No one called anyone a Trump shill for supporting progressives in down-ballot elections. If you’re just talking about the start of the presidential election cycle, that’s too late.

No. Because even if they carried 100% of the vote in a state, the delegates can and most likely would just cast their votes for one of the major parties.

Brother, I’m voting against the party with the absolutely insane and oppressive declared policies. What are you talking about?

Well in that case it’s not really relevant.

That and the fact that it’s legally impossible for one to win the presidency, yeah.

No you can’t. Because we live under a system where one of them is going to be in power after the election, and every possible voter shares equal responsibility in the outcome.

There are plenty. But I do think it’s performative as hell to withhold your vote within a couple months of a major election. There is no momentum for anything that could possibly disrupt the status quo in Palestine before the election, and letting Trump win isn’t going to make that any easier afterward. Unless you’re an actual accelerationist, in which case I’m glad you can so confidently accept the likely millions of excess deaths that will cause.

Answer to both: no. So maybe we should use other factors to decide!

Right, I’m “decrying” successful revolutions because I don’t believe that your armchair activism is going to start any actual movement capable of disturbing the status quo.

It’s only worthless if it’s third party, sadly.

I love getting downvotes for just understanding the law.

But this isn’t a mental exercise, this is real life. The choice and all of its consequences are still happening regardless of your choice to disengage. They aren’t “false options”, they’re printed on the ballot. The only way to reject the premise here is actual spontaneous massive revolution, and if you’re suggesting that as an alternative to voting, well, I don’t imagine you’re of voting age anyway.

If anyone hasn’t already lost their Israel-colored glasses, they’re not coming off.

See, doing it as a bloc with public visibility I can see. That actually has some chance of swaying at least the rhetoric. But I still think if they actually go through with not voting, they’re voting against their own interests. The right is rabidly xenophobic and loves Israel, the only thing Trump will do to end the genocide is send even more military support.

Oh man this thread is a real breath of fresh air, thank you three for having heads on your shoulders.

Not voting is a choice. You can’t not participate in politics.

I think you’re generally right that foreign policy won’t be very affected (not sure what the image has to do with it), but domestic policy certainly will be. It’s very disheartening to see all of these self-proclaimed leftists basically discarding LGBTQ people, whose rights are extremely up for debate in this election, to make a performative stance against a policy that both sides support equally.

Voting doesn’t affect your ability to do other activism.

Oh sick is Trump campaigning on that??

It’s not just shunned, it’s literally throwing your vote away. Voting laws in the US, including the electoral college, mean that it is literally impossible for a third party to win the presidential election. We need ranked choice or other alternative voting methods, and the EC needs to go away.

Walking away from the switch is making a choice. You’re exactly as complicit in the result as if you had flipped the switch.