USians are you voting center right (Democrat) out of fear of the alt-right (Republicans) winning?

I’m not voting for either party. Now’s not the time for division

You can vote for everyone, so that no party feels left out.

I don't have a reason to vote for either a democratic candidate or a republican candidate.

It's simple as that, but since you're asking for an explanation:

The DNC has managed to convince me to vote for them up until 2020.

They promised a lot, but once they got into power, they walked back what they said and started talking about strategy and pragmatism. Legalizing marriage equality could cost the midterms. Cancelling student debt is too big of a risk to the economy right now. Healthcare will come gradually if we just make these concessions.

And now?

It's worse.

Biden's carcass barely skidded into the white house after fuckery in the primary, the same campaign promises trotted out from previous elections, and the utter shitshow of trump's presidency. For god's sake, it took mismanaging a pandemic to get the win.

Here we are now with people still suffering and dying from COVID, the dissolution of abortion rights, worsening climate disasters.

And the Democratic party can't even deliver on biden's campaign promise of financial relief. They're telling people to still go to work despite having covid symptoms. They're forcing trains to continue running without maintenance.

It took Thanatos to remove Diane Feinstein from office because nobody else with power in the party had the political will.

And that's what it comes down to. The democratic party doesn't have the will to make things better because it doesn't benefit them.

Why should I vote for them if they won't benefit me or the people I care about? What material conditions would I expect them to improve?

I'll vote in local elections and I'll continue what I'm doing in my community, but as I said, I won't vote for a candidate who doesn't give me a reason to vote for them.

By this point people Dont vote for Democrats for progress, but just for survival since Republicans have gone full fascist
- But what about the people here in this thread who said why they're not voting for democratic politicians?
  Do you not consider our actions informed or motivated by survival?
  Do you personally believe voting for Biden in 2024 would improve my chances for survival? You're talking a lot about what other people believe, but what do you believe?
  Do you think the democratic party is doing its best to fight fascism? Do you think Biden will do something different in 2024 to prevent fascism?
- Republicans have gone full fascist
  Please identify any serious difference in actual governance between Trump and Biden. Politeness doesn't count, I'm talking about real material differences.

CENTRISM DOESN'T EXIST, IT'S MERELY A RHETORICAL STRATEGY

THERE'S NOTHING ALTERNATIVE ABOUT THE RIGHT WING, THIS IS WHAT THEY'VE ALWAYS BEEN

I dont get how you don't consider Project 2025 terrifying enough to vote against in a swing state. Like, do you, I just don't get it.
- If Biden wins he'll just do most of whatever project 2025 is anyway, because bipartisanship

That is true, we dont vote democrat for progress, we vote democrat because republicans want to annihilate us. Voting democrat is just a patch to give us more time to organize. But, yeah, voting for any liberal will move the Overton Window to the right every tims. That is an irrefutable fact. The point of voting democrat is just for it to not move as much as it does with republicans.
We cannot overthrow the bourgeoise by voting at all. But voting does changes the speed in which things detereorate. Republicans are accelerationist in this regard.
- no democrat did anything about the overturning of Roe, no democrat has done anything about the wall or the caged children. no democrat is materially supporting the palestinian uprising. and on and on and on.
  you think democrats are going to do anything about freikorps doing pogroms against us?
  the part that's always missing from
  dorks is that delaying an enemy only matters if you're getting something out of having extra time.
  is molotov-ribbentrop if the soviets proceeded to not build any tanks.

Joe Biden is building the wall and let Roe get overrturned. Democrats don't even do harm reduction now.

The only difference is whether or not the president releases rainbow balloons at pride or rants about the gays ruining Christmas.

It's harm redirection; not harm reduction. Or, 'so long as it's NOT happening to the libs, they don't care'.

I'll vote Green. There are no PSL or SA or CPUSA for me to vote for. It's the left most option I have. And if not a green slot, then Libertarian just because they are more sane than Republicans and don't care too much for imperalism or culture war bullshit.

is not "harm reduction".

Maybe write in Eugene Debbs. Hear he's still running from a cell somewhere.

In

we're under the 3rd Red Scare and 2nd Lavender Scare. Fascist death spiral will continue until socialism improves.

Hold up, you would rather vote Libertarian than Democrat? Libertarians are rich people that want no government intervention on minimum wage or environmental laws. They are the craziest out of all the parties in America.
- I live in a +18 hard R district. I have no representation. The nearest Green chapter is 2 counties away and it's a professor from Lansing and a handful of waywards, half of them
  including the professor himself.
  Sans a Green, there's usually a Libertarian on the ballot next to Republican A,B,C, ...and 1/4 times there's a Democrat. After the stunt they pulled with
  I want the Democratic Corporation to cease to exist. No more "half measures".
  They'll never get another phone call, dime, or second of mine no matter how much they beg or try to shame while they fund and boost far right Republicans as "strategy".
  
  Did you know Trump's #1 briber was Clinton's #3?
  
  It's a fuck you to both Democrats and Republicans that counts cause I can't just write in Mickey Mouse (Green Party). They also want ranked choice voting. Case in point in the state of Maine, Greens and Libertarians teamed up to get RCV passed in 2017.
  what have Democrats been doing with the minimum wage and environmentalism? $7.25/hr last moved in 2009, of since the costs of livng has skyrocketed. Maybe a fart in the wind on environmentalism while approving more drilling and destructive wars. Climate enhanced storms do more damage than they are wiling to invest.
  But you know anytime Zelensky takes a shit in his
  burn pit of a country, we seem to have endless pockets of billions laying around to make an even bigger burn pit. (Paltry crumbs for our own chemical disaster zones at home). Then they are busy arresting and beating demonstrators demanding they do something.
  Yes they're loony, but they aren't going to try to make me illegal and have solidarity with reguards to war, even if the place they are coming from differs from mine the objective is the same. I'll take the risk of an incompotent pothead over a fascist or fascist adjacent chumming "pragmatic"
  liberal.
  They won't win, but maybe 5% somewhere gets heads in board rooms panicing and policies start moving.
  They are the lesser evil than democrats where I am mostly because my options on the ballot suck ass. It's a chaos vote. As Lawrence O'Donnel said when he was working in the DNC, they didn't have to listen to anything on the left and we had to prove to them that we are capable of not voting for them..
  It isn't like the Democrats have any legal obligation to honor my vote anyways even if there was a progressive option. Hell Joe Biden himself swooped in a few counties away from me to prop up a republican to prevent a progressive dem win for the modest fee of $200,000. if that shows you where Democrat's true heart lies. I could just not vote and save myself the hassle, but it's cathartic, semi meaningful on a local level, and I will not give Democrats any more life support. They don't deserve to represent the people.
- In terms of how far away from the truth, yeah, libertarians are the most deranged. But liberals are straight up bloodthirsty and don't mind putting us on the edge of nuclear war. Republicans are, well, even worse than that. Libertarians are more of a meme and while their policies would surely be disastrous, they usually can at least be trusted to oppose wars. Usually.

Not anymore. If Dems want my vote they have to do better than strikebreaker Joe.

oh fuck im gonna voot

Dems want to build cop cities and Bidens on track to deport more people than Trump

I cannot in good conscience vote for that, it would be immoral and unprincipled, so I simply will not vote in a national election

I mean rather than not voting why dont you vote third party then just for morale?

I vote Dem straight-ballot, because of the harm reduction, and also because I don't buy the argument that having Republicans in power is energizing leftist sentiments more than it is emboldening outright fascim. But I am sympathetic to the idea that electoralism is a cul-de-sac where leftist political energy goes to run out of steam and die. I don't want to pretend that I'm totally sure of what the right approach is.

can't you vote for 3rd parties or anything

No, not really. The two parties control the whole process up and down. You can vote for other parties, sometimes, in some places, but it's almost entirely pointless.
- rip. Preferential voting is useful, so is mandatory voting. Anyway. Maybe later kiddo

No, even if I did believe voting did something, it still wouldn't matter since I live in a very red state.

How do you survive in a red state? Are you White?
- you realize most black people live in the south right?

there is no point in voting, all we're doing is lending out tacit support to the system that will do as it wishes regardless

Why are people always trying to get people here to

????

Everyone here knows how the electoral system in the US works, and has madeca decision in whether they want to are not. The kind of people in a left political space are more politically aware than average.

The vast majority of people in the US don't vote and are not generally politically aware. If you really need to

evangelize go out and talk to them. People here are not get-able, they've made their decision one way or another.

And most importantly, the people on this site who live in the US are not going to be the deciding votes in US elections, especially presidential (because that's what all US

evangelists are always talking about) There's not enough communists or anarchists to blame your electoral losses on. Look into the 10s of millions of peoole that don't vote and don't have an exact reason for it, other than inherently knowing that the system they live under doesn't work

I don't shit on people for playing the harm reduction game. That being said, I was told that l'orange douche was the worst thing ever and while he was in office nothing really changed. Then I was told Biden was going to make everything better and that hasn't happened. So... like... this is all bullshit. Plus, I ponder if Trump is so incompetent it might be a blessing in disguise.

I dunno. Voting is pointless without a a people's vanguard and some sort of system with material benefit. I'll vote on local races but in the last 6-8 years I can't remember voting for a particular candidate on the national level.

no. i don't support right-wingers

it's honestly that simple

Nope. They can earn it, otherwise, I actively want it to fall.

I'm probably just going to vote for the farthest left viable candidate in each race. If it's the liberal, it's the liberal. If it's the DSA candidate it's the DSA candidate. The meat of my organizing work happens outside of electoral politics, but I want the political environment I work in to be the friendliest possible.

Hahaha imagine participating in electoralism lmao...

Nothing had fundamentally change and nothing will fundamentally change from electoralism.

Why living in New England gives no point to voting?
- In MA at least most races are unopposed de jure, and the rest are unopposed de fact. There's a few competitive primaries between a bad dem and a less bad dem. But even those are rare. There's definitly no point to voting for President here.

honestly I probably will. I’ve voted third party/not voted for all previous elections, but this election I really just don’t care at all. Like, we’re gonna get one or the other anyway so why not just vote for the one I’d prefer. Although I’m only voting if I can vote by mail, I’m not expending energy to go down to a voting station or anything.

Ugh actually I might not vote cause they’re probably not gonna mail us the ballot like in 2020, we probably have to go through some weird bureaucratic process to get a mail in ballot

Voting in the US is like having the option of 5 fruits, but through the magic of “democracy” you only get to vote for either apples or bananas or you could throw your vote away on oranges or something. Meanwhile, I just want mango’s. Since voting will never get me mango’s (communism) why would I engage. It’s materially inconsequential. It’s not like the political parties decide what happen anyways

Not since 2016, didnt work. I also live in one of the only solidly blue cities in TX so my vote means shit.

No, but to be fair, I am in a very Blue state, so I don't even have to deal with hypotheticals about lesser evils. My state is so over-determined that my vote for national offices mean literally nothing.

Blue States still elect Republican senators and governors like Vermont and New Jersey at some point.
- Not a problem in my state, though it is one of those where the party has such strong control that anyone, regardless of beliefs/platform, runs as a Democrat. Things are just decided within the party before the ballot.

To be honest, I do actually think this marks an election where voting democrat might be in my interests... if I even lived in America in the first place.

It just is a fact that republicans are going mask off, and they truly are worse for much of the world than democrats. Obama put sanctions on Venezuela. Trump put down sixfold the amount. Whatever democrats will do, the republicans will do it worse.

I get having apathy towards it. I don't blame you if you don't. The contradictions will continue to worsen. It almost feels like events in the future are guaranteed to come, and that the democrats will only delay them very minorly.

I will vote dem for non-presidential elections for the sole purpose of keeping Sarah Palin out of congress, but that is pretty much it

If I was in a swing state I would because Project 2025 is genuinely terrifying, but I'm not so I won't.

Honestly, project 2025 is what changed my mind about voting democrat.

I'm going to spend a half hour voting for my local politicians so I might as well vote for Marianne while I'm there.

I get my ballot mailed to me way before I have to do anything with it so I usually send it back with whatever takeout menu preferences I find in it

I'm sure I'll get called a federated lib but yes. I commonly see the argument that fascist encroachment has still happened under Biden, which is definitely true, but I still think it would be worse and faster under Republican leadership. If we had legitimate dual power institutions that could provide for and protect the most targeted amongst us, I'd be more open to the "fuck it" argument, but for now I will still participate in the elctoral system from an entirely harm mitigation perspective.

I vote dem downballot because the republicans are worse and I would maybe consider voting dem for president if I lived in a swing state.

Also I only vote at all because I live in a vote by mail state (ballot gets mailed to me a couple weeks before election day, I fill it out in like 15 minutes and then drop it in a ballot box whenever I'm in town next), if I had to go stand in line at a polling place on a specific day I absolutely wouldn't.

no

For presidential i always vote EATASS42069

Ill maybe vote dem down ballot depending on who it is.

That's basically been my attitude since college or so, but now in my 30's I'll vote my local Dems, some of whom are not absolute ghouls, but anything more national is going to be a write-in for Cthulhu at this rate.

no i vote out of spite for my conservative family

Vote PSL, but tell your family you wrote in Hillary Clinton