Controversial opinion, it's way more than half: 1/3 voted for the orange man, 1/3 didn't bother go to vote because "BoTh SideS ARe thE SamE!" and 1/3 tried to do the right thing.
It’s a large and incorrect assumption, and not mathing, to lump non-voters into supporters, especially when the administration is purging eligible voters.
That’s an assumption, jumping to a conclusion. It is true for some people, since some people say it out loud, but it is not true for everybody, and calling it “unambiguous” is an unsupportable claim.
To the degree some non-voters say they don’t care, that’s still deeply complicated, enough that even taking someone’s word for it is a bad idea. Non-voters in the U.S. are not uniformly distributed, and thus there is evidence suggesting that not caring is already a function of class, race, education, gender, and age, among other things.
If you actually care about voting and about the truth, it does yourself a disservice to jump to a assumed conclusion that all non-voters are saying something unambiguous, that they’re all saying the same thing, that they all have informed choice, that they understand all the tradeoffs and implications, and that they really are fine with any outcome regardless of what they say.
Eligible voters should absolutely be lumped in as implicit supporters. Disenfranchised voters have been made ineligible so should not have been in the statistic.
Rhetorically: why is it "implicitly approve" instead of "implicitly disapprove?"
The only thing you know about them is that they did not vote. Even using your assumption of their beliefs ("both sides are the same"), that position is generally affiliated with disapproval, not approval.
This is extremely lazy and unrigorous reasoning that could be extended dishonestly to any number of things. Oh, you aren't protesting genocides? You must support them then. Oh, you're not helping feed hungry people in poor countries? Guess you support child starvation. Oh, you're not contributing to the Rust ecosystem? ...............
None of those are comparable to the simple and quick act of voting against a treasonous candidate for US president.
This wasn’t a bad candidate vs worse candidate situation, it was someone who supports breaking apart the trust and foundation of the country solely for personal gain versus someone who at least believed in providing a veneer of civility.
signing an online petition is also a quick act, and the same reasoning you’re using would follow. you’re almost getting at what’s wrong with your specific voter argument though - in many, many states, 1 or more of the following can apply:
big states that always vote one way like CA where a non vote is the same as a blue vote
states where voting is such a tedious process that opting out is a reasonable choice, even if it doesnt place a big burden otherwise
states with voter id laws, often large chunks of the eligible population do not have an id
disabled people, people with hardship, etc., felons
It’s really weird logic to lump massive chunks of the general population these things apply to in with the same people that explicitly support this. It also ignores the fact that these elections often come down to a few thousand or fewer votes in a handful of battleground states. Not voting in those places, I would tend to agree more with the gist of your point, but it is no where near a big chunk of the population.
If someone looks at (admittedly shitty) candidates like Harris and decides she's as bad as Trump it means the implicitly approve of Trump. You need a mushy brain to not see that there's shit (Harris) that there's Trump, orders or magnitude worse.
The democrats are complicit in genocide. Trump is attacking allies too, but they’re both criminal. The main difference is “worthy and unworthy” victims.
I don't really know how to respond politely to downplaying genocide. What I can say is that it is becoming accepted that Kamala Harris lost in part because she refused to change genocide policy. If you want to win, you should start taking it seriously.
My swing-state vote was stupendously easy to get. (a) don't commit a genocide (b) give voters something big and material like free healthcare (c) don't cover up COVID and Long COVID
> I don't really know how to respond politely to downplaying genocide.
Sorry. I don't intend to downplay genocide and I don't want to come across that way.
What I'm trying to critique is (so far as I can read it from your post) your inability to see that two things can be the same in one respect - but apparently not notice that one is much bigger than the other.
If it helps, I'm not American and don't have any option to 'win' as far as US politics goes. I think you are right that Kamala Harris was facilitating genocide. But I also think you are wrong to not take into account that Donald Trump is a whole order of magnitude worse.
> My swing-state vote was stupendously easy to get. (a) don't commit a genocide (b) give voters something big and material like free healthcare (c) don't cover up COVID and Long COVID
So they voted for the side committing genocide and who sees free healthcare as an atrocity in itself to everything the US stands for? What did the Dems do to "cover up" COVID? You know versus "It's nothing worse than the flu, it'll be over in two weeks" while privately being aware that neither of those things were true?
I mean, they didn't do that (and I think the DNC, DWS and their ilk have a lot to answer for the current state of affairs), but your "swing state, stupendously easy to get" decided instead to vote for the side that openly doubled down on those things, not really a ringing endorsement for expectations of voters there.
That's before we even get to the general issue of an electoral populace so ignorant of the political landscape that the number one search on Election Day on Google was "Did Biden drop out?"
I voted third party. If the Democrats want my vote, they have to represent something resembling human values.
Look around you, COVID is still everywhere and the scientific literature is pretty dismal. The Democrats lagged about 6 months behind the republicans, now most people believe what was far-right in 2020. It's true fewer people are dying, but most people do just think it's a cold. The democrats shut down reporting, didn't fight for worker protections, and basically were most invested in the economy over health. They also were never clear about the airborne method of transmission and so people ended up believing masks didn't work because they would wear a surgical mask and still got sick. They didn't "follow the science".
