In a matchup between Biden and Trump, many young voters say they might choose silence.
Refusing to vote for an imperfect candidate in order to stop a fascist takeover doesn’t sound very smart. “We can’t have our specialest most perfectest prezzy so lol get fukked every1.”
The problem is, I’m almost 40 and have been hearing this my whole life. And the Democrats keep moving further right.
Biden is the most progressive US president in modern history. Maybe still not as progressive as you’d like, but nevertheless Democrats are slowly moving to the left, not right.
“The logic of not voting for Joe Biden in 2024 is that the Democratic Party is supposed to be accountable to young people and diverse communities.”
Such an adorable take. I used to think they were accountable, too. That they gave a shit what I thought and would do things that I approved of, or have a good reason not to. That voting actually sent a message.
Give this kid another decade and he’ll be as hopeless as I am.
Then there’s this guy:
“[I’ll say], ‘Hey, you want to buy a house after college, right? You want to have a good-paying job after you graduate, right? You want to be able to have access to health care?”
I really don’t think voting is the best way to get these things. Especially when Democrats never talk about access to health care, just health “coverage.”
What voting for Biden will get you is more boring government. That’s about the only thing voting will get you that you actually want.
This kid actually gets it:
And then there’s the Electoral College. For Lillian, it’s difficult to feel like her vote matters in a state that has gone blue since 1980 and a rural county that generally swings red. "The whole [voting] thing is a symbolic gesture,” she says. “If we had a more direct voting system, I would participate more. The Electoral College is scum.”
Want people to think voting matters? Make their vote actually matter. Outside of swing states votes for president just become meaningless statistics, especially since you don’t need the popular vote to win the election.
Will the silence be loud enough to create actual change in how the Democratic Party approaches the youth vote in future elections[?]
It never has been, and it never will be.
Dems not talking about healthcare is kinda not true is it? The US has the ACA and coverage means expanding who has access to the ACA and at what tarrifs.
The ACA was supposed to have a public option. But the health insurance companies got Lieberman to kill that. Now whenever I hear a Democratic politician talk about health care it’s about making sure everyone has “coverage.”
Pay very close attention when you hear them talking and you’ll hear it. But people don’t need health insurance, they need health care. And the coverage Dems keep pitching often gets between people and care.
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and some are not allowed to vote because of laws and policies crafted over the years by politicians like Biden and Trump
I’d love to know what you’re even talking about.
talking about the people in the US who are not allowed to vote due to different laws and policies like myself being left out of yet another election
US has plenty of dissidents too
As a leftist, it’s important to accept that the Dems will never, ever, ever move to the left unless there’s massive grassroots organization such as Unionization and Socialists winning local elections.
People who abstain from voting as protest, however, still think ironically that voting is anything other than loss prevention. If everyone sits out and protests, literally everyone on the Dem side and Trump wins in a landslide, and Trump manages to keep elections for 2028, the Dems still won’t move to the left.
That’s why voting as a leftist is about loss prevention, rather than gaining material change. The movement leftward comes from upsetting the entire 2 party process by flipping the table itself. Mass Unionization and taking of key seats is exactly how you (non-violently) upset the process and force concessions or enable third party to be theoretically viable.
Until then, however, any leftist not voting Dem in the federal election is sorely misguided.
