I made the decision that I'm not voting for Biden a long time ago, but been getting a lot of grief from my liberal friends and family.

No, I don't agree with his policies. No, I don't agree with his track record. No, I don't think his "climate change plan" is convincing or nearly goes as far as is needed. No, I don't think Obama did a good job. Not on a boat, not on a train... this election crap is driving me insane.

Been getting iced out a lot because they're all like "but Biden needs overwhelming support to overcome Trump's blatant election f*ckery threats." How can you not do it? Then they look at me like I've been kicking puppies. Not my problem. He's not entitled to my vote as the "lesser of two evils."

And if there's going to be election shenanigans... what difference does voting even really make? Political referees will hop in and call a politics fowl? I don't think they're gonna handle me saying that electoral politics altogether is a waste of time too well.

Anyways, any advice how to handle without ruining relationships?

  • Zuzak [fae/faer, she/her]
    1·
    4 years ago

    I'll just write my response and see if it helps:

    Well look, I would happily vote Biden over Trump if we had something like ranked choice voting. But the democrats and republicans alike would rather have a system where my vote is wasted than to allow third party challengers. The only reason we're in this situation where I'm supposed to vote for the "lesser evil" is by design, because the two parties want to stifle democracy. I'd be willing to hold my nose and vote for a csndidate I didn't like if it meant that they would change the system such that I wouldn't have to do it again. But you're asking me to support the people who are keeping me disenfranchised, and to keep voting for them my entire life. And if I have kids, they'll be expected to do the same. That's completely unacceptable, and I won't do it. If Biden wants my vote, he can have it the moment he endorses election reform so that I'm never in this position again.

    I refuse to buy into the logic of lesser-evilism and I will not vote for a candidate who isn't qualified to be president, period. And there are plenty of reason why Biden is not fit to be president. I felt the cost of the War on Terror personally, due to my brother's trauma and the trauma he put my family through - but this was only a small taste of the horrors that the people living in the Middle East went through. Biden's role in that is unforgivable. He's also one of the architects of mass incarceration, and as VP did nothing about the immigrant camps. He has been given opportunity after opportunity to do better, but instead has had a hand in basically every major problem that we face.

    Fundamentally, it is the responsibility of politicians to win over voters, not the responsibility of voters to vote for a candidate. Even with what I've said, there are plenty of ways that Joe could have won my vote. Instead he has made it overwhelmingly clear that he doesn't want my vote. He has done virtually everything he could to alienate the left, from directly telling people not to vote for him, to saying he has, "no empathy" for the struggles of young people, and most importantly by far, to rejecting all sorts of popular and essential progressive policies, such as M4A and the GND and codemning protesters and trying to out-jingo Trump on China and I can go on and on.

    At the end of the day, my vote is my voice. And I believe that it's my responsibility to use my voice to speak for the victims of US imperialism, because they aren't given a voice in our elections despite the fact that their lives are often affected more by our policy than even we are. These are the people who lost friends and relatives to Obama's drone strikes, where we have no idea how many civilians were killed because they just classified any male in a certain age range as terrorists, the same way they did it back in Vietnam. I don't believe that these people would want me to vote for Biden.

    That is my decision, and the only one who could possibly change my mind is Biden himself, and he's shown no inclination that he's willing to throw me a bone.