I have problems with people who abstained. The hard thing is, how do you change voter behavior?

  • Lux (it/they)@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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    10 hours ago

    How do you change voter behavior?

    You don’t. If you want someone to vote for you, you need to provide something that they want. The point of democracy is not to change the people to fit what the rulers want, it’s to change the rules to what the people want. If you can’t do that, the people don’t want you.

    • loudiamond@lemm.ee
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      8 hours ago

      It’s also to appeal to candidates , which doesn’t get talked about enough in the case of Gaza

      Joe and Kamala did nothing to appeal to those voters, going so far as to cancel a Palestinian speaker at the DNC who agreed to have her entire speech vetted

      so why arent we pointing the finger at them?

    • BalderSion@real.lemmy.fan
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      9 hours ago

      I keep ruminating on this argument, and it gives me deeply split feelings.

      On one hand I keep thinking, voters need to grow up. Voting is how the populace gets to engage in self governance, i.e. politics, and as the aphorism goes, Politics is the art of choosing between the disastrous and the unpalatable. Things that are easy aren’t solved by politics, and the voters need to accept that you’re often not going to get what you want and in governance you often have to settle for choosing the thing you hate the least.

      On the other hand, I keep thinking I’m making the classic leftist mistake of demanding everyone should do what I think is right, because I am right, and then being frustrated when my rightness isn’t blindingly obvious to everyone.

      Like the lady says, It’s like rain on your wedding day…

      • very_well_lost@lemmy.world
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        9 hours ago

        To paraphrase Donald Rumsfeld: You don’t run for office with the electorate you want, you run for office with the electorate you have.

        • Geobloke@lemm.ee
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          8 hours ago

          Well that’s a lie, with voter suppression and gerrymandering you can have your dream electorate!

        • BalderSion@real.lemmy.fan
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          8 hours ago

          Well then, our troubles are deeper than we know.

          On the right as long as you talk a good game on lowering taxes they’ll put aside any and all espoused convictions. See how quiet the Libertarians got when Roe v. Wade was overturned. Turns out any time I spent debating the preeminence of personal liberty and the NAP was a big fat waste of my time. Alas.

          On the left we have an electorate that “…would rather be right than president,” and it turns out they get to be neither.

      • SoftestSapphic@lemmy.world
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        8 hours ago

        Americans are impoverished and uneducated, Democrats are not, but they should be fucking smart enough to know you can’t use big words or complicated ideas with poor, distrqcted, and uneducated people.

        You force through policies that put money in their pockets, that tangibly improve their lives, or you piss them off even more and give them a minority to attack as a distraction from your lack of policy.

        The Republicans understand this.

        This is how you appeal to the impoverished and uneducated, and that will be the majority of the American voting population until a couple decades after we offer free education

    • spujb@lemmy.cafeOP
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      10 hours ago

      Despite all the emotions in this comment section, this is still my conclusion as well.