George Takei's Based Voting Take [Rule}
George Takei's Based Voting Take [Rule}
Image Transcription:
A tweet from the George Takei Twitter account which states:
"A Democrat was in the White House when my family was sent to the internment camps in 1941. It was an egregious violation of our human and civil rights.
It would have been understandable if people like me said they’d never vote for a Democrat again, given what had been done to us.
But being a liberal, being a progressive, means being able to look past my own grievances and concerns and think of the greater good. It means working from within the Democratic party to make it better, even when it has betrayed its values.
I went on to campaign for Adlai Stevenson when I became an adult. I marched for civil rights and had the honor of meeting Dr. Martin Luther King. I fought for redress for my community and have spent my life ensuring that America understood that we could not betray our Constitution in such a way ever again.
Bill Clinton broke my heart when he signed DOMA into law. It was a slap in the face to the LGBTQ community. And I knew that we still had much work to do. But I voted for him again in 1996 despite my misgivings, because the alternative was far worse. And my obligation as a citizen was to help choose the best leader for it, not to check out by not voting out of anger or protest.
There is no leader who will make the decision you want her or him to make 100 percent of the time. Your vote is a tool of hope for a better world. Use it wisely, for it is precious. Use it for others, for they are in need of your support, too."
End Transcription.
The last paragraph I find particularly powerful and something more people really should take into account.
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"Democrats have always fucked me over but I keep voting for them because the alternative is actively more harmful".
No, I don't find it touching nor powerful. This is a celebration of the failure of the 2 party system.
When you roll out the feasible alternative let me know. Until then, I'll be voting for the candidate whose rallies don't break out in chants of "kill f*ggots, kill all transgenders"
We need to get RCV passed at the state level in at least 33 states, then we can get rid of FPTP at the federal level, and actually force some change
oh if it's that simple then lets just do that. surely we can bang it out in a weekend.
Nobody said it was simple, but yes. Let’s do that.
Doing the easy thing is what’s got us to where we are.
can you pull it off in under a year? because in a year we're gonna have a presidential election and one of the leading candidates is someone whose already been determined by a court to have engaged in insurrection and has said that he'll have the military suppress protests starting day one and will replace 50,000 government functionaries with people whose only qualification is that they're loyal to him personally. his friends tell me every day that god has commanded them to kill me 😀
I would surmise it would take between 15 and 40 years to get it passed.
Imagine if we’d started pushing for this in earnest 15 years ago.
Like they say, the second best time to plant a tree is today.
What might help to effect this change? If I'm not mistaken, a number of states are almost under single-party rule, particularly those that might benefit most from this kind of change.
Is it something that may be built up from a municipal to county to state level to then establish on a national level?
Back in the day the "Moral Majority' took over the GOP by taking over the local offices. If the usual attendance at a meeting was twenty folks, the MMs would make sure to show up with 50. It took them a while, but they were persistent.
We tried to pass it at a county level here in California, and it passed in several counties, only for the registrar of voters go to the state legislature to overturn it, so, maybe?
Nice idea, but it isn't going to happen before the 2024 elections. First things first.
force some change
RCV favors moderates and promotes political stability. That's kinda the opposite of a revolution.
That's better than the fascism that FPTP favors. It's not revolutionary, but at least we might start heading in the right direction
RCV does the opposite, actually. It exhibits center squeeze, where centrists are often eliminated early even if more people prefer them over the eventual winner.
Yeah that happens most of the time in a PR system
Radicals come to power under fair systems by being able to reach disenchanted voters in a national crisis or uproar.
That word "feasible" is doing a lot of work. No doubt the politician I want to vote for won't be "feasible" for some reason, and the one you want me to vote for is.
which politician do you want to vote for, and what's their path to victory that doesn't involve making massive systemic changes to both the electoral system and the electorate in under a year?
Ok guy.
In the general election the "feasible" candidate is always the Democratic nominee, so you should never have any argument about it at that stage. Meanwhile in the primary people try to use that sort of "feasibility" / electability argument against farther left Dems, but it is total nonsense and can be completely ignored at that stage.
That is part of the calculus people are making when they express the idea they won't vote for candidate A for reasons X and candidate B for reasons Y.
It is how voters can express their political will during the primary and electoral process. If a candidate can modify their position on X or Y because of voter concerns, that would be a meaningful part of the democratic process influenced by the voters. They're trying to forge that alternative.
The real unfeasible alternative is actually just doing nothing and letting the donors buy their selected policies and voting for the lesser evil between them. That is just supporting the status quo.
When you figure out a means of political activity that doesn't involve refining the capitalist regime as it stands, let me know. Until then, I won't be voting for candidates who help slaughter innocent people around the world.
So you won't use your vote to help less people die?
That's not what he said and you know it, shut up.
Ok
No, I don’t find it touching nor powerful. This is a celebration of the failure of the 2 party system.
Liberal-splaining strategic voting is how my socialist brain interprets this. This isn't as condescending as others but yeah it's not powerful or touching it's a sad coping mechanism, even sadder because he's been so negatively affected personally by it.
Winner takes it all it the biggest bullshit ever. Anything but popular vote is worth jack shit.
I mean straight popular vote is also winner take all just not skewed by weird slavery shit counting rules
Wrong. It's "democrats advanced in fits and starts, sometimes stumbling and falling, but heading in the direction of the finish line. I keep voting for them because the other guys are trying to set off a dirty bomb on the race track."
Ok. And your point is? Not voting isn't going to do shit. You are not going to change the system by not participating. That's a losing strategy.