I think there’s some power in a protest vote, especially if it outflanks the DNC on its left.
A non-voter is easily written off by them as being an apolitical or apathetic citizen and it’s less likely that the DNC will chase them.
A groundswell of votes for 3rd party candidates, even if they’re just for Jill Stein or someone similar, is going to signal to the DNC “Hey, there’s a large and growing contingent of active and engaged voters who are delegitimising your duopoly and you can either chase their votes by pushing left-leaning candidates and policy or you risk getting left behind”. Obviously this is only under the circumstances that there’s an actual groundswell of voters that are large enough to be taken seriously, although that could be as small as like half a percent - elections have been won by narrower margins than that in the past.
Do I think that this is a sufficient strategy to push someone like Biden left?
Absolutely not. (But it sure beats Va*sh’s strategy to bully Biden left, which I’m almost certain that he’s going to drop on his followers any day now…)
Do I think that electoralism is the path to achieving anything?
Almost certainly not, aside from the potential of maybe getting awareness and mainstream attention on key issues or of delegitimising the entire system of liberal democracy by revealing it for what it is (see: the disillusionment of the historical Bernie Bro).
But I do believe that if you’re going to put any stock in the act of voting at all, you’d make a better case for a further-left protest vote than you would for a purposeful abstentionism.
You do you though. Nobody’s gonna be looking over your shoulder when a ballot is under your nose and I’m convinced that voting is pretty insignificant so I don’t think it’s worth spending much time considering or discussing, and it’s certainly not something worth starting a struggle session over (whether online or, Marx forbid, within any actual party/movement).
I think there’s some power in a protest vote, especially if it outflanks the DNC on its left.
A non-voter is easily written off by them as being an apolitical or apathetic citizen and it’s less likely that the DNC will chase them.
A groundswell of votes for 3rd party candidates, even if they’re just for Jill Stein or someone similar, is going to signal to the DNC “Hey, there’s a large and growing contingent of active and engaged voters who are delegitimising your duopoly and you can either chase their votes by pushing left-leaning candidates and policy or you risk getting left behind”. Obviously this is only under the circumstances that there’s an actual groundswell of voters that are large enough to be taken seriously, although that could be as small as like half a percent - elections have been won by narrower margins than that in the past.
Do I think that this is a sufficient strategy to push someone like Biden left?
Absolutely not. (But it sure beats Va*sh’s strategy to bully Biden left, which I’m almost certain that he’s going to drop on his followers any day now…)
Do I think that electoralism is the path to achieving anything?
Almost certainly not, aside from the potential of maybe getting awareness and mainstream attention on key issues or of delegitimising the entire system of liberal democracy by revealing it for what it is (see: the disillusionment of the historical Bernie Bro).
But I do believe that if you’re going to put any stock in the act of voting at all, you’d make a better case for a further-left protest vote than you would for a purposeful abstentionism.
You do you though. Nobody’s gonna be looking over your shoulder when a ballot is under your nose and I’m convinced that voting is pretty insignificant so I don’t think it’s worth spending much time considering or discussing, and it’s certainly not something worth starting a struggle session over (whether online or, Marx forbid, within any actual party/movement).