed out in that thread I RT'd...Dem POTUS means which battles we're fighting SHIFT.

Joe Biden is not a fucking great choice but the notion that he'd somehow be worse than the man who's actively MURDERING swathes of the public so his buddies can make a little more money reselling equipment the taxpayers already paid for...is inane.

Joe Biden will be uninspiring and ineffective and won't do anywhere near enough to actually hold the GOP accountable for their ongoing treason.

And he'd still not be doing as much active harm as the man whose decisions are predicated almost entirely on who's stoking his ego.

If this is what it comes down to, NOT having dozens of new Federalist Society judges confirmed every time there's an opportunity to fill a seat is better than the alternative.

I don't have to like Biden to grasp that that's better for everyone.

So for my sake, and the sake of so many others, if I have to I will vote for the Dem nominee even if it's nowhere near who I wanted.

Because that's how it works. It's not about who is or is not "owed" my vote. It's about me voting what I see as the better future.

Yes, we COULD HAVE had M4A.

We STILL could. If we can actually get the fucking GOP out of power, there will be future elections, future opportunities to push what we should be looking forward to NOW.

Every election cycle is filled with goddamn DOZENS of COULD HAVES.

If it weren't for the fact that for once we're actually seeing someone with 'socialist' in their political ideology actually come anywhere close, I'd find it weirder that people are forgetting that.

It is actually a major shift that in a country that kept itself in existential terror at the mere thought of communism for multiple decades, and in which a centrist got endlessly labeled "socialist" for center-right policies, we had any success pushing to end health insurance.

So we can gripe and grouse and hold onto ridiculous fantasies about Bernie's chances of winning and what was done to prevent it or we can acknowledge that outside of any stumbles by the campaign or opposition by the DNC, these ideas are now MAINSTREAM.

It's another set of things we COULD HAVE had that are still things that COULD BE.

And my position is that even a shitty Dem puts us closer to that than anyone from the party currently actively dismantling the country for profit.

If this reasoning doesn't work for you?

I don't actually really blame you.

I GET why so many feel like we're past the point where this situation should be acceptable.

We shouldn't have to be choosing between two men accused of rape.

I'll readily admit, maybe I'm wrong about a lot of things and where we are now is having enough people absolutely fed up that we're stuck between a party of terrorists and a party that's seemingly impotent to oppose them that we're ready to rise up en masse to force a change.

But I'm also seeing self-described leftists talking like the GOP is offering anything better than the Dems and liberals clinging to a false sense of stability and "normal" and I'm not especially confident that even the loudest would-be revolutionaries are ready.

And I've said before that I don't think the assholes among Bernie's supporters made a huge dent in how many people were willing to vote for Bernie?

But devotion to dunking on liberals for mildly cringy metaphors on Twitter certainly wasn't time devoted to making the case.

So I'm not especially convinced that what calls itself the Left in this country is in the best possible position to actually convince sufficient enough people that the time for revolution is now.

Which sort of just leaves electoral efforts.

And if we're stuck with electoral efforts that means overcoming decades of GOP fuckery and it means dealing with the fact that the two primary parties are far-right and mostly center-right and only the latter of those has any chance of being shifted leftward.

Which in turn means dealing with the Dem establishment and dealing with the DNC because unless you have a leftist party in your pocket ready to go and ready to dominate we're still dealing with the Dems.

And I don't see any future in which the Democratic party disappears while the GOP still exists that doesn't end up worse than what we already have.

Whatever people's fantasies that people supporting the party devoted to enriching the wealthy can be swayed toward socialism.

Which for me, once again, means that I grumble and grouse and vote for the party doing the least to murder us all.

And remember that it's not JUST presidential elections that change things.

And an electoral loss is temporary.

This is not a defense of Biden.

This is not a defense of the Dems.

This is me arguing that in my mind, if I can't have the electoral results I WANT I will MAKE the best I can out of what I get.

Even if I know we could have had so much better.

Not because I owe Biden, or the Dems.

But because to me I owe myself and everyone else a vote in favor of something better than this pitiful mewling overgrown toddler tantruming his way into genocide.

If you need to feel like your vote is going toward someone you can actively support, that's fair too.

You owe it to yourself to look at what's motivating how you're going to vote and vote for what you believe gets the future you want to see.

If you get to November and Biden hasn't convinced you his presidency will be better than anything we have under Trump?

Vote to reflect that. Not in spite of anyone else, or out of pique at what should have/could have been.