Voting 2008...

[Forrest]

Is there anyone left around to discuss the specter of what's about to happen less than three months from now?

I'm not dead.

And feeling about the same way about Biden as Impy was about Obama 12 years ago.

[Imp-Chan]

Well, it took me nine years from the start of this thread, but I did end up expatriating three years ago, so I guess I really did put my money where my mouth is. Frankly, I'm glad we got out. It's insulating us from the worst of it, and will probably continue to do so, assuming we can solve Poe's visa problems.

I am SUBSTANTIALLY less happy about the prospect of possibly voting for Biden than I was about the prospect of voting for Obama, though, and I am not sure I'm going to make the same choice now as I did back then. Obama didn't succeed in a lot of the changes we needed, but he did some stuff that was at least helpful for me, personally, and worked out better than I had expected, overall. However, the system was broken then, and it's more broken now, and we are rapidly reaching the tipping point at which we either institute radical changes or a whole lot of death is going to happen... and Biden does not represent change. At all.

I hope I'm wrong, but I see this coming election shaking out in two main ways, with a bunch of little sub-paths branching out after that.

1) Trump declares that he won.

Regardless of whether or not this is true, it will be challenged, and rightfully so, because of all the attempts to tamper with the vote. There will be open protests, and they will make Trump feel very insecure, which will make him double down on authoritarianism. This will either break Americans into submitting to a hellish mess in which massive numbers are homeless and unemployed, or push enough of them over the edge into open rebellion. Or both. Either way, SOME people will object violently to the authoritarianism, which means armed resistance, and it's all an easy spiral downhill from there. People have a lot less reason to try to protest peacefully if they have no hope of success. I'd give it less than a week, post-election, before the first exchange of fire, to be honest. It might even happen before the election, at this rate. Certainly there's been violence in the other direction, already.

Additionally, if Trump declares that he won, his merry band of followers is going to take it as divine providence. To them, it will be proof that they were right to be hateful, right to back him. They are, officially, winners. And that means they're justified, in their minds, in acting on whatever hateful little urges they have. I would expect a wave of violence, most of it opportunistic, and quite a lot of it hate crimes.

None of this is a good outcome. The best that can be said of it is that it might lead to revolution, and that might, eventually, lead to a new government with better protections against corruption and representatives who, for a while, will be slightly more committed to serving the American people than most of our current batch of opportunistic, immoral garbage. But it will not achieve that before a lot of people die, the world economy is thrown seriously out of whack, and possibly it's sufficiently unstable to ignite other wars in other countries, or even a world war depending on how desperate Trump gets for a distraction.

2) Biden wins, by a wide enough margin so that Trump cannot realistically claim otherwise.

Trump and his followers will still say otherwise, of course, and he may sue, or simply refuse to leave office. He also will have two remaining months in which he and his cronies can attempt to break the system so thoroughly that they can live for years on the profits before anyone will be able to unfuck it. It's already pretty damn bad and will take years of dedicated effort to even come close to fixing it, but there is SO MUCH MORE DAMAGE that can be done in those two months when there's nothing left to lose and plenty of spite to fuel bad decisions. Most of this crop of scum are quite old... they don't need whatever they do to last, because they won't live long enough to see it undone.

Trump's followers will also take this as an excuse for violence, defending the cause and their warped vision of American freedom. It's cute how that happens either way, and by cute I mean a horrifying inevitability.

But enough about the probable actions of Trump and his flock, because they're really a symptom, not the whole problem... what about if Biden manages to get sworn in and get enough control of the situation back so that we can have four more years of politics as usual?

Well, we still won't have healthcare. Won't have job security. Won't have a reliable justice system. People will still be dying of a pandemic, and murdered by cops. People will still be broke and homeless due to skyrocketing evictions. But probably there will at least be some oil poured on troubled international waters, and in a year or so when there are promising treatments and vaccines, the American passport might be useful again, though the American reputation and economy won't have recovered. And even though Biden will not be able to unfuck most of Trump's mess, and frankly is unlikely to actually try to do so since it's just as beneficial to high-level Democrats as it was to Republicans, he will dress it up in prettier paper so it's easier to swallow than the completely unsubtle bricks Trump has been lobbing at our heads for years. It will calm people down, make them feel safe enough and comfortable enough not to rebel, and the situation will continue to erode in a quieter, steadier way. In four years, we'll be faced with choices which will not include Biden, and probably won't include the profoundly necessary systemic changes, either. They may or may not include a dramatic swing either left or right.

---

So what do I plan to do about it? I don't know, because I don't think either path is good for America, and I think both outcomes would lead to a lot of extra deaths. I don't want either outcome on my conscience, but if I do nothing then the outcome will always be on my conscience no matter what, and if I vote for Biden then America still slides right and I am complicit because I signed off on it. There is no good choice, and part of that is because a lot of us held our noses last election and voted Clinton (myself included) in a vain attempt to prevent exactly everything that has happened the last four years, and now the DNC knows that they can feed us whatever they want and we'll still vote for them if we're scared enough of the alternative.

If I do vote for Biden, I'd be doing it primarily for my own benefit, simply because I am already safe from most of the mess and Biden is likely to address the one thing most likely to directly affect me (international relations), so the outcome would be more comfortable for me personally. It might be worse in the long run, though, because the longer we defer these issues the harder it's going to be to correct them later, and the bigger the mess that inevitable revolution will make. And yes, it's almost certainly inevitable at this point... history has demonstrated that over and over. It's only because America is a comparative infant as a world power that it hasn't experienced a complete failure of state already. We're unprepared for it, as a culture, but it's part of growing up. And by all the hypothetical gods, America NEEDS to grow up.

On the other hand, if I don't vote, my lack of action may end up contributing to a situation that will almost certainly end America as we know it, painfully, messily, and right the hell now. Even if I think that ultimately, that America of my childhood wasn't very great and we'd be way better off in the long run just starting over, it's a hell of a way to go, and I don't really want to have to live through it. There's a good chance that I'll have to, regardless of what I do, though. We all would.

At the moment, though, there also isn't any form of international mail, the best I can do is spend a bunch of money to send a package with my vote, which the board of elections for Ohio might not even accept. My driver's license has also expired, because I wasn't able to find a doctor licensed in the US here in Korea to check my eyes for the documents necessary to renew remotely, and I wasn't able to go back to the US to deal with it in time for obvious reasons. So I have no state ID, and they may not accept my vote regardless. That's another factor in my decision, because if I choose to vote I will have to sacrifice about a tenth of my monthly income to do it. I'd rather not do that for a choice I don't believe in.

[Forrest]

Normally, I would put an argument here about how the practical thing to do is to vote for the lesser evil if you're in a swing state (or at least count as a swing state voter, as apparently you do if Ohio is where your ballot goes), otherwise vote for the third party that best represents you if you're in a safe state. Being in California, I generally vote Green, until the day that either the Democrats fix their shit or voters like me make California into a swing state, when I'll vote Democrat.

But that's advice for people voting normally from their home state. If it's going to cost you a tenth of your income to do it, the tiny difference that that vote would make (and the distaste of either voting for the lesser evil or else for the best loser) would make it not worth it to me, if I were in your shoes.

[dark_lord_zagato]

After the primaries of 2016, I made a decision about my voting preferences from that point on. I decided that I would no longer play the lesser of two evils game. I won't be threatened into voting for a status quo Democrat just because the other candidate is "even worse." If neither candidate deserves to be president, then neither candidate gets my vote. No regrets, no matter which side wins.

In situations like what we have in 2020, i'm willing to vote for either Green or Libertarian candidates. They both have good points, they both have bad points. More importantly, I believe this is the way out of this mess we're in. If we can raise some respectable 3rd parties, who go on to win numerous seats in congress, we can make it extremely difficult for Democrats and Republicans to maintain this system of 50/50 gridlock that they have so skillfully built. No more breaking promises and blaming it on the other team. No more taking it for granted that people will vote for you just because you're not the other guy. Get honest, or get marginalized.

It will take time and sacrifice, and we will surely have bad presidents in the meantime, but this is the only plan I can think of for getting corruption out of politics and government. Take the idea of separation of powers, and using our ballots, apply it to political parties.

[Graybeard]

I must say that I'm disappointed with the responses here.

Three points. First, as a friend puts it, there are no unicorns in politics. There are no perfect candidates. Waiting for one to appear so that you can vote for him/her/it is a pointless exercise.

Why is that? Second point. We have seen on many occasions that a candidate who looks like a unicorn on first appraisal turns out just to be a jackass with a horn glued on once it's exposed to careful scrutiny. Third-party candidates who get little enough support that they avoid that scrutiny can look good for a while. But somebody, somewhere WILL dig up some dirt on them. It may be personal behavior; it may be ugly IOUs; it may be policies that look appealing until they are scrutinized carefully. But it will be dirt, and it will be there; and then you're right back in the same position of holding your nose while you vote for them.

Finally, the next president, failing something extraordinary like death, will either be Joe Biden or that-guy-whose-name-it-makes-me-sick-to-write. That's the choice. Voting for somebody else doesn't mean you don't like either of them. It means you are so willing to tolerate either of them that you won't expend the effort necessary to tip the odds by your tiny little bit -- a tipping that can be amplified, although still remaining tiny, by not merely voting, but working to get the less objectionable of them more votes. Are you REALLY so willing to tolerate BOTH of these guys that you will in essence say "okay, whatever"? If so, I am honestly interested in hearing why.

Never in my life -- and I have been around longer than most ES and DNPWWO readers -- have I been more certain that I'm not going to vote for a third-party candidate than I am in this election. And that is despite being decidedly lukewarm toward the guy I'm going to vote for. (I'm pretty sure you can figure out who that is.)

[Forrest]

I agree with Graybeard for people in swing states, and Zagato for people in safe states.

If there were any chance that my vote might not be counted for Biden anyway, I would vote for Biden to make sure it was, because the only likely alternative is a Trump victory.

But since there is virtually a 100% chance that no matter how I vote, my vote power will go to Biden, because of how everyone else in my state votes, then I am free to protest vote for a Green with no chance of winning, just to send a tiny message to the Democrats that I would like their policies to generally align more with the Greens, if they want that vote back.

[Graybeard]

I agree with Graybeard for people in swing states, and Zagato for people in safe states.

Thing is, though, even in "safe" states, there are other elections that matter, and refusing to vote in conditions where one otherwise could vote (Impy, I don't think your situation satisfies that criterion), because of disliking both Biden and that other buffoon, is harmful. There was an election here a couple of years ago when the race for some local office, I forget which, was decided by a margin of eight votes. I'm pretty sure that more than eight people in our community (which, note, has a higher than average percentage of registered voters who actually vote) sat out that election because they didn't like the choices at the top. If they hadn't sat it out, results in that local election might have been different. And from small acorns grow mighty oaks.

I think it's no secret who I'm going to vote for in the presidential race; it has been personally offensive to me to watch that alleged man tear down stuff that I spent my whole career helping build. But at the local level it's a different story. I probably will cast at least one vote for a third-party candidate, and not as a protest vote. Rather, it's someone who has a chance of actually winning, because there is recognition in the community that the major parties are either behaving idiotically or running idiots for the race in question. I share this view, and do not consider a third-party vote in such a setting to be "wasted" in any way.

[dark_lord_zagato]

Are you REALLY so willing to tolerate BOTH of these guys that you will in essence say "okay, whatever"? If so, I am honestly interested in hearing why.

It sounds like your grievances against the incumbent are of a more personal nature than mine are. I dislike him for more generic reasons, things he has in common with many other politicians. If you say he is destroying something you helped build though, it makes sense that you would want him out of office ASAP. I can only say that we have different motivations right now, which is why I'm voting third party these days.

My present concern, is that the Democratic party is becoming less responsive to the needs and wishes of their voters. The US is the only modern country without a satisfactory public health care system. My uncle rations his insulin because Medicare doesn't quite cover it anymore. When I voted for Obama in 2008 I was under the impression that he was going to give us what Canada has. Now, people like Bernie Sanders are openly mocked by most of the democrats who insist that single payer doesn't work, even though it clearly does.

I don't think i'm asking for a unicorn. I just want a president who isn't going to turn around and shoot us in the back as soon as he is sworn into office. If you have your own reasons to vote for Biden though, I can respect that.

[Forrest]

I agree with Graybeard for people in swing states, and Zagato for people in safe states.

Thing is, though, even in "safe" states, there are other elections that matter, and refusing to vote in conditions where one otherwise could vote (Impy, I don't think your situation satisfies that criterion), because of disliking both Biden and that other buffoon, is harmful. There was an election here a couple of years ago when the race for some local office, I forget which, was decided by a margin of eight votes. I'm pretty sure that more than eight people in our community (which, note, has a higher than average percentage of registered voters who actually vote) sat out that election because they didn't like the choices at the top. If they hadn't sat it out, results in that local election might have been different. And from small acorns grow mighty oaks.

I'm not advocating that anybody refuse to vote. I think everybody should vote, but how who should vote for which office differs with the context of the vote, even given the same end-goal.

And yeah, in little local elections where there isn't any such thing as "safe" or "swing", exactly who you vote for matters; and often, third party candidates aren't even on the ballot for those. I though we were just talking about the presidential portion of the election.

[Imp-Chan]

I have been saying for ages that if we want change, we have to start by owning the local elections. Most politicians are built, they don't spring up fully formed and ready to run for the US Congress very often. Putting people of principle in charge at the local level can make a HUGE difference in everything from local ordinances to local law enforcement practices, and those are areas where we really do need to make changes. It's sortof the trickle-up approach to politics. If we start by regaining control locally, that can spread to regions, which can spread to states, which will eventually spread to the federal level. But it will take years of making and maintaining consistent small-scale changes to reach that point, and it takes a lot more community involvement and unity to even achieve those changes. On the other hand, in an individualist society, bottom-up change is a lot more likely to STICK than top-down ever will.

Everyone organizing local protests should be putting at least as much energy into putting forward good candidates in local elections, and facilitating all those protesters in actually voting and campaigning locally.