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My response to "Why I Still Don't Vote 2014"
Here is a 21 minute video where a guy who calls himself "DaREVOLUTIONARYWitDaTattoos" is frustrated about politics and refuses to vote.
Before someone alerts this thread, this is the (lengthy) response I made in the comments:
I have a few points to make about this vid.
5:40-6:00
Even though the popular vote is all but irrelevant in determining who becomes president, I think it should be noted that Obama won the popular vote both times. He is the first president in decades to win the popular vote twice with over 50% of the vote, and he won the majority of the vote in every non-white group. It wasn't just one single group that put him over the top.
6:15-6:45
There have been quite a few elected officials with pro-people/populist agendas. There's Bernie Sanders, for starters. There's Elizabeth Warren, Sharrod Brown, and the list goes on. Even Obama's agenda has been fairly progressive (though I even have a few disagreements with him), doing things like pushing for an end to the Bush top tax cuts, and pushing for a jobs bill a few years ago that was eventually blocked by Republicans in Congress.
7:40-8:10
I agreed 100% about how more should be done with regards to the prison industrial complex and Wall Street. However, sitting out elections is clearly not going to solve those problems. If people want those problems fixed, they need to either find more candidates who care about those issues, or run themselves.
Outside of prisons and Wall Street, there are many other issues that face the country that our two major parties hold vastly different views on. For example, there is the fight for the right to vote PERIOD, the fight to get guns out the hands of criminals and lunatics, the fight for health care, education, taxation, women's rights, gay rights, a higher minimum wage, etc. Sitting out elections is EXACTLY what the money-grubbing elites and the bigots want the working class (and especially Black folks) to do. Why else have many states like Florida and North Carolina made voting more inconvenient for us during the past few years if voting doesn't change anything? In fact, there would be no Social Security, no Civil Rights Act, and no public highways if voting were supposedly so ineffective. California would still have the budget deficit leftover from the Schwarzenegger era if voting truly didn't make a difference.
Compared to other countries, voter turnout in the U.S. is atrocious. It's a shame that some people today seem to take for granted the rights that people died for in the past. There is no excuse for sitting out an election, and a person has no right to complain if he or she isn't politically-active.
5:40-6:00
Even though the popular vote is all but irrelevant in determining who becomes president, I think it should be noted that Obama won the popular vote both times. He is the first president in decades to win the popular vote twice with over 50% of the vote, and he won the majority of the vote in every non-white group. It wasn't just one single group that put him over the top.
6:15-6:45
There have been quite a few elected officials with pro-people/populist agendas. There's Bernie Sanders, for starters. There's Elizabeth Warren, Sharrod Brown, and the list goes on. Even Obama's agenda has been fairly progressive (though I even have a few disagreements with him), doing things like pushing for an end to the Bush top tax cuts, and pushing for a jobs bill a few years ago that was eventually blocked by Republicans in Congress.
7:40-8:10
I agreed 100% about how more should be done with regards to the prison industrial complex and Wall Street. However, sitting out elections is clearly not going to solve those problems. If people want those problems fixed, they need to either find more candidates who care about those issues, or run themselves.
Outside of prisons and Wall Street, there are many other issues that face the country that our two major parties hold vastly different views on. For example, there is the fight for the right to vote PERIOD, the fight to get guns out the hands of criminals and lunatics, the fight for health care, education, taxation, women's rights, gay rights, a higher minimum wage, etc. Sitting out elections is EXACTLY what the money-grubbing elites and the bigots want the working class (and especially Black folks) to do. Why else have many states like Florida and North Carolina made voting more inconvenient for us during the past few years if voting doesn't change anything? In fact, there would be no Social Security, no Civil Rights Act, and no public highways if voting were supposedly so ineffective. California would still have the budget deficit leftover from the Schwarzenegger era if voting truly didn't make a difference.
Compared to other countries, voter turnout in the U.S. is atrocious. It's a shame that some people today seem to take for granted the rights that people died for in the past. There is no excuse for sitting out an election, and a person has no right to complain if he or she isn't politically-active.
I probably missed a few points and didn't touch base on everything, but I want to hear what the denizens of DU think about my response.
18 replies
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= new reply since forum marked as read
