632
We'll have a long memory as things get worse for working class Americans, minorities and women
(lemmy.world)
this post was submitted on 12 Oct 2024
632 points (73.7% liked)
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Bernie
Couldn't even win the primary. I voted for him, but we ended up with Clinton instead. So I voted Jill Stein in the general out of spite in 2016, and it's still one of my life's greatest regrets.
You shouldn’t regret your vote. You voted your conscience. That is all that is required. You didn’t fail the electoral process, it failed you.
Shit, even that isn't required. There's no compulsory voting laws in the US.
Now if you want to actually make a difference...
You don’t use your conscience when voting?
If you want to make a difference? No, you don't use your conscience, at least not exclusively. You mainly use your brain.
Flabbergasted
Ok
If the political system worked the way I want it to, I wouldn't have to regret it. But I threw away my vote on a spoiler candidate, knowing it was never going to amount to anything, but I was spiteful then over Bernie's loss and thought I was making some sort of a point. The result was that I ended up contributing to Trump's win in 2016 and I'll never live that down.
If Hillary had been a better candidate, and adopted more of Bernie’s policies, she would have earned your vote. You didn’t fail her, she failed you. It’s literally her job as a candidate to sway your vote. She failed. It’s not the electorate’s fault when the candidate doesn’t court them. We need to stop blaming individuals for candidates deficiencies.
That's one way to look at it, but it doesn't alleviate the fact that I tried to game a system that was already being gamed, and ended up voting against my own interests as a result.
In practice, what happened is that I wanted a candidate who offered A, B, C, and D, which was Bernie. Bernie lost the primary and we were left with a candidate that only offered A and B (Clinton), so I got angry and voted for someone else that had no chance of winning but I thought would send a message.
So she lost, and we ended up with a president who not only didn't do any of what I wanted, but actively made life worse for me, my loved ones, and millions of other people. And I helped create that outcome when I thought I was being a better person by voting by conscience, because I thought she deserved to lose. Only I didn't give enough consideration towards who would win when that happened, and that ended up being a bigger burden on my conscience in the end.
To take that forward to today, honorable mention to the fact that Israel became more empowered under Trump's administration than by any other administration that preceded him, so hell, I blame myself for essentially helping to facilitate this current situation we find ourselves in, too.
It was vanity on my part, or maybe just naivete, and there's not really another way to frame it.