Political Memes

That's not why anyone abstains from voting. People abstained from voting for Democratic candidates because they felt that they are controlled opposition, who only slow the rate of decline temporarily before the pendulum swings back to Republicans to do the dirty work. The only way to break that cycle is to force the Democrats to run better representatives of the people's interests, and the only way to do that is to deprive them of power when they run shitty candidates like Kamala and want you to vote for them just because Trump is worse. This is the same thing that's been happening since the 80s, and if people would have stopped falling for it back then, it wouldn't have got as bad as it is now. If Kamala had won, we'd still be heading towards he same horrible destination, it would just be slowed down a bit. You could argue that slowing it down is still better than letting it go full speed ahead, and that's true, but only in the short term. At some point we need to pay the price to turn the ship around.

I don't know if you find this line of reasoning convincing, but at least try to remember that the reason people abstain from voting is not them being picky or perfectionist. It's them trying to look at things in a longer-term, greater-good sort of way. I have a 60 year old friend who spent her whole life voting for Democrats she didn't really like. What did it get her? Bush, Obama, Trump's first time, Biden. And the possibility of Kamala. And you do realize that if Kamala had won, we'd just be getting all this same Trump shit but a few years later, right? That was her reward for voting "blue no matter who": the same fucked up situation we're in now. So she's tired of it, she doesn't want to vote anymore for someone who won't make things better. Her only hope is that starving the Democrats out will force them to eventually run someone who might actually change things in the same aggressive, effective way that the conservatives always manage to achieve.

Again. It's not about "I only vote for someone who perfectly agrees with me", and in fact the people who abstain from voting are most likely people who have voted MANY times in the past for people they don't even like at all, so it's a really misguided accusation.