• SpaceCowboy@lemmy.ca
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    8 months ago

    You were probably taught in school that democracy is a wondrous ideal thing.

    When you become an adult you realize democracy isn’t about voting for who you like the most. It’s about preventing bad people from getting power. You will never get to vote for some ideal perfect person, and even if you did the general muddiness of politics would prevent that person from being able to make the change they want.

    Yes, it’s “the line” now. But to be more accurate, it’s always been the line.

    • Cosmic Cleric@lemmy.world
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      8 months ago

      Yes, it’s “the line” now. But to be more accurate, it’s always been the line.

      You’re not wrong, but also, when one of the parties purposely manipulates your vote by using the premise that you described, because they have a bad candidate, then they’re no better than the other party that are the “bad guys”.

      There are more than just two candidates available in the whole United States of America that could run for president.

      • SpaceCowboy@lemmy.ca
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        8 months ago

        There are more than just two candidates available in the whole United States of America that could run for president

        Yeah and they either decided not to run or were eliminated in the primaries. Ideally I think a ranked choice system would be better than a primary system, but the primaries are a somewhat reasonable approximation, albeit an antiquated one.

        The thing about democracy is the winner is the person that gets the most votes, not decided by solely your vote. And you can’t force people to run. Bernie Sanders ran in the 2020 primary and lost to Joe Biden. He decided not to run in this primary. You can be bitter about this, maybe come up with some conspiracy theories about the DNC somehow putting Bernie in duress to keep out of the race. Or do the same for anyone else you prefer.

        But the fact is the imperfect run off system of the US electoral system determined it’s Biden vs. Trump again. You can be emotional about how you wanted something different, but it’s not going to change anything. You can be angry at other voters for not choosing different candidates. Still not going to change anything.

        And Joe Biden is legit the best President of my lifetime. Not something you’ll hear from content decided by social media algorithms. He’s done a lot despite some bad actors in congress, and he could do more if there were just a few more Dem Senators and a majority in the House. Only criticism I really hear is from either republicans and kids that are ageist and/or learned about foreign policy from TikTok.

    • bloodfart@lemmy.ml
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      8 months ago

      Uhh…

      If you support Biden or hope that he’s elected this article should deeply disturb you.

      Polls are looking bad recently and instead of having a party line of “we’re gonna change, we recognize that no one wants to suffer under rising inflation while their government supports a genocide.” They’re saying “it’s fine that the polls are bad, our supporters will come out and vote for us no matter what”.

      • SpaceCowboy@lemmy.ca
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        8 months ago

        I’m Canadian, and judging from history things tend to go badly for countries that neighbour fascist countries with a powerful military. So yeah I want Old Joe to continue to be President.

        But I’m not too worried about polling, they were off in 2016 because they people considered unlikely voters actually did vote, and they voted for Trump. So the statisticians compensated for this and they were much closer to the mark in 2020, but still somewhat under-counted Trump support. So they have to compensate some more. But my gut feeling is that a siginificant of the unlikely voters that turned out for Trump in the past two elections probably won’t turn out for him again. But statistics is a scientific thing, they can’t just mark Trump supporters as unlikely voters again because of a gut feeling. They have to follow the process and do the math without any gut feelings about it.

        So… the polls about support for Trump aren’t reliable at all. So no point in worrying about them one way or another.

        The real concern right now is how young people are pushed into some strange politics by social media. The Olds are going to vote the way they always do, and there’s less of them with each passing day. The kids are getting sucked into accelerationist doomerism so who knows what will happen there. Constant emotional manipulation on social media can send people down some dark paths. I used to think the kids are alright, but I’m not so sure anymore.