The point of voting blue in 2018 isn’t to make the US perfect. We cannot accomplish that in one fell swoop. There’s gerrymandering, voter apathy, voter suppression, and generations of older party-line fucks we have to deal with.
Voting blue in 2018 is to make it less immediately threatening for PoC, LGBT+ people, the disabled, and any other marginalized demographic. It’s a stopgap against Republicans who are aligned with Nazis, white supremacists, and sexual abusers.
Correcting politics in the United States is going to take decades of new voters staying on top of politics and not falling prey to apathy, like our predecessors.
People telling you not to waste a vote on 3rd Party this midterm aren’t saying “never vote 3rd party.” Republicans have united behind one utterly heinous front. We need to unite behind Democrats, for the time being.
In Canada, splitting the leftwing vote between the Liberal and New Democratic Parties was how we wound up with almost 10 years of Stephen Harper. Holding our noses and voting for the party that had the best chance of winning was how we got Justin Trudeau, who isn’t perfect, but is leagues better than a Conservative government. Yes, it sucks to have to make sacrifices, but you need to look at your alternatives. -V
I think the most important thing people have to remember is that it’s easier to make forward progress when the people in power don’t inherently want you dead.
We’re not going to have a utopia. Let alone a utopia in our lifetime. But we can make a better society. We don’t do that by only allowing perfection. Perfectionism gets you nowhere. What we need is “good enough”. Is the bar for “good enough” really low right now? Yes. Does that change that that IS good enough? No. Good enough saves lives, helps us maintain energy to work on raising the bar, and gets us at least pointed in the right direction.
So just hold your nose and fucking vote blue. Keep voting blue. Because we can’t really raise the bar until we’ve not only made some changes - Obama made changes and we tried to raise the bar too early - but sustained those changes.
Social progress is not a sprint. It’s a marathon of lifetimes. It takes lives. Susan B. Anthony’s life went to social progress. Sojourner Truth’s life went to social progress. Martin Luther King Jr.’s life went to social progress. Marsha P. Johnson’s life went to social progress. People have fought and died for social progress, and it’s not fast or easy.
But it’s worth it.
This is the race of the tortoise and the hare, and we must be the tortoise. Even though it’s not exciting, or fun, or easy, let alone fast.
