I am sick and tired of fear-based voting and I wish more people were, as well. I know that either Trump or Biden are going to win, based on first-past-the-post voting, but one guy is highly unpopular and feared (for good reason) while the other has a serious enthusiasm problem (also for good reason). Our choices are terrible, but many people have been pushed to choose one of these guys out of fear — the fear of fascism, the fear of socialism (even though Biden is not even close to being a socialist), and the fear of the unknown.
Now, if you have been following me for a while, you might know that I have been very critical of the Democratic Party. In fact, I made a whole series about it. However, I have been critical of the Republican Party, as well. But at this time, I have come to post to this blog with a message that I wanted to post on or before Election Day in the United States, and I know that at least one person who reads this might not like it. Heck, I might lose some followers over this, but I need to make these opinions known before the final tally (because we know that not all the votes will be counted).
That said, the greater message is for mostly the people who are beyond disgusted with our two major political parties, the Democrats and Republicans, but still feel compelled to vote for candidates from those parties. I also have a message for party loyalists who feel the need to attack people who are critical of these parties and those who feel the need to moralize their preference for Joe Biden.
What I Need to Say Now
I decided long ago that I would not vote for Joe Biden or Donald Trump. I tweeted this some months ago:
I have not gone into depth about my reasoning until now.
In short:
Yeah, I know that either Biden or Trump will be president come late January 2021, but I’m not helping either one. I feel that both these guys are unacceptable. While it is true that Trump has been an unmitigated disaster and I would like to be rid of him, Joe Biden is not the right person to replace him. If we get rid of Trump, we will have “solved” one problem. However, we will be replacing one problem with another and compounding problems that existed even long before Donald Trump announced his candidacy in 2015.
What Spurred Me to Make This Post
Over four months ago, I got into a heated discussion about the 2020 Election (and voting for Biden in particular). This discussion is what spurred me to write this essay (and it’s a long one). Now, I wanted to post this months ago, and in the form of a video essay, but I couldn’t because of my problems with procrastination and lack of video-making skills. (I might still make the video after Election Day, pending the results. If I make that video, I will post attach it to this post and possibly update the text.)
In a way, I am glad I waited to make this essay because of the recent events, including a discussion that Brianha Joy Gray and Virgil Texas had with Chomsky on the podcast and the presidential election in Bolivia.
The Discussion About the Presidential Election on Discord
In late June 2020, I went to a group chat in Discord and I told one of the members in the group that they did not have to vote for Biden since there were plenty of people around to do it for him. This person said that he was thinking of voting for Biden after Donald Trump’s latest affirmation that he sided with white supremacists. (At the time, Trump retweeted a video with a supporter of his shouting, “White power!” before deleting the retweet.) Despite that development, I told the other person that they did not have to vote for Biden.
As I was texting this other person, I said that we had four months to avert having four more years of Trump and any time with Biden (and his eventual replacement). I suggested that this person consider voting for Gloria La Riva from the Party for Socialism and Liberation (if that was at all possible; it is possible in my state), for example. However, this turned into a heated argument.
The group member I was talking to insulted me. He said that I was out of my fucking mind if I believed that we could push a third-party candidate. He said I was being obtuse. He said I had my head up my ass. He even accused me of gaslighting people. (To that, I wanted to say, “Do you know what words mean?”) Additionally, he dismissed my intention to vote for La Riva as a “protest vote.” I still maintained my own politeness through all of this.
During this argument, I was fully aware of the difficulties that lie ahead in getting more people to vote third-party. That said, I said that the belief it is impossible to make third parties viable was a self-fulfilling prophecy. This is true, at least in theory.
The Debate Between the Bad Faith Podcast Hosts and Noam Chomsky
In mid-October 2020, Briahna Joy Gray and Virgil Texas, the co-hosts of the Bad Faith Podcast, presented Noam Chomsky with valid questions about the efficacy of voting for Biden. Yes, even though many of us, including the #NeverBiden people, would love to be rid of Trump, there were still valid concerns that Biden would hurt the most vulnerable Americans who were/are being hurt by Trump and far-right policies. Yet, during the debate, Chomsky never directly answered their questions but instead blamed non-Biden voters for “helping Trump” and ignoring the issue of climate change.
Of course, liberals jumped on this story and told people to “listen to Chomsky,” although, as has been pointed out, these same people love to ignore Chomsky most of the time.
Some self-described lefties did the same and they rightfully received some pushback.
Where I Was Four Years Ago
Honestly, I would have voted for Clinton in 2016 if the election were close enough. Ultimately though, 2016 broke me of fear-based voting and HRC’s campaign and her supporters helped me get there. I voted for Jill Stein in my state and every time I think about my choice, the more I am proud of it. I am not falling for the Democrats’ nonsense again. Thus, I will not be voting for Joe Biden.
Of course, I strongly disagree with Chomsky now. This is not the first time I disagreed with Chomsky on things. One thing I disagreed with him on was his suggestion that U.S. troops stay in Syria to protect the anarcho-communists in Rojava. (While I wanted that society to thrive, I knew better because the U.S. was never in Syria for humanitarian reasons, no matter how anyone felt about Assad and regardless of what he’d done. The U.S. could only make things worse.) This Biden thing is another area where Chomsky is incredibly wrong.
The Common Thread in These Discussions
Both these discussions — mine and the one Chomsky took part in on the Bad Faith Podcast — involved the concept of fear-based voting. I wanted to write this essay because I despise fear-based voting and the U.S. electoral process. So, without further ado, I am going to say my piece about this whole process and my thoughts on voting third-party and the prospect of voting for Joe Biden.
Are We Serious About Voting Third-Party?
If enough people voted third party, we could have more third-party candidates representing us nationally. However, we still must contend with voter suppression and outright cheating by Republican and Democratic operatives. We must also contend with the fear of enabling one-party rule, but the desired outcome worth is worth the risk.
That said, how long are we going to keep doing participating in the duopoly? If now is not the right time to get started with the process of making third parties viable, when is the right time?
The Right Time to Vote Third-Party
In 2008, we were swept up in the Barack Obama craze, so many of us didn’t even think about voting for third parties.
In 2012, some of us were disenchanted by Obama, but most of us still supported him to help him defeat the out-of-touch plutocrat Mitch Romney. Thus, few people thought about voting third-party and most of us never even heard of Jill Stein or any other third-party candidate.
In 2016, we had to vote for Hillary Clinton as not to get Trump, so we “could not dare” think about voting third-party. We got Trump anyway.
What about this year (2020)? “No, we can’t vote third-party. We gotta get rid of Trump!”
In 2024, people will still say, “It’s not the time to vote third-party.” By then, we will likely have to deal with a more repulsive Republican who’s smarter than Trump.
What about 2028? “It’s still not the time.”
What about 2032 (if we’re still around)? “Nope, not the time.”
What about 2036? “Oh my God, Oooh!”
Long story short: It will never be the time with this mindset. This is the definition of fear-based voting.
About Fear-Based Voting
Often in the United States, we are not called to vote for something, but against someone. That is mostly due to fear and it is a tool that both major political parties in the U.S. use to great effect. This is something that Jamarl Thomas mentions often, and he is 100% correct.
What Is Fear-Based Voting?
Generally, in the United States, we are told that if we do not vote for one party, we are inviting all types of catastrophe. Democrats are usually the ones who use fear-based voting (since Republicans are more concerned with depressing the vote during general elections), but both parties use fear to control people.
Often, Democratic, independent, and other left-leaning voters are told that the Republican Party represents the bad guys while the Democratic Party is nominally better. (Nowadays, we just hear that the GOP is worse. It’s an admission that the Democratic Party isn’t really good, isn’t it? Anyway …) Democrats use the fear of people losing civil liberties and even violence to convince people to vote against Republicans.
Republican voters are called to vote for Republicans to end abortions and to win the culture war. Republicans may even try to win a larger swath of voters by using the fear of Islamic terrorists and immigrants.
Those tactics are dangerous because they’re reductive. The arguments that loyalists of both major parties use mainly serve as a distraction, even when they hit upon rights that are important to citizens at large. As a result, people are steered away from looking at third parties and independent candidates while giving even more power to the two corrupt parties at the top.
Our Fears in 2016
In 2016, Democrats used fear-based voting to get people on the left to fall in line and elect Hillary Clinton. Trump was the boogeyman because we did not know how he would lead or if he was even capable of leading a nation.
Among the fears that Trump’s candidacy inspired was the ideological makeup of the Supreme Court, Trump’s possible undermining of NATO (is that really a bad thing, though?), and his proximity to the nuclear launch codes. Would we see a nuclear war because Trump acted on a whim? Many people who voted for Clinton did so because they did not want to find out.
Our Current Fears
This year (2020), we are being told to vote for Biden — again, out of fear of Trump.
“OH MY GOD, TRUMP IS A FASCIST!!!! IF YOU DON’T VOTE FOR BIDEN, YOU’RE ADVOCATING FASCISM!!! (And you’re a terrible person.)”
However, it was fear-based voting that partially got us, Biden, as the Democratic nominee. (Other factors included the pandemic, DNC cheating, and media collusion.) Biden is the worst guy to go against Trump at this moment, so the Democrats could lose once again, even if they get the lion’s share of Bernie Sanders’ supporters to vote against Trump.
Now, I will admit, there is good reason to fear Trump because he has grossly mishandled this pandemic, his judges are unqualified, his cabinet is filled to the brim with swamp creatures, and he has emboldened many right-wingers, especially white supremacists. Yet, I question just how much better Biden and Kamala Harris will be.
That said, this time, many people on the left who were indignant four years ago have given up fighting and they have expressed their intention to vote for Biden. That includes many role models, like Brother Cornell West and Susan Sarandon.
This includes some independent lefty media people, as well.
While I may be somewhat disappointed in the lefties who have pledged their vote to Biden, I am not angry at those who know that Biden is bad, admit that he is bad, and refrain from voter-shaming. Unfortunately, some lefties have taken to voter-shaming, even among Sanders supporters. And as many vote-shamers do, these lefties, in concert with the liberals, have chastised people by saying that they are tacitly supporting fascism or claiming that those withholding their vote for Biden are all “privileged.” (I assure you that I am not privileged and never have been.)
Other lefties, like Chris Hedges and Jimmy Dore, remain indignant. They have essentially said, “I am not doing this [anymore]!” I am in this last camp, and I would like to discuss my reasoning. But first, I want to share an idea I had for getting neither Trump nor Biden.
My Long-Shot Idea for Getting Neither Trump nor Biden
Days before I got into that argument, I wrote down a few ideas about bypassing Trump and Biden and I shared them on Twitter — via my personal Twitter account. In short, I had three ideas to get lefties to coalesce and possibly reach others and avoid a second Trump term or any Biden term:
- We could vote Green. This year, the presidential and vice-presidential nominees for the Green Party are, of course, Howie Hawkins and Angela Walker, Respectively.
- We could vote for Gloria La Riva. As I discussed, she represents the Party for Socialism and Liberation. I was first made aware of her because of the suggestion made by journalist Mike Prysner. She is currently on the ballot in 15 states and an official write-in candidate in 14 states, enough to win the Electoral College.
- We could work on a write-in campaign for Jesse Ventura. He wanted to run as a Green, but he said he needed a clear path for the nomination, and he couldn’t run earlier this year because he would lose his health insurance.
All of these options were preferable to me because I agreed with all these candidates more than I did with Trump or Biden. Also, Howie Hawkins was the originator of the Green New Deal. I believe that La Riva and Ventura would honestly do all they could to reduce the impact of the worst effects of climate change, as well.
That said, I must acknowledge the problems with all of these options:
- Howie Hawkins is a problematic candidate for the Greens.
- Gloria La Riva isn’t on the ballot outright in most states.
- It was always harder to convince people to vote for Ventura than Hawkins or La Riva.
Howie Hawkins is a problematic candidate for the Greens.
In the past, he has supported Russiagate and used CIA talking points where it comes to Assange.
Howie has somewhat disavowed Russiagate recently, and he has said that all the charges against Assange should be dropped.
Besides these important issues, I have heard and read about the allegations that the Green presidential race was rigged. Other candidates, especially Dario Hunter, have alleged that the delegate requirements were adjusted to help Hawkins and that only Hawkins was allowed to participate in certain events.
Furthermore, I have heard that the Green Party wasn’t concerned so much with winning but keeping the power structures within the party intact, much like the DNC does (and there are some ex-Dems among the Greens running things into the ground).
Now, some lefties refuse to believe these allegations, but they are worth looking into. We may know a lot more after this election. In any event, the lefties must audit the Green Party if they are weighing it as a viable electoral option in the future.
Gloria La Riva is less known than Howie Hawkins, yet for some reason, she is polling higher than Hawkins when she’s included in polls. Still …
Gloria La Riva isn’t on the ballot outright in most states.
This will make voters less likely to vote for her or write her in. If she was able to win the 15 states where she is on the ballot, that wouldn’t be enough to give her an Electoral College Victory. She would have to win at least 23 total, so people would have to write in her name in at least 8 states.
In some ways, it was always harder to convince people to vote for Ventura than Hawkins or La Riva.
Although people have been working to get Ventura as an official third-party candidate in various states — and he is the Green candidate in Alaska — fewer people across the country may be willing to vote for him via write-in than they are to vote for other third-party or independent options. If he was on a ticket in all states, he might be able to pull a Ross Perot or even get a plurality of votes. He is well-known and could piece together a coalition of lefty, rightist, and independent voters. I think he could have won the popular vote if he was on a ticket, but he would have to get at least 270 Electoral College votes.
Also, there are many lefties out there who do not like Ventura’s politics. Ventura himself has admitted that he is “socially liberal and fiscally conservative” — i.e., he leans libertarian (he says with a small “l,” but he has entertained running on the Libertarian Party’s ticket for 2016). In any event, he parts from the Libertarian Party on climate change. Now, with regards to economics, I want to know if Ventura is open to learning about MMT (Modern Monetary Theory) because if he is, and he could come around to implementing it, that problem works itself out.
In short:
All these ideas are longshots based on access and people’s willingness to think outside the duopoly (really, monopoly).
A Missed Opportunity
Sadly, I think that our best chance of getting a third party — and a peaceful revolution — was in 2016. Then, Bernie Sanders came from over 20 points down to make the Democratic primary a real two-person race. He won about 22 states plus the Democrats Abroad vote and he had far-reaching appeal; his coalition included young people, far-left-leaning Democrats, some Republicans, and many independents. Sanders had leverage, and that is when he should have threatened to take his coalition to the Green Party or in an independent run if the Democrats refused to make an honest effort to appeal to that coalition and make real concessions. However, he didn’t.
Instead of using his leverage, Bernie Sanders capitulated to the Democrats and put in a serious effort to help get Hillary Clinton elected as president — more effort than her entire campaign put in.
What was the risk if Sanders took his coalition outside of the Democratic Party? Sanders could have split the vote on the left and we would have gotten Trump. But guess what? Many Sanders supporters (more than HRC supporters did in 2008) relented and voted for Clinton and we got Trump anyway.
That said, I think that we should press on and divest from the Democrats and Republicans. To be perfectly honest, it is an uphill battle, but one worth fighting. However, too many of us are scared to do it because we fear that we could give one of the major two parties too much power. To that, I say that both parties are working together anyway. Also, look around. Republicans (currently) control most governorships and state houses, the Senate, the presidency, and the courts. We will need to overturn all that and supporting more than two major parties is part of the process — and we will need to start locally.
Why We Were Told We Must Vote for Biden
The following is a collection of reasons that many people have given us to vote for Biden.
“We need to get rid of Trump!”
This is the top reason we are given for voting for Biden. Even though I agree with this sentiment, the fact of the matter is that we would be trading one problem for another. Also, we are often told that Biden is “not Trump,” in lieu of any issues.
Alternatively, we are told …
“You’re helping Trump [if you criticize or don’t vote for Biden]!”
This is precisely what Chomsky said in his debate with Briahna Joy Gray and Virgil Texas. I disagree because this discussion is reductive and it puts the onus on people to take responsibility for what their elected (and selected) leaders will do once in office — and the general public’s reaction to results.
We were fed this same type of garbage four years ago. If it didn’t work on me then, it won’t work on my now. I can see that this is how Dem loyalists, liberals, and some lefties use fear against the rest of us. Normally, a small group of people is being preemptively blamed for the results of the election, although that group of people being berated represents a small segment of the population and one without that much power. Even when the fearmongers are referring to nonvoters, a large segment of the population, the fearmongers ignore the fact that most nonvoters have been disenfranchised to the point where they see no value in voting.
To be quite honest, many of the people who can vote but choose not to have a point. In the U.S. electoral system, people with money and corporations hold so much power that they can essentially overrule the vote and push through policies regardless of public support. But the powerless still carry the blame, much like individuals are told what they can do to mitigate climate change and general pollution when the fact remains that 100 corporations and are responsible for most global greenhouse gas emissions. Worse, the U.S. military alone is a greater polluter than 140 countries.
Why is it that any non-vote for Biden helps Trump and not the other way around? And why is it that any criticism of Biden, even from people who have pledged their vote to him, is harmful? If Biden cannot withstand any criticism, he is that weak.
“Biden raped fewer people.”
This was actually a sentiment expressed by many liberals after Tara Reade’s story gained traction. Even worse, some women — even those claiming to be rape victims themselves — have said that Biden could rape them and kill a bus full of school children and that he would still have their vote because they had to get rid of Trump.
Gross.
Now, excuse me … If Biden did any of those things, would he not be automatically worse than Trump?
“But the climate.”
Sure, the Democrats “believe in science,” but that doesn’t stop the party from supporting fracking. Biden will not ban fracking. He and Kamala Harris have restated that many times since the first presidential debate.
Also, the Democrats will not commit to a fracking ban in their 2020 platform. Sure, platforms are non-binding. However, if Democrats will not even pay lip service to a fracking ban, that says a lot about them.
What’s more is that Democrats will do nothing to address the greatest contributors to excess greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere: corporations and the U.S. military.
“But the courts.”
Let’s face it: The courts are gone, and the Democrats helped us get there. Thus, this was never a good reason to vote for Biden — or Hillary, for that matter.
Even if Hillary Clinton was elected president, there was a good chance that the Democrats still would have been the minority in both Houses of Congress to start 2017. Thus, there is not much she could have gotten done beyond more austerity, more tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy, and more defense funding. Mitch McConnell would have still been the Majority Leader in the Senate, and Republicans like the late John McCain expressly said that they would have held up any nominations to the Supreme Court for four more years if he had to.
To make matters worse, The Democrats have helped to make the courts — not just the Supreme Court — more corporate and more reactionary by fast-tracking over 100 of Trump’s judges. This process started in 2018, when Democrats fast-tracked 60 judges during the midterms, when the party was trying to recapture the House and stave off Republican challenges to Democratic seats in the Senate in 24 states.
And all this time, Democrats were worried about the health of the sainted Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Ruth Bader Ginsburg should have stepped down during Obama’s first term. Nevertheless, she died in September and Republicans rushed at the chance to get another reactionary, corporate whack job on the Court. Ginsburg’s body wasn’t even cold, and the Senate Judiciary Committee was holding confirmation hearings for Amy Coney Barrett, who was ultimately confirmed. Democrats like Dianne Feinstein helped her along. It’s gotten so bad, that even NARAL has turned on Feinstein.
Democrats should have abstained from these hearings to expose them for the farce that they are.
Now, I want to point this out, but Amy Coney Barrett does pose a threat to reproductive rights and health care in the United States, but that is not all we should be focusing on. For instance, what is her record on worker’s rights and education?
Also:
Most of the time, we are told to focus on the Supreme Court. However, we almost always ignore the lower courts. To date, over 150 justices in appellate and district courts — all lifetime appointments — have been confirmed under Trump. Many consequential decisions are made in district and appellate courts. Additionally, most of the Supreme Court justices are pro-corporate.
Yes, we are ignoring the part where most of the judges appointed to all these courts since Bill Clinton’s administration have made rulings against workers and that’s by design. That includes RGB, as she was part of majority decisions that went in favor of corporations regarding copyright law, by the way.
“Trump is a fascist!”
Biden is also a fascist based on his words and actions. Also, neoliberalism will only lead to more fascists running for president.
What is fascism?
Fascism as an ideology that is inspired by Benito Mussolini’s Italian Fascism. That ideology, which was developed in the early 20th century, is associated with, authoritarianism, hierarchical structures, and total state control, i.e. a dictatorship. Some people will simply define it as the marriage between corporations and the state, others will focus on the subversion of democracy or the focus on nationalism, tradition, and race.
Mussolini’s fascism rejected Marxism, liberalism, and traditional conservatism while borrowing from all three of those ideologies.
- For instance, fascism was inspired by national syndicalism.
- While taking the focus away from class conflict, fascism focuses more on race and nationalism.
- Fascism rejects the notions of representative government and individual rights. However, the ideology advocates public participation in politics and uses parliamentary channels.
- While it rejects many traditional conservative views, fascism uses edited history and nostalgia to inspire “national rebirth.”
Ultimately, fascists are imperialists. They believe that political violence and war are necessary to achieve national rebirth. As such, they have no problem with expanding their territory and displacing people in other lands.
When you think about it, what we call Trumpism does enable fascism to flourish. However, I would point that many fascist and proto-fascist elements in the United States were already there to begin with. Also, look at the 14 hallmarks of fascism according to Umberto Eco. How many boxes does the United State tick? How many boxes does Biden tick, as well?
Who says that you can vote out fascism?
Lately, Trump has threatened to contest the election in many ways.
- Earlier this year, Trump telegraphed his moves to undermine the United States Post Office, thus making it harder, if not impossible to vote. His appointment to the office of Postmaster General, Louis DeJoy, worked quickly to remove flat sorting machines and Postal Boxes.
- Trump denigrating voting by mail, even though Oregon voters do so entirely by mail and there have been few cases of proven fraud by mail.
- Trump and the Republicans rushed Amy Coney Barrett’s confirmation in the hopes of having her be a deciding vote in case the 2020 presidential election is even contested, a la the 2000 presidential selection.
- Brett Kavanaugh, Trump’s second SCOTUS appointment, has argued that no votes that aren’t counted on Election Night should be counted at all, despite the fact that that is not how any of our elections have worked.
- Furthermore, Trump has reportedly talked about claiming victory if he leads in the vote count on Election Night.
In short, it appears that Trump is doing all he can to stay in office, the will of the people be damned. So, can we really vote that out?
The best way to vote away fascism is never to vote for it in the first place. By the way, Trump likely would not have been elected if not for the “Pied Piper” Strategy. I will keep reminding people of that.
And if you vote in a fascist, it will take more than voting to get rid of them. It will take a movement.
What’s more is that these same people who want us to hate Trump were willing to vote for him if Bernie Sanders won the Democratic nomination.
These evil creatures would doom us to a second Trump term in order to prevent a Sanders nomination. So, it would be alright for them to vote for Trump, but it’s not alright for anyone to vote third-party? Sanders was the compromise, and they wouldn’t even let us have the compromise.
And if Trump is such an existential threat, why did many Democratic oligarchs threaten to vote for Trump and why did the same people guilting you into voting for Biden wish him a speedy recovery when he was diagnosed with COVID-19? Real lefties wanted that bastard dead.
For a moment, we were seeing Trump being rehabilitated in real-time. Just like George W. Bush has been rehabilitated by liberals, we know that Trump will be respected like Reagan after he leaves office, and it will be much easier.
That should make you think. It seems to me that Trump isn’t the type of threat that some people want us to think he is. What is the point of all this, then?
“We can push Biden left.”
No, you are not moving Biden left. Anyone who has said that we will is either lying to others or lying to themselves. The primary was the time to move Biden left, but he and the people who installed him as the Democratic nominee wouldn’t budge.
Biden is the guy who shunned a machine union’s support in 1972 yet welcomed corporate support with open arms. Once again, he will not support Medicare for All. Also, why would he feel the need to move left if he has your votes anyway and the Democratic establishment did all it could to help Biden in the primary? If he wins, he already has people’s votes and if he loses, the Democrats will just blame the left anyway.
“We must save the ACA!”
The Affordable Care Act is garbage. It is a right-wing health care plan that the Republicans rejected the moment Obama promoted. Under the ACA, Americans must purchase insurance plans or pay a penalty.
Even if the law isn’t gutted, premiums will continue — yes, CONTINUE — to skyrocket. Also, at least 12 million people have already lost their employee-sponsored health insurance this year, largely due to people to the pandemic. “Strengthening the ACA” — which Biden wants to do — will not address these problems.
We need a single-payer system or a national health service. This is non-negotiable.
“Blurb, blurb, blurb … harm reduction!”
This is lesser-evil-ism by another name. Even if we vote for the lesser evil, we’re still voting for evil. Thus, voting for “harm reduction” means that harm is still being done.
Anyone who says this is admitting that a Biden presidency is going to suck donkey balls if it happens. And that’s a selling point?
“We’re trying to restore the soul of America!”
Who said the United States had a soul to begin with? This country was built on exploitation, genocide, and white supremacy. We will get nowhere unless we are honest about the history of this nation and are dedicated to fighting all forms of oppression. And it is not enough to say that you care about minorities and women. You must prove it by making sure that all people who are in places of authority are held accountable and that people have the power to redress their grievances and the power of self-determination.
“We’re trying to save our democracy!”
The United States has never really had a democracy. Our Constitution was written for the benefit of rich, landowning white males. The Electoral College also grants uneven representation to states with smaller populations with regards to the presidential election. Black men didn’t have the right to vote until after the Civil War. And while women have had the right to vote intermittingly and in limited areas, the right for all women to vote was not enshrined in the Constitution and only granted just 100 years ago. Still, Black folks, Native Americans, and other people of color have long dealt with voter suppression.
There has always been some level of shenanigans in the U.S.’s electoral system, but it has been more blatant as we’ve gone on. We are forced to contend with gerrymandering and illegal voter purges, which, again, mostly affect Black voters. And since the Supreme Court — which, again, is not very responsive to the people — gutted the Voting Rights Act, states have taken to reduce the number of polling places, particularly in Black, poor, and Democratic-leaning areas.
Why I Did Not Vote for Joe Biden
Did you see how easy it was for me to destroy all those talking points that liberals use to guilt people into voting for Biden? Well, I have more reasons for not voting for Biden, starting with the crap he said in 2018.
Joe Biden has ‘no empathy’ for young people’s struggles, many of which he helped cause or make worse with his legislation.
On January 10, 2018, Joe Biden told an audience at the Los Angeles Times Ideas Exchange that he did not empathize with young folks who were struggling.
The younger generation tells me now how tough things are. Give me a break. No, no. I have no empathy for it. Give me a break because here’s the deal guys:
We decided we were going to change the world and we did. We did. We finished the Civil Rights Movement to the first stage. The women’s movement came into being.
To be fair, this is the rest of the quote:
So, my message is get involved. There’s no place to hide. You can go out and you can make all the money in the world, but you can’t build a wall high enough to keep the pollution out. You can’t live where you’re — you can’t not be diminished where your sister the man or woman or the woman she loves. You can’t — when you have a good friend being profiled — you can’t escape this stuff.
And so, there’s that old expression my philosophy professor would always use about — from — Plato: ‘The penalty good people pay for not being involved in politics is being governed by worse people than themselves.’ It’s open. Go out and change it.
Now, even with the full context of the quote, it goes without saying that Biden doesn’t want to give students free college or wipe out all of people’s student loans. With his bills and votes in the U.S. Senate, he helped make it nearly impossible for young people to get rid of their debt. Yet he blames them for their problems and ignores the advantages he himself had.
I’m going to be honest: The moment I heard Joe Biden say, “I have no empathy” for young people suffering — mainly because of legislation he passed when he was in Congress — I made the decision that I would never vote for him. That’s right. I will not vote for Joe Biden and I would not vote for him if he were running against the devil itself. Why would I vote for either entity when neither care about me nor anyone outside the donor class?
You might say that’s me voting with my emotions, and I won’t deny it. This is an emotional vote. However, most votes are emotional. Many of the people voting for Biden and against Trump are doing so with their emotions. The key thing here is that the people who refuse to vote for Biden nor Trump have facts to back them up. There is no good reason to vote for Joe Biden or Trump because they will do nothing for us, let alone end U.S. imperialism.
Besides having no empathy for young folks, Biden doesn’t want to institute Medicare for All.
Biden has said that he would veto such a bill if it came to his desk. He said this despite there being a freakin’ pandemic. He said this despite the proof that optimal care could work for evil people. Trump’s people got the ‘rona and survived. Even obese-as-hell Chris Christie survived. Imagine what a better healthcare system can do for good people.
Biden also opposes Medicare for All despite Obama offering to help Biden pay for his son Beau’s care after Beau suffered a stroke in May 2010. Beau ultimately died from brain cancer in 2015. Still, Biden has the nerve to use his son’s memory to deny people universal healthcare.
Biden will not institute a UBI.
This is despite people starving and facing foreclosure due to shutdowns. If any serious leader wanted people to stay home, stay safe, and help control the spread of the coronavirus, that leader would give people money to pay their bills, pay their rent, and purchase food. However, we do not have any serious leaders in power and Biden will not improve on Trump’s mishandling of the pandemic, particularly not in this area.
Biden wants to gut the social safety net even more.
If Biden is elected president, I expect severe austerity to social safety net programs.
Biden has advocated wanted to make cuts to Social Security since at least 1984. When he was in the Senate, Biden bragged about trying to work with the Republicans to gut Social Security and Medicare.
Biden also voted in favor of Bill Clinton’s “welfare reform” in 1996, which made cuts to programs for the poor. As of late, Biden has never said he regretted that vote.
When Biden was vice president, the Obama administration formed a commission that suggested cuts in Social Security and Medicare. That Bowles-Simpson commission’s plan was ultimately rejected because in large part due to progressive activists. The Tea Party also helped, but in an odd way.
“Nothing will fundamentally change” for the oligarchs.
In a June 2019 fundraiser in Manhattan, Joe Biden told a group of wealthy donors that “Nothing will fundamentally change” if he was elected. That means that nothing except their bottom line will change — an in an upward direction. This spells doom for everyone else, especially people who have already lost their homes and businesses.
The former vice president has a horrible record with Black folks.
Think about this: Why did Obama choose Joe Biden to be his running mate in 2008? Obama chose Biden because the then-U.S. senator from Delaware would reassure a contingent of white voters. Why is that? Well, look at Biden’s record.
Biden’s horrendous record with Black folks goes all the way back to his first years in Congress. This includes:
- His opposition to the desegregation of school busing.
- The 100-to-1 cocaine sentence disparity
- His stance on law enforcement in the 1980s
- The 1994 Crime Bill
- Various comments he made about Black folks throughout his career
I will speak about three of these topics in the next section, so here I will talk about the first and fifth issues.
Biden’s Opposition to Integrated School Busing
How can someone oppose desegregating school busing and not be a racist?
Various Comments Biden Has Made About Black Folks Throughout His Career
Biden has said many racist things over his career. For instance:
- In 1975, he said that segregation was good for black folks.
- That same year, Biden said that the Democratic Party needed its own George Wallace.
- In 1977, Biden said that he didn’t want his children to “grow up in … a racial jungle,” in reference to school busing.
- In 1988, Biden wrote a column in a local Delaware newspaper in support of welfare reform legislation passed by Congress that fall. In the column, Biden wrote of “welfare mothers driving luxury cars and leading lifestyles that mirror the rich and famous.” This rhetoric was one step away from “welfare queens.”
- In 1994, when he was pushing for the passage of the crime bill, he used dog whistles when talking about crime.
- In 2007, he called Barack Obama “Bright and clean,” and “articulate.”
During this election alone, Biden has made a series of racist comments, including:
- He compared Black children at a public pool where he was a lifeguard to cockroaches. This was that infamous “Corn Pop” story.
- During an event in South Carolina on February 11, 2020, Biden claimed to have met Nelson Mandela after Mandela was freed from prison. He later had to admit that he had never met Mandela.
- During one of the Democratic debates, Biden said that Black parents needed to play music for their children and that perhaps social workers could be sent to Black homes to help parents.
- At the end of an interview with Charlemagne tha God, Biden said that if anyone was wondering if they should vote for him or Trump, “You ain’t black.” He later apologized for that statement.
Biden has a horrible record on justice.
Let’s start with the 1994 Omnibus Crime Bill.
The 1994 Crime Bill
Since the law was passed, the total prison population in the United States more than doubled. Currently, there are still over 1.4 million incarcerated people, yet many have even been to trial. And not only did the crime bill explode the federal prison population, but it provided funds for local police departments, many of whom adopted the very policies established by the federal law.
Of course, Black people were already being incarcerated at rates that outpaced all other racial groups.
When asked about the crime bill, Biden has never fully denounced the bill. He has said that he regretted mandatory minimum sentences for crack convictions. However, he has often tried to shift blame by pointing to the states and bringing up the fact that the Congressional Black Caucus also supported the legislation.
Biden has never even tried to promote programs to help many Black folks who were arrested for nonviolent drug offenses. And he wants to give police departments, many teeming full of white supremacist thugs who would love to kill Black folks like sport, more money to crack people’s heads.
The 100-to-1 Cocaine Sentence Disparity, et al.
Joe Biden’s horrible record on justice does not end or begin with his vote for the 1994 Crime Bill.
In the 1980s, Biden outflanked President Ronald Reagan from the right. During Reagan’s administration, Biden was on the Senate Judicial Committee, where he worked closely with segregationist Strom Thurman on legislation that would increase funding for the war on drugs and allow for civil forfeiture. Even though Reagan vetoed the bill due to the increased spending it would require, many of Biden’s preferred policies from that legislation were eventually implemented, including the racist 100-to-1 cocaine sentencing disparity.
Black Lives Matter
Even now, Biden has signified that he still wants to be “tough on crime.” In the face of sustained protests against police brutality, Biden has never expressly supported the Black Lives Matter movement, let alone expressly condemned white supremacy. Whenever he is asked about the protests, he never talks about them directly, but says that he is against the “rioting and the looting,” an often-used right-wing talking point.
VP Candidate Kamala Harris
To make matters worse, Biden named Kamala Harris, a self-described “top cop,” as his running mate. I’ve talked about her before on this blog and explained why I could not vote for her, but I didn’t go over her entire record. Harris never won a single delegate during the Democratic primaries and her presidential run died due to her piss-poor record as a prosecutor in San Francisco and California’s attorney general.
During Harris’ tenure as San Francisco DA, she withheld information from defendants regarding a corrupt lab technician and police misconduct. The lab technician intentionally sabotaged her work and stole drugs from the lab. Eventually, a memo circulated exposing that Harris’ deputies knew about the lab technician’s corruption and more than 600 cases that the technician handled were dismissed.
As California’s AG, Harris refused to review cases involving police shooting young men in Anaheim. She also fought to keep, George Gage, Daniel Larsen, Johnny Baca, and Kevin Cooper in prison when their cases warranted review. In Gage’s case, the prosecutor held back what may have been exculpatory evidence. He is currently serving a 70-year prison sentence.
Harris laughs whenever she talks about her record in San Francisco and her policy to arrest the parents of truant children. She also scoffs at the idea of building schools instead of more prisons.
This is the woman who will likely take over for Biden within one or two years, if he’s inaugurated. I honestly don’t want this woman as president due to her eager compliance in a corrupt, racist, draconian in-justice system.
Biden’s Refusal to abolish ICE
He has also never supported abolishing Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), which is now forcing women to get hysterectomies and has allowed COVID-19 to spread like wildfire in the concentration camps. ICE is not that old of an agency. In fact, it was created in 2006 during the Bush regime. ICE is not only superfluous, but its agents are also completely cruel.
Biden will not end any of our wars and may look to start even more.
Trump has not started any wars. Yes, he is still abysmal on foreign policy. For instance, he has increased sanctions of Venezuela and undermined Maduro’s presidency by promoting an MIC stooge by the name of Juan Guaido. Trump also moved the U.S. embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. Additionally, Trump has increased drone bombings by 432%, ordered the killing of Qassim Soleimani, and continued to aid the genocide in Yemen. Yet what will Biden differently from Trump in these areas, and where does he plan to expand U.S. imperialism?
I highly doubt that Biden will grant clemency to Julian Assange and Edward Snowden.
Some of the people voting for Biden have swallowed the Russiagate narrative whole, so they fully believe the lie that Assange and WikiLeaks were partially responsible for giving us Trump. As a result, these people have also fell into supporting the intelligence community — or, at least more than they had before. I know better.
The truth is that WikiLeaks has revealed important news about worldwide corruption and crimes committed by the United States military and intelligence community. Also, nothing that WikiLeaks has reported has been proven false.
Assange is currently imprisoned in Belmarsh and awaiting a decision regarding his extradition to the United States. If the United States and the United Kingdom’s partnership leads to Assange’s conviction for Espionage Act violations, this will spell disaster for investigative journalism, independent journalists, whistleblowers, and dissenters across the world.
Snowden’s case is important because he is a whistleblower. He revealed information about the NSA’s domestic spying program, and he has been exiled in Russia while trying to flee U.S. authorities.
Surely, the intelligence community prefers to have Biden (and Harris) at the helm, so the next administration would comply and continue persecuting Assange and Snowden. I won’t vote for that.
Joe Biden is a rapist.
While he may have fewer victims than Trump, Biden is still a rapist. Yes, I believe Tara Reade.
In April 2020, Katie Halper released audio from a full interview she had with Reade, a former Joe Biden staffer who accused Biden of digitally penetrating her in 1993, when he was a U.S. Senator. Reade’s allegation is credible, given the corroborating testimony from various sources, and evidence, notably from an episode of Larry King’s CNN show around the time of the alleged rape.
In addition to Reade’s allegation, there are multiple clips of Joe Biden violating the space of women and young girls, all of whom were visibly uncomfortable.
I will not knowingly vote for any rapist and/or creep. In fact, Joe Biden has said that if anyone believes Tara Reade’s testimony, that they might not want to vote for him. Duly noted.
Joe Biden is a worse candidate than Hillary Clinton.
And 2008 Hillary was far superior to her 2016 incarnation. I have written extensively about how terrible Hillary Clinton was as a 2016 presidential candidate (see: “A Few Hard Truths About Hillary Clinton”) and I must say that Joe Biden is even worse than that. Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign was plagued by empty platitudes and laziness, but at least she had a platform. However, her ads had less substance than any campaign in the previous 40 years. Yet Joe Biden’s campaign has essentially told HRC’s 2016 campaign to “Hold my beer.”
Not only have Biden’s handlers advised people to avoid talking about issues, but Biden himself does not look up to the task. He has noticeable cognitive decline. Pair that with his ability to put his foot in his mouth and you have a doddering old man who can’t help but offend the very demographics he would need to win.
We are screwed either way.
No matter who wins between Biden and Trump, the vast majority of Americans and people around the world will lose.
Honestly, what’s to stop Joe Biden from being a horrible president? Also, chances are the if Biden wins, he will not finish a full term, so we’ll be stuck with Kamala. Furthermore, if the Biden/Harris administration does pave the way for a worse, more competent Trump, doesn’t that mean that Biden and/or Kamala were horrible in the White House?
We keep hearing that “the Republicans are worse,” but as time goes on, I find that statement to be less credible. Sure, there are some Republicans who are worse than most Democrats, but there are also some Democrats who are worse than most Republicans and often, the worst of the bunch rise to the top of their respective tickets and become presidents. U.S. presidents are responsible for some of the world’s worst atrocities, but Democrats take the extra step of discrediting and destroying the Left while they’re at it. These Democrats are the real terrorists, and we can thank one Democrat (Woodrow Wilson) for giving us the insane foreign policy we have today.
Issue by issue, where do the Democrats actually differ from the Republicans? If you look closely, the Democrats only pay lip service to certain groups and social issues. In practice, they and the Republicans agree on the same neoliberal agenda of corporate tax cuts, austerity, and the neocon agenda of foreign wars. Both Democrats and Republicans are gung-ho with militarizing the police and crushing dissent. Do you honestly think that this will change with Biden at the helm?
Joe Biden is only as bad as Trump at best. And if Biden isn’t as bad as Trump, that means that Biden and his puppet masters are worse.
I’m not entirely convinced that Biden even wants to win at times.
Look at how his campaign is being run. Even before the pandemic hit, Biden made few appearances, mostly because his supposed gaffes had gotten worse the longer this contest had gone on.
At times, Trump has given Biden an opening, but instead of trying to distance himself from Trump and the Republicans’ worse policies, Biden has taken the opportunity to punch left, take a dump all over Bernie Sanders — his top competitor and someone who has done more to elect Biden than Biden’s entire team — and the Democrats have done more to cater to this mystical moderate Republican. There are far more lefties the party can reach, but this party has been openly hostile to the left for decades. It has been more obvious since 2015. Also, Biden refuses to advocate for popular polices, like Medicare for All and UBI, which would help people tremendously, especially during this pandemic.
Does this party even want to win? Certainly, top Democrats like Nancy Pelosi care about winning their individual races and that’s only to maintain the power they have in the party and to protect their access to wealthy donors. Democrats also fight tooth and nail to keep lefties from positions of power. Otherwise, Democrats will happily lose to Republicans so they can maintain the established order.
Why Are You Getting Angry at Me?
If this message angers you, I want to know why — but only if you can tell me respectfully. Regardless, this is my response:
I am not gaslighting you.
Do you even know what gaslighting is? Let my help you out.
What Gaslighting Is
Gaslighting is a form of intimidation or psychological abuse. When someone is gaslighting you, that person is trying to make you believe that you are going insane by withholding crucial information and/or presenting false information to make you doubt your own memory, perception, or the rationality of your own actions.
Sometimes, gaslighting takes a physical form to have the same effect. For example, if you know that you placed a book at one end of the table but someone else comes in and places it at the opposite end and tells you that it was there all alone, that person is playing games with you. The same person could also rearrange things in your workspace and tell you that you are imagining things if you notice that something’s off.
Often, governments (especially the United States government), oligarchs, and their stenographers will use gaslighting to crush dissent. They will lie, misinform people, use pressure language, and indirectly recruit members of the general public to vilify and discredit people with unpopular opinions, particularly when those opinions are reasonable. By making people feel like they are crazy for having an opinion that differs from the “general consensus,” more people will be inclined to avoid speaking up and to keep their heads down.
According to Merriam Webster, the term “gaslight” comes from a 1938 play entitled Gas Light (two words), by British writer Patrick Hamilton. That play was adapted into British and American films both entitled “Gaslight” (one word), which were released in 1940 and 1944, respectively. In the story, a man attempted to make his wife believe that she was going insane.
Now That You Know What Gaslighting Is …
You should understand that telling someone that they don’t have to vote for Biden is not gaslighting. Neither is telling someone that voting third-party is possible (at least in theory). However, this Vote Blue No Matter Who nonsense is gaslighting, or close to it. If you refuse to vote for Democrats, especially in presidential elections, your sanity and intelligence are questioned, if not outright insulted.
Reclaim your power.
I just told you that you did not have to vote for Biden, and I’ve said numerous times why it made sense not to. I did not condescend to you. I did not insult you. I was trying to give you hope and push you in the direction of reclaiming your own power. The Democrats are the ones insulting you. They are condescending to you. They did all that and more but you’re angry at me.
Voting Democrat does not make you more mature.
You may think that you’re “rooted in reality” and “acting like an adult” by voting Democrat, but the only message that you are sending by voting for Biden is that bullying works. And the people doing the bullying are acting like grade-school children and mean girls from high school.
The Democratic Party is abusing you.
As I said above, the Democratic Party is bullying you. Democratic operatives are bullying you. Party loyalists are bullying you. Whenever they tell you that you MUST vote Democratic, they also call you dumb for defying or even questioning them. Additionally, they have used Russiagate to get you to fall in line.
Although some people who have told you to vote for Biden will admit that he is an awful choice, some will try to blow sunshine up your ass, others will berate you for not wanting to vote for him, and the rest will be angry that you’re criticizing him, even if you plan to vote for him or did so already. Why is that?
What I see is a similar dynamic from 2016. (However, Hillary Clinton had and still has more enthusiastic fans.) Then, it was not enough to vote for Hillary. No, you had to do it with a smile on your face and like it. Ultimately, these people don’t want you to just vote Democrat. They want your complete submission. The point is to get you to bend the knee and keep your head down.
Also, these people are ready to blame lefties whenever the Republicans win. Yet if the Democrats win, they’re more than willing to disregard us.
The Democratic Party has shunned the working class for over 50 years.
The Democratic Party was already becoming a corporate party by the 1930s, but it took a detour as FDR staved off a revolution while saving capitalism from itself. That all changed once FDR died and the process continued when Jimmy Carter started crushing unions in the 1970s.
In the 1980s, the Democrats formed the Democratic Leadership Council to move more to the right after losing two elections in a row to Ronald Reagan. From the DLC, we got Bill Clinton, Al Gore, Richard Gephardt, and Joe Lieberman.
In the 1990s, the Democrats took things a step further by gutting financial regulations and attacking the social safety net with “welfare reform.” Bill Clinton was even willing to gut Social Security before the Monica Lewinsky scandal hit.
After winning election in 2008, Barack Obama built a cabinet suggested to him by Citibank and once in office, he did nothing to help homeowners and student loan borrowers. He did allow the police to crack the heads of Occupy Wall Street and Standing Rock protesters and mandate that everyone buy health insurance at the risk of being taxed each year for not doing so.
The Democratic Party has supported imperialism for over 100 years.
As I mentioned before, it was a Democratic President, Woodrow Wilson, who started us on this path as acting as the world’s “Top Cop.” Now, Democrats are consistently giving Trump funding for our already bloated defense budget. We went from a $538 billion budget in 2017 to a $739 billion budget today. The Democrats gave him $200 billion more to play with each year. And just this year, the Democrats pushed through legislation to prevent Trump from taking our troops out of Afghanistan.
The Democratic Party does not care about justice.
Joe Biden is the architect of many of the problems we have with law enforcement and civil liberties today. He wrote the 1994 Crime Bill. He wrote what would become the Patriot Act, which has allowed warrantless spying by our intelligence agencies. He helped make it impossible for student borrowers to get rid of their debt without paying steep fines. He helped make it harder for people to file for bankruptcy. And Obama militarized the police while imprisoning more whistleblowers and investigative reporters than all other presidents and W combined.
At the local and state level, many Democratic mayors and governors have done nothing to abate police brutality. In many cases, the mayors are too scared to take on the corrupt police unions. In other cases, Democrats have been complicit by increasing police budgets and allowing Trump to send feds into their states and cities.
What makes you think that Biden would be remotely better on justice than Trump? Although Trump emboldens white supremacists, he has given them no more power that Biden, past presidents, and George W. Bush have.
The Democratic Party doesn’t really care about Democracy.
Otherwise, it wouldn’t try so hard to get Green Party candidates knocked off the ballots in numerous states, including Texas, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Montana. The Democrats successfully got the Greens kicked off the presidential ballot in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Montana. In Texas, Democrats successfully challenged the candidacies of three down ballot Greens.
How is this helpful? One might argue that this takes away “spoilers,” but how do you think the people who would have voted Green will respond? Either they will stay home or vote Republican to spite the Democrats. Nice plan there.
The Democratic Party refuses to listen to, let alone respect, its voting base.
These past two Democratic Presidential primaries say it all. Democratic operatives were willing to destroy their own party to make sure that Bernie Sanders never became their nominee. This party disenfranchised voters in just about every state it could, particularly in Iowa, California, Texas, and South Carolina.
The Democratic Party does not care about Black people.
It does not care about Latinos. It does not care about Asians or LGBT people, for that matter.
- It has done nothing for Black folks since the Civil Rights Act.
- While the Democratic Party may say that it supports DACA, it has done virtually nothing to improve working conditions for migrants, low-wage earners, and “low-skill workers.” At the same time, Democrats support policies that cause many people from Latin American countries to flee their homes and seek asylum in the United States.
- The Party treats Asian Americans like an afterthought.
- The Party only cares about LGBT people who are neoliberal like the rest of the party’s leadership. Marching at pride parades is only for show.
But you want to vote for this clown show because … Trump. That’s all the Democrats have to tell you because they don’t want to do anything for you. You’re afraid of being blamed for Trump. So what? We know who’s really responsible. (The Electoral College, but really the oligarchs.)
I am scared, but not just for the reasons some people think I should be.
While I would be relieved to see Trump gone, the fact is things will get worse no matter who is elected on November 3. Trump will continue to be abysmal and fan the flames of racial hatred, but I don’t trust Biden to serve the best interest of most Americans, either. Once again, If Biden does a horrible job, he will make most Americans’ lives worse and pave the way for a more competent fascist.
Also, if we think that Trump is an existential threat, his presidency has already set things in motion that Biden cannot undo in just four years, even if he tries to undo them at all. (Spoiler: He won’t even try.)
- Trump has already built a following and it will not just go away if he loses.
- There are right supremacists with plans in place regardless of who wins on November 3, 2020.
- The corporate media has continued its devolution, and it will only get worse no matter who is president.
- It will be extremely difficult for Biden to get a handle on this pandemic and allow people to resume what can be considered normal lives.
- The protests against police brutality will continue, especially as people continue to lose their jobs and their homes. The mishandling of the pandemic will only create more discord and lead to more police violence. Biden needs to address the housing crisis, reduce unemployment, give people health care, and get money into the hands of people who need it, but he is unwilling to do these things.
- Trump has left us with federal courts that are more corporate and Christian fundamentalist than before.
In the end, we must fight whoever is in the White House intelligently, but many of us have not figured out how to fight someone as incompetent as Trump. How do have any hope of challenging Biden?
In some ways, it should have been easier to fight Trump: Much of what we needed to do was focus on policy. When we take personal shots at Trump, we play to his strength, but he has no answer when the conversation is on policy and his opponents can hold their ground.
What I’m Trying to Say
Now, you might think that I jump around topics a lot, but I am trying to show you how all of this is connected. Democrats and Republicans (especially Democrats) use fear to get the people most likely to vote for them to fall in line. However, they are using fear to get you to ignore your own material situation and other important issues, like environmental justice and foreign policy. No matter who you vote for, this person will continue harmful American traditions like austerity and imperialism.
This is the bottom line: If you don’t like Trump or Biden, you don’t have to vote for either of these two terrible individuals. I am not telling you how to vote because the choice is ultimately yours to make — and millions of Americans have already voted anyway. All I’m saying is that you have other options when it comes to using your vote. Please internalize this.
Also, if we’re going to be stuck with one of the two worst options anyway, what’s the point of voting for either? This is especially true when neither party respects democracy. Hell, you saw what happened to Bernie Sanders — twice. Your vote will not make a difference if it isn’t even counted and if the election is close enough, both the Democratic and Republican Parties can and will rig the results.
Additionally, if we as lefties are just one small group of people, what difference do our votes make, especially if some of us are in red states anyway? Chances are your vote is being diluted regardless. Thus, if you don’t want to vote for two horrible candidates, why not vote the way you want to? Or are you serious about voting third-party?
And, for crying out loud, the Democratic Party’s top priority isn’t even to win. The top Democrats will treat lefties like their worst enemies. So, why give corporate Democrats your vote? All you’re doing is rewarding their bad behavior and keeping yourself tied to your abuser.
In the end, you have more freedom to vote than you want to acknowledge. You just need the courage to vote your conscience and be secure in your choice.
Sadly …
Many lefties who are relenting and voting for Biden know about all this. Biden doesn’t want to do anything for us. There is something profoundly evil about a man who still wants to deny most Americans health insurance, Social Security, a UBI, and human dignity even as he’s losing his own mind. The only reason — or maybe just the top reason — why someone would want to vote for Biden is to get rid of Trump.
To be perfectly honest, Trump is tiring. I would love to see the press paying less attention to Trump’s tweets and to see less of him overall. But again, Trump is not going to give more power to white supremacists than they already have, nor is he giving them more power than Joe Biden already gave them.
Remember
Voting is not the end-all, be-all when it comes to positively affecting change, especially not in the American electoral system. But ultimately, we need to divest from the Republican and Democratic Parties. Voting for third parties is one way we can do that. And if you hate both these major parties, when are you going to start dismantling the duopoly?
Are you even serious about voting third-party? I doubt it.
Shmaltz and Menudo 
Howdy Shmaltz!
I understand your frustration with the two-party system and your desire to vote third-party, but I don’t agree. I’ll distill my argument to this: why do you think Sanders ran as a Democrat and not as a third-party candidate. He never thought he could win apart from a heady month or so in 2016 and another in 2020. So, why’d he do it? Because he recognizes that true reform and change in the US will not come from revolution and throwing out the Constitution for a re-written one. If you think the powers that be control elections, you can be damn sure they’ll control that process. But, through incremental — although he was going for more than incremental change — from the inside. He pushed the Overton window to the left. It is now imperative that we take advantage of that by electing Democrats who can enact legislation and reforms that will be left-leaning.
Democracies will always be centerist governments. Democracies blend the voices, opinions, and desires of their electorates. In a sense they average us. The fundamental flaw in our democracy is that it is dominated by big money interests and that was before Citizen’s United. The only way out of it, though, is by electing Democratic majorities who are right now responding to the progressive element of the party and willing to pass electoral reform. By 2022, they likely will have moved on. New issues will be on the table and the electorate will be regressing towards the mean.
My opinion is that we work within the system to move it to the left because democracies will always hover around the middle.
Huzzah!
Jack
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Hello CalicoJack,
Thanks for responding to this monster post. Now, I have a few thoughts about what you’ve said here, but to avoid making a monster response to your comment, would it be alright if I made another post featuring this comment?
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Sure. That would be great.
Jack
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Thank you. Here is the post: https://shmaltzandmenudo.wordpress.com/2020/11/21/can-we-work-within-the-democratic-party-my-response-to-calicojack/
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