Too Good For A Free Banana

I don’t really worry about… we’ll say most of you. Excepting some people who I have blocked, most people following me or who I follow have their eyes on the ball. But then I see the normies on Instagram who believe every single social media graphic that gets posted by some idiot about politics. I worry about the kind of people like my friend who was so upset that Joe Biden was the nominee, not because she didn’t like his policies, but because she believed that the DNC chose the president and “Why did they pick him if he’s too old?” I worry about those people. The ones too dumb to know how dumb they are, but just smart enough to vote.

I think things are bad enough that Democrats will do well in the midterms. But one thing that people have refused to accept is that all of their posts have an effect. They think they’re just one nobody online and that no one listens to them, plus they’re in a blue state, so it’s fine, they can say whatever they want and their “vote doesn’t matter” while not recognizing that their words do, and that what they’re engaging in is a years-long campaign to stifle enthusiasm for the exact political changes that they claim to want.

We can gain a lot of information from more precise break downs of how people voted, but just these raw numbers tell us something important. They tell us that about 3 million people who voted for Biden in 2020 decided to vote for Trump in 2024*, and they tell us that about 3 million people who voted for Biden in 2020 just didn't vote at all in 2024.

And it's very likely that at least some of those votes were from people living in states that went blue anyway, but it's even more likely that a lot of those votes were not. Yes, it's very rare that presidential elections are won by one or two votes and so it's easy to say that "my one vote doesn't matter," and that's true of any one individual person, but when you and your friend and 3 million other people all feel the same way - well, that's how elections are lost.

Yes, your one vote doesn't matter by itself. But in a democracy, you have to get rid of that hyperindividualist way of thinking for elections. Your vote is on a team - not in the fandomization of politics red vs blue sense, but in the you can't win a football game with just the QB sense. The team needs your vote to do its part so that their votes can do their part, and anyone who is telling you to not vote is doing so in an attempt to undermine your team. And if you're telling people not to vote, then you're actively working to undermine your team as well.

I get being disappointed with your party. I get being incredibly frustrated with the state of politics in the US right now. But it is still obvious that one party is significantly worse than the other, and as long as that's true, I need you to let your vote do its part, so that my vote can as well.