If you figure out what your coworkers sauce of choice is, let me know too. I love spice, but haven’t found a good staple to keep on hand.

What about Joe Biden made him sufficiently left while Kamala Harris wasn’t?

-Joe Biden wasn’t campaigning to finish building Trump’s wall. Or saying that actually it was a good idea to build the wall and the only problems were just that Trump said Mexico was going to pay for it and that he didn’t finish the job.

-Joe Biden wasn’t campaigning on being pro-fracking. And bragging about how he was the tie breaking vote for the IRA, which leased new land for fracking. (I understand there was more to this act, but Harris points to it as a way to show she supports fracking)

-At the time the genocide in Gaza hadn’t ramped up and gotten as much publicity as has now, so we didn’t get to hear Joe Biden’s stance on it.

-Joe Biden wasn’t calling to ensure America has the “strongest most lethal fighting force in the world”.

-Joe Biden didn’t align himself with the Cheneys.

You see that 10 million more Democrats voted for Biden, but stayed home for Harris and you believe the problem is with the people and not the candidate? Now granted, racism and sexism played a role in this for sure. But to attribute that much of a difference just to that? Most of the people that are deeply racist and sexist are already voting for Trump because he supports those ideas. And from what I’ve seen, the Republican voters stayed pretty consistent from last election. It was mainly a dip in Democratic voters. If the problem is with the voters and not just that Harris was an incredibly weak candidate, then why do you believe that many more people voted last election?

That’s exactly the reason that people didn’t vote.

There’s no civilization in sight.

Your options are

1. drink the pond water and get dysentery. Struggle to find help while you are slowed down by your illness and shit yourself to death.

2. drink the bucket of shit. Same problem just much quicker

3. drink the camel piss. It’s sterile, (edit: I stand corrected) and provides some hydration

4. just fucking give up because all these choices are dire and no matter what you’re probably going to die because there is no sign of civilization or rescue, or another clean source of water, or things getting remotely better for you.

And you’re yelling at people for not happily slurping up the pond water and subjecting themselves to dysentery. Some people are going to have the fortitude to do whatever it takes for survival. And some people in that situation just give up.

People didn’t vote because of apathy, and no hope that things will get better in the future. Yes Harris is better than Trump. But she’s still a step in the wrong direction. Just because it wasn’t a running long jump towards doom doesn’t mean it’s not making progress in the same direction. You want people to vote for you? Inspire your fucking voter base. Give them something to rally behind. Make them excited. Give them hope. Give them a reason to stand in line for hours to vote after working an 8 hour day. Have strong policies that inspire confidence in your capabilities. Don’t make a large part of your campaign ‘at least I’m better than the other person’. That’s your selling point? Not how good you are. Just how less bad you are.

Let’s preface with the fact I voted for Harris, and understand where you’re coming from with lesser evil voting.

But the other half of your argument is that with the way that Harris was tacking to the right to try to gain moderate voters, the choice was between voting between fascism now and fascism later down the line.

But if we vote for fascism later then we have time to distance ourselves from fascism.

By sitting at home happy that you did your job and ‘defeated’ fascism, until the next election where your choice is again fascism now and fascism a little less later down the line?

As the Dems keep drifting further and further right. At what point do you put your foot down and demand actual progressive policies? And how do you get those demands to actually be listened to when the party knows you’ll vote for them because “at least we’re not as bad as the other guys. What choice do you have?” Supporting her is a message to the Democratic party that their strategy of slowly becoming more conservative wins elections. And this is the reason that I was very conflicted about voting for her, but just held my nose and did it for the greater good.

I 100% agree with you on everything in this comment. My only point is that regardless of how badly trump wants to finish the job, Harris certainly doesn’t seem to want to stop it. And as such, she isn’t free from criticism. Moreover she needs to hear more criticism to push her into walking back her support of Israel “defending itself” by retaliating in a wildly disproportionate fashion. And the key time to do it was in the lead up to the election, because if she felt like enough people were upset about it that it could cost her the election, it had a higher chance of making a difference.

It’s possible to believe Trump is an evil piece of shit, but also that Harris needs to improve. Just because she’s the better choice doesn’t mean she’s perfect.

This really cuts to the core of the issue. Why would they need to listen to what people are saying if they’ve already won the election? To bolster their chances of being re-elected? But then the next election will most likely be a repeat. Vote for me or else the fascists win. Then we elect them, even though they state while they are running that they plan to do [x]. We make a big fuss to tell them we don’t want them to do [x]. They follow through with what they clearly stated while campaigning. And then next election it’s the same thing again. The only bargaining chip we really have as the American people is our vote.

If the situation is really that dire. (And I absolutely believe it is) And American democracy as a whole is at stake, who is really the one to blame? The people holding steadfastly to their beliefs and saying that they don’t feel comfortable/ good voting for someone who is saying they will continue to support genocide? Or the person that sees people saying that and points the finger at them as the problem instead of hearing them out and changing your policy to gain their votes? I understand that also poses the risk of losing votes, but do you really want the votes of people thirsting for genocide?

All of this being said I do completely understand that this is the choice that we’ve been stuck with, and that things will be massively worse if Trump does get elected. I’m voting for Harris, but I can’t say that I really blame people who feel like they can’t in good conscience. And I hate seeing everyone telling them to just shut up, vote Harris and worry about it after.

Why can’t both be true? Sure. Trump tells Netanyahu not to accept the ceasefire. And when Netanyahu says no, rather than doing something to further pressure him, like making the munitions we send them conditional on a ceasefire, he just gives up and sends more bombs.

We’ve tried nothing and we’re all out of options! We asked him nicely to stop and he told us no. :(

I understand that we are stuck with these 2 candidates. But is it not still valid to complain that we have to pick between full throttle genocide and a slightly more palatable “restrained” genocide?

I’m not advocating for people not to vote for Harris. But to boil everything down to “said some mean things” is completely reductive. And you’re correct that she is not the president yet. But the only indication of what her actions will be when and if she is elected, are the things that she is saying now. And right now we are not seeing much if any pushback against what Israel is doing. She keeps saying that Israel has a right to defend itself. But what Israel is doing right now is going far above and beyond simple self defense. It is a genocide.

One way that people have the power to convince her to change her policy is by being vocal about their dissatisfaction. Presidents need to have personal convictions. They can’t just be completely wishy washy. But their role is to be an advocate and representative of the people’s interests. This is why they get elected. Because people feel that the candidate they are voting for is in line with their beliefs, and policies and changes they wish to see. So when people are vocal about their dissatisfaction with the policies she is putting forth, it gives her an indication that it is time to take a second look at what people are criticizing her about. To actually listen to what people are saying and potentially change her views. Especially if she wants their votes.

The people that are criticizing Harris on these issues in particular are by and large people who very obviously would not vote for / do not support Trump. A criticism of Harris is not supporting Trump. It is hoping to convince Harris to become a candidate that they can fully support. Someone they truly believe in and want to become president. Not just somebody they vote for because “well at least it’s not Trump”.

Not going to pretend to be able to read the minds of Hamas. But it seems like the idea was that taking hostages would give them leverage to negotiate. Because although the Israeli government generally regard Palestinians as subhuman barbarians, surely they wouldn’t risk the lives of the hostages by retaliating full force. And it seems in general they were partially right. The general population of Israel is calling for a ceasefire because they are concerned for the safety of the hostages and want their friends and family back. But Netanyahu seems to have very little interest in negotiations.