Biden defeated Trump by nearly 8m votes in 2020, a substantial if not overwhelming margin of victory. Matters were very different in the electoral college. A combined total of 44,000 votes handed Biden victory in the swing states of Arizona, Wisconsin and Georgia.
Had Trump succeeded in “finding” 45,000 more votes in these three states, the 2020 election would have resulted in an electoral college tie, an unseemly result that, by the terms of the constitution, hands the task of electing the president to the House of Representatives. In a travesty of democratic rule, when the House elects the president, each state delegation, and not each representative, gets a single vote, and while Democrats still controlled the House after the 2020 election, Republicans actually enjoyed a majority of state delegations. Trump would have won.
While it is hard to imagine Trump defeating Biden in the popular vote in 2024, the electoral college remains another matter. Polls already predict another tight electoral race. Maga zealots and election deniers continue to target and attack independent election officials in the key swing states. Add to the mix the possibility of a third-party candidate, who, like Ralph Nader in 2000, would have no prospect of winning but could peel away votes in these crucial states, and the perils magnify.
Generations of Americans have recognized the defects in the way we elect our president. The first serious effort to eliminate the system came in 1816 and hundreds have followed, all failing given the extreme difficulty of amending our constitution. It is a grotesque fact that a candidate who has made clear his hostility to democratic governance could only be returned to office through an antiquated, dysfunctional and anti-democratic electoral system.
So you’re an accelerationist. Got it.
This is what someone with no agency and no ability to ever organize something like a nationwide vote strike/write-in campaign tells themselves as a big fucking cope. Sure, you’ve got agency in this system, buddy. Sure you do.
Yea, I never once claimed to have agency in our system, and the liberal rallying cry about voting is absolutely an example of that. What are you actually upset about? That I am accurately describing our shitty society?
No, that you have the smug superiority of someone who is like “I vote with my principles” which is great and all, but it literally doesn’t make you better than anyone else or have a reason to tell others that participating means “they support it” especially if that’s literally the only actual agency they have in this shitty fucking system, voting. (Protip, it’s literally the only agency they have.)
On top of the verifiable harm that attitude that does to minorities in the USA. It’s easily arguable that no matter what party you vote for, you’re hurting minorities all over the planet, but sorry sir, I’m about general harm reduction, even if it’s halfassed in the short term.
I don’t think letting the worse win for your pyrrhic personal victory is in any way fucking helpful, nor is acting like you’re somehow better, smarter, or more capable than others for it, or that it means they support those things.
I’m on the left, and you’re just being a smug asshat, dude. Maybe not classist, but sure obviously think you’re better than everyone else here. Do you think that’s helpful? Great job not using classist words but still acting like a smug know it all prick who thinks they know better but can’t be fucked to actually help educate, but instead wants to put others down for not already knowing. Sounds pretty fucking classist to me.
Like there’s a thousand ways you could have participated in this thread without being a rude jerk. You chose to be a rude jerk, what does that say about you?
I get it, you are “on the left.” You would have voted for Obama a third-time if you could, Biden was the next best thing obviously. Anyone who implies differently is an “asshat.”
Resorting to making assumptions that couldn’t be further off base? Obama solidified the worst aspects of the Bush presidency and told us to “look forward, not backward” in regards to fucking war criminals. He had plenty of scandals that were mostly swept under the rug by the media. He himself admitted that if he had ran in the 1980’s he would have been running as a Republican. He ran on a public option but then said “Fuck you people” and gave us RomneyCare.
Seriously, grow up. Instead of addressing anything substantiative about how you’re being a rude asshat, you’re just continuing to be a rude asshat. Truly, do you think being an asshole like this helps spread a leftist message or are you just an authoritarian fuckin tankie who thinks you have to make everyone do it by force because you’re too much of a rude asshole yourself to be able to educate anyone else? Because for someone who thinks using the word “yokel” is too much, all you’ve done the whole thread is shit on anyone else for having a differing opinion or having their own thoughts, going as far as to claim to know what they believe based on how they vote, which is classist as shit genius. My literal first response to you was very polite and you kept being an asshat, and that’s why I didn’t let it go.
You might think the downvotes are from “angry libruls” but guess what they’re from people who think you’re acting like a condescending asshole. Like, this isn’t fucking reddit, it’s Lemmy, and the fucking devs are god damned communists. Why the fuck do you think I wasn’t scared away by the talk of them being tankies (I checked, they’re not, I’m not so sure about you.) and made an account on lemmy.ml? It wasn’t for shits and giggles or to troll. My fucking Avatar is god damned Situationist Guy Debord.
Has anyone ever told you, “You’re not wrong, Walter, you’re just an asshole,” because you need to fucking hear it.