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.
No, candidates “earn your vote” in the primaries – the general election is damage control. The fact that needs to be explained is depressing.
We saw what abstaining and protest votes got us in 2016 and nobody should be stupid enough to fall for that again. I will absolutely shame someone for being an idiot incapable of pragmatism in a choice between “bad” or “irrecoverably catastrophic” when the options are already outside of their control.
You know Biden or Trump (or his proxy) is going to be the president in 2024. You also know MAGA voters are organized, motivated, and will turn out to vote for their candidate. It is a bald fact that 3rd party or protest votes will only serve to help Donald Trump get elected and nothing else.
Good fucking luck forwarding any leftist cause or candidates in your lifetime if Trump is elected.
Liberal-splaining this ad infinitum, calling people idiots, and blaming those the party (and you) turn away is again a confession. The party won’t change if you don’t focus your concerns in that direction, and shaming your political allies is self-sabotage.
As they said, you can push for this change in the primaries. No shame in being principaled or taking a long shot there, but in the general you’re just handing power to a fascist if you don’t vote dem.
I don’t get why you’re going around every comment here to complain about being talked down to while you seem to not even understand what you’re arguing against.
Well, starting around 2014 various far-right groups ran an effective, coordinated campaign to fracture the left-wing vote and ensure their preferred candidates won… They’d pretend to be liberals and leftists and use social media to argue against voting for the opposition candidate. #Walk Away was one of the major efforts.
They said the exact same things you’re saying now.
Let me guess I’m also a Russian troll? Walkaway didn’t amount to very much in practice, it was mostly people larping online with a bit of viral marketing around it, one of the organizers I actually doxxed to the FBI after they said they attended the Jan 6 insurrection. (That’s why you don’t register your LLC to your home address.)
I’m not arguing against voting for the opposition because I understand strategic voting. I’m arguing against the condescending tactic used to shame the left, supposedly your political allies, which I also think is mostly a show people engage in online.