> How is it a betrayal of anything or anyone to vote for the better of two viable options (according to your own opinion)?
How do you weigh two options when one has a record of imposing very long-term harms (PRWORA has now been on the books for almost 30 years and if you remember her response to Sanders' accusation she helped round up the votes for PRWORA, it was to defend the law) vs a more acute set of insecurities?
That's the choice between measles (orange, fast-spreading, kill you or you recover) and polio (not orange, slower spreading, you might not ever fully recover). So I am not entirely sure from the perspective of being married to a non-American who was the lesser evil except to say they were both genuinely horrifying.
Theres a second very important point here as well. If the issues that matter to my family (for example, full inclusion in the protections of the working classes -- even we knowledge workers are working class) are not on the table, withholding my vote may be the only way to get them on the table at all, and voting for someone who has actively worked against those interests is a betrayal of that.
On the issue you originally mentioned – immigration – surely it's clear which where each of these two people stood. Look at their policy proposals, their party's policy proposals, their party's policy history, and their rhetoric. Then you vote for the one that's better. No matter how slight the difference (though in this case the difference is huge).
I'm not sure what issue you're referring to getting on the table. (I suspect it actually already is on the table.) But how does not voting get that issue on the table? It's too late to change the candidates' positions on election day. Are you hoping that years later a different set of candidates will try to address your concern by examining who didn't vote in the previous election? That seems unlikely. Candidates do what voters want, not non-voters. Opinion polls often throw out non-voters, too.
And most people care about multiple issues, so even if your main issue isn't addressed by anyone, you've lost the opportunity to try to make some progress on all of those "less important" issues.
The winning strategy for improving the world is not hard. Vote for the "lesser of two evils". Every single time. This will cause evil to decline. Maybe slowly, hopefully quickly.
Don't get stuck in analysis paralysis. The main two U.S. parties have a lot of differences. It should be pretty easy to figure out which closer aligns with your views.
But what of those other issues? Health care reform that specifically singles out my family for additional burdens if I lose my job because I am married to an immigrant (back to the same issue)?
What I am doing is trying to help a third party organize so that if not this year, if not next year, if not in four years, we can eventually make an impact.
Basic point is: If my family is not to be fully included with the same rights, then you don't need my vote. This willingness to throw elections made the Democrats come around on gay rights. It ought to be used by those of us in mixed-nationality families to make them come around on immigrant rights.
(In addition to organizational efforts, I am in the running for volunteering for various positions in the American Solidarity Party, primarily because they do include families like mine in their agenda.)
I don't understand the issue you're referring to with health care. Can you explain further? I also don't how being "willing" to "throw" elections helped change Democrats' opinions on gay rights? What are you referring to?
Helping a third party is counterproductive and irresponsible. The only "impact" you will make is in harming the issues you care about most. It's the same as just volunteering to help the major party you like the least. It's basically the worst thing you can do. At best, third parties in the US take advantage of well-meaning people by using magical thinking and cynicism. At worst, they're used as patsies to let foreign dictators influence the election[1].
In our first-past-the-post voting system, you have to get a majority to win, not a plurality. The party with the most votes doesn't win – the party with over half the votes wins. This means it isn't possible to have more that two competitive parties under this voting system.
I don't like that system. I think we should have a different voting system that more fairly represents people and eliminates mathematical loopholes. I also think the major political party that most closely represents my views is also the most likely to offer a chance for electoral reform.
It's a much faster, easier, and more plausible strategy to try to move the best viable party in the direction you prefer. There's effective alternatives to third parties – look at the Democratic Socialists of America or the Tea Party. These groups were able to use the major political parties to launch and implement their platform very quickly (like in one or two election cycles). There's more actual politicians aligned with groups like this than any third party, and they have massive influence over US politics. And they don't have the downside of forcing their members to shoot themselves in the foot every election.
The US absolutely needs people like you who are passionate about important issues and have the time and energy to dedicate to making real change. But please, for everyone's sake, do it in a way that doesn't directly harm the only peaceful strategy for political change that we have.
The Affordable Care Act required purchasing of individual health insurance for everyone in your household, and provided a penalty to those who could not. There was a gap between where this requirement was effective (the income tax filing requirement) and the poverty line, which meant that Medicaid was understood to be the coverage of last resort.
But new immigrants are barred from access to Medicaid, meaning if we had returned to the US, we would have had a 5 year period where we could be fined for me losing my job just because I am married to a non-citizen.
Now, the first policy (Medicaid exclusion) was a part of Bill Clinton's re-election campaign (and when Hillary responded to the accusation of helping round up votes for it, she defended that law, guaranteeing there was no way I would vote for her). The requirement to purchase without undoing the exclusion was done entirely by Democrats without any GOP help.
When your family has been sold down the river enough times, there's a lack of trust. I maintain that the Democratic Party treats families like mine as cheap bargaining chips because we only get one vote as a household while other families get two, so there is not much harm in throwing my family under the bus or off the boat if it gets some other votes somewhere.
At the end of the day the only two things politicians want is your money and your vote. And it is only in these ways we can hold them accountable.
Honestly, I don't even know what to say to this. It just makes me sad.
I'm sad because it seems like your reasoning is based on an extreme corner case – a hypothetical fee if you hypothetically moved and hypothetically lost your job and hypothetically couldn't find insurance. I'm sad because no one should have to worry about that anyway. I'm sad that this loophole exists and hasn't been fixed. I'm sad that you're blaming and not supporting the people trying to fix health care. I'm sad that those people didn't do a better job fixing it. I'm sad because I'm pretty sure you're going to make it harder to fix in the future. And I'm sad because I don't know how to have a constructive conversation on this anymore.
Thank you for engaging with me. I hope I'm wrong – I hope your political effort and strategy is able to help the people you care about without hurting others.
Economic insecurity is nothing to laugh at. I have economic security to some extent where I am living. I would have such security in a different way if we moved to my wife's culture despite being excluded from a lot of initial opportunities.
But the first time we moved back, I was unable to find a job and needed that assistance, which was then denied to me.
I don't see how it can be fixed. Both parties throw families like mine under the bus as easy ways to appease others. The only way I see is to try to start a very different approach to our national conversation and that is not going to come from our parties of capital (either one).
