Quote:
Originally Posted by shiney
The patriotic decision to stay home and not vote because everyone sucks is what led to the 2010 GOP resurgence. Anyone who stays home because "it doesn't matter" can kiss my ass. The entire country has you to thank for being too lazy to keep the actual realistic fascists out of office, even if by voting for the only slightly less evil plutocrats.
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Voting Democrat is at best a stop gap that treats the symptoms without touching the cause, and treats them poorly at that.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Osterbaum
Not voting is generally a valid fort of protest against a broken system. The notion that if you do not vote, you don't get to complain is stupid.
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It's not as good a form of protest as voting for a party that won't win, however.
I'd encourage all left-wing citizens to vote Green or some similar party in as many large scale elections as they can. Not voting comes off as voter apathy which no one really cares about very much, and voting democrat just tells them that they can keep doing what they're doing and keep their voter base.
Voting third party and splitting the democrat vote might end up with four years of assholes, but we've survived that before, and it does a few very important things.
Firstly: It tells the democratic party that they need to shape the fuck up. If the democrats don't shape the fuck up there's really no point electing them over republicans because they completely lack the back bone to do anything, and it's just having republican lite.
Secondly: It reminds the country why Obama won by a landslide. Reminding everyone how fucking horrible republicans really are can't be an entirely bad thing.
Thirdly: It send a message to all the other voters that hey, it didn't win this time but if we get a large enough chunk of people voting it makes third parties look like an option. And third parties looking like an option will do a lot to unshit our country in the long run.
I mean if you're just looking at the next 4 years as the end all be all of everything then, yeah, vote and vote democrat. If you'd rather make an attempt to actually unshit the country instead of watching it crash and burn in the long run, then vote third party and take the short term lumps for long term gains.