11.2 million. That’s the number of American citizens who rank climate change as their top issue but didn’t vote in the 2024 election, according to research by the Environmental Voter Project. For context, Donald Trump won the presidency in 2024 by less than 2.3 million votes. For a little over a decade, EVP has been [...]Read More... from If So Many Americans Care About Climate, Why Don’t They Vote Like It?
I’d ask you to consider how we got here. Trump didn’t just fall from the sky and started wrecking things on his own.
I could go into the whole history of the last quarter century and beyond, but to keep things simple, let’s go with a personal example:
I live in an area I would describe as blue MAGA. They regularly vote (corporate) Dem at the federal level, although local politics is very Rep dominated. My rep is a multiple term incumbent Democrat who we have tried and failed to primary multiple times, including one election where I was directly involved in the progressive opposition campaign.
As far as issues that enable fascism goes, they:
Voted for more ICE funding and increased border security.
Voted for increases to military spending.
Voted to support Israel’s genocide.
Participates in the war mongering around countries like Iran. To the extent that they had any issue with Trump’s recent war, it was a matter of poor execution rather than any principled stance against US imperialism. This matters beyond some lefty purity test. Stances like these and the policies they lead to help manufacture consent for these wars.
Failed to press for congress to act on it’s constitutional responsibility to stop presidents from illegally starting wars.
Voted on a Republican resolution to condemn the horrors of socialism at a time when right wing fascism is the dominant, pressing crisis in our country.
I could go on, but you get the gist. They’re exactly the kind of Democrat we’re talking about who enables the fascists to do what they do.
So… setting aside the fact that he’s probably in a safe seat anyway, what should I do come election day? Is voting for this person a vote against Trump and fascism? Is this harm reduction? Can I expect them to do ANYTHING to reign in this administration when they have not even tried to do so before? IF they’re not going to, what exactly is the benefit? And there are costs beyond what they will do in office. Incumbency comes with a pretty big electoral advantage. Continuing to support them makes it harder to unseat them later.
I’d ask you to consider how we got here. Trump didn’t just fall from the sky and started wrecking things on his own.
I could go into the whole history of the last quarter century and beyond, but to keep things simple, let’s go with a personal example:
I live in an area I would describe as blue MAGA. They regularly vote (corporate) Dem at the federal level, although local politics is very Rep dominated. My rep is a multiple term incumbent Democrat who we have tried and failed to primary multiple times, including one election where I was directly involved in the progressive opposition campaign.
As far as issues that enable fascism goes, they:
Voted for more ICE funding and increased border security.
Voted for increases to military spending.
Voted to support Israel’s genocide.
Participates in the war mongering around countries like Iran. To the extent that they had any issue with Trump’s recent war, it was a matter of poor execution rather than any principled stance against US imperialism. This matters beyond some lefty purity test. Stances like these and the policies they lead to help manufacture consent for these wars.
Failed to press for congress to act on it’s constitutional responsibility to stop presidents from illegally starting wars.
Voted on a Republican resolution to condemn the horrors of socialism at a time when right wing fascism is the dominant, pressing crisis in our country.
I could go on, but you get the gist. They’re exactly the kind of Democrat we’re talking about who enables the fascists to do what they do.
So… setting aside the fact that he’s probably in a safe seat anyway, what should I do come election day? Is voting for this person a vote against Trump and fascism? Is this harm reduction? Can I expect them to do ANYTHING to reign in this administration when they have not even tried to do so before? IF they’re not going to, what exactly is the benefit? And there are costs beyond what they will do in office. Incumbency comes with a pretty big electoral advantage. Continuing to support them makes it harder to unseat them later.