this post was submitted on 03 Mar 2024
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Not voting (in your election)
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Excellent article and I'll be looking out for other pieces from Savage in the future. It's right to the fucking point, too, with no extra fluff.
There's so much wrong to unpack with this quote from the podcast.
First, yeah, it is Biden's fault, for not being a better candidate. I don't hold his age or speech impediment against him, but hells yeah his racism is a turnoff.
Second, failing to provide a barrier between the man and the White House isn't the same as helping him get there. That's blatant manipulation, an attempt to paint principled voters (and non-voters) as guilty of someone else's crime.
And most repugnant is the final line of the quote. "You decide if you want to help..." Yeah, well, I'm decided not to help any racists get to the Oval Office, thanks. I don't vote for evil, lesser or greater. I couldn't live with responsibility for putting Biden there any more than his predecessor. If you want a vote, you've got to be better than just the least-bad candidate, you've got to actually be a good one, or at the very least one who might be good if I'm feeling like a gamble.
Savage already talked about the failure to persuade voters to vote for a Democrat rather than just against a Republican. But I just want to highlight the bareassed ridiculousness of thinking that voters who have and voted for a preferred candidate are a better target for propaganda than voters who saw nothing they wanted and stayed home. Who's more likely to buy a cold drink on a hot day, someone with a water bottle in her hand or someone without?
And the reason for this ridiculousness is that the attempts to castigate third-party voters and abstainees are based in tribalism, not in a genuine attempt to seek converts. It's an abandonment of rational self-interest in favor of creating an outgroup to scapegoat for election losses.