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Comment by kevin_thibedeau | Hacker News Reader

Really wish Zeldin wasn't an election denier. That's what made me vote for governor sellout.

That’s such a weird thing to not vote for someone for. I mean, I get it - it’s a principled stance and all. But you should never vote on principal. You should vote to win so that the real issues you care about are reified. Principal could make you feel good but you still lost. Winning is the only thing that matters.

That kind of cynical thinking is exactly what broke US democracy. Winning at any cost even to the detriment of society as a whole.

It’s from the book “Rules for Radicals” and has been a major part of progressive activists strategy for over 60 years. It works.

I didn't say that it doesn't work. It has been a major part of the anti-abortion and pro-gun movements as well and it has been very effective there.

However your quality of life in society is much more important than any single issue. Knowingly voting for a candidate who is not competent just because you agree with them on a single issue will not solve any of the larger issues in society.

It comes down to pragmatism, not ideology.

Consider you have to 2 groups, A and B, and a set of issues. Each issue has different importance to me and each group has a generally opposing stance on each issue.

One group may have a stance on a subset of issues I generally prefer but more importantly the other group could have a stance on issues that terrify me. Their stance would lead to negative outcomes much worse than negative outcomes from the other group. It could even be that I disagree with many of the stances of the group I vote for but I’m not terrified of the outcomes associated with those stances.

So it is therefore more important to win to stop the opposition group from producing undesirable outcomes.

You're misunderstanding issues versus the mechanism of issue management. You're saying ability to manage issues is less important than any issue being managed, which makes no sense.

Unless, of course, you don't believe in democracy and an election process.

I believe in winning so the issues I care about most are either acted on or prevented from being acted on. Without winning it’s pointless. You need to win to take power so winning is the most important thing before anything else. Everything else has winning as a prerequisite.

If you vote for me, I’ll work to enact everything you want, but then I’ll also ensure I become dictator so that later I can repeal everything I don’t like, including most of the things I passed for you. Good news is, you won!

> Winning is the only thing that matters.

…assuming you trust the system to enact policies you care about. Punishing the act of disingenuously eroding trust in the system for political gain isn’t just a matter of principal but a clear long term strategy. Believe it or not there’s another election cycle after this one.

Next election cycle? Who cares, it will be forgotten by the next news cycle. Keep winning to keep getting your desired outcomes.

Many people consider not having election deniers in government to be a “real issue” in and of itself. Having people in office who sow discord and continue to promulgate a fantasy about election integrity actively takes focus away from more important things.

The winning at-all-costs attitude is what got us here in the first place: people so concerned with winning and having their people in office they don’t care if they actually won the election, and tell themselves increasingly nonsensical things to justify it.

It’s about outcomes. If that’s an outcome you care greatly about then that’s your decision to make. For me it ranks low on the set of outcomes I desire, especially when compared to the outcomes the opposition desires.

The book “Rules for Radicals” talks about this and it has been a tool of left wing activists for 60+ years. You see it today for instance with various activists groups that plea for “our democracy” on one hand while destroying things and disrupting society until they get their way outside the democratic process.

The outcome is not in your control. Its like going to a rigged casino and expected to win big. This ideology is really out of touch with reality.

Having elections transition smoothly according to the vote is low on the set of outcomes you desire?

That seems like a meta issue, that if not supported, all other issues are moot. So I'd certainly vote against party on any given platform plank in order to maintain the meta process that applies to both present and all future parties regardless of platform planks.

We often have to vote for the lesser of two evils.

Not really; I refuse to vote for evil politicians (it keeps my karma nice and shiny). Unless voting is mandatory, you can simply not vote for anyone. My practice is to vote for someone that won't win, like the Greens, but for whom my vote might save them their deposit.

Sure, but then you can't either act surprised when the more evil politicians are elected and blame people for either not voting or voting for better politicians.

You get what you vote or don't vote for

That’s only looking at a single election. Being willing to vote for scum means your party is happy to send scum to the next general election, at which point you get to vote for even more scum.

Have some standards in the general election and people start looking at scum thinking their not electable.

If you want better politicians, there are two things you can do:

Vote in primaries, there are different rules about this but if it means you have to join and participate in party activity to vote for a candidate then so be it.

hold them accountable together as ironic as it is: as a lobbying group, or even more grandiose work together with as many citizens of the state (even across the party line, no craziness though), to hold the governor/politician accountable.

Some states have open primaries, eliminating the need to join a party. I wish my state was one of them, because I hate the political parties.

Yep don’t forget the second option. Direct action is always possible. I subscribe to a “block of marble” theory of politics: you can always METAPHORICALLY beat those in power into shape.

> but if it means you have to join and participate in party activity

Yeah. But my shiny karma doesn't want me to join a party whose policies I disagree with, just so I can influence their choice of candidates. That seems hypocritical, and I regard hypocrisy as the cardinal political "sin".

I've never agreed with the policies of any parties, so I have never joined a political party. The closest I got was that I joined CND, about 40 years ago. I quit about 39 years ago.

If you were already going to get what you didn't vote for, what's the difference?

Refusing to vote doesn't change the outcome if the only choices are bad ones. If anything it means you effectively voted for whoever had the majority in the end and are still guilty of supporting the greater evil if they turn out to be such.

>If anything it means you effectively voted for whoever had the majority in the end and are still guilty of supporting the greater evil if they turn out to be such.

Thats red herring. Our electoral system is completely corrupt. The only way your vote would actuallycount is if all of the politicians we're replaced at once. Then maybe there would be an even playing field where it would matter.

Your statement of "you effectively voted for whoever had the majority" is like living in a state controlled by a two party system of gangsters and telling us that we just voted for the greater evil. Our two party system is corrupt, both parties are corrupt, don't lie to yourself.

I think you make it too easy for yourself to drop responsibility. "Both parties are corrupt, everything is corrupt, the system is corrupt" is just a cope out.

There are efforts to introduce alternative voting systems that make 3rd party systems viable. There are efforts to get ~~corruption~~ lobbying out of the system, ...

If you really think that the system is "totally corrupt"; do something to fix it.

Im not AT ALL responsible for a system that is not controlled by the people. That has been as clear as day for the past 50 years. If you are supporting it, you are the problem. You are supporting corruption by playing its game.

Yes my "do something" is focusing on supporting grassroots people and efforts that we have direct control over.

I have no interest in supporting systems that are not backed up by common individuals.

> Im not AT ALL responsible for a system that is not controlled by the people.

In the US system all power - nominally - derives from the people. And it still is controlled by the people, as the balance-of-power upset in 2016 - when Trump was elected GOP candidate despite the GOP leadership disfavoring him - showed. But yes; most of the time the two party system is doing a laudable job keeping the the people disunited over petty squabbles, while the moneyed class is poking the fire. And you feeling that "the system [..] is not controlled by the people" is just part of the strategy; you are still an actor in the system and as such you bear responsibility.

> You are supporting corruption by playing its game.

I'm not permitted to participate in US American politics. I'm just an observer. The system I'm living in is a semi-direct democracy with federal, regional and local levels, on each of which I do participate. It's pretty much "by the people, for the people". Still; not without flaws.

> Yes my "do something" is focusing on supporting grassroots people and efforts that we have direct control over.

That's a laudable effort, I congratulate you. Are you aware of other grassroot movements that try to break up the two-party system and to get money out of politics?

What are "common individuals"?

>If anything it means you effectively voted for whoever had the majority in the end and are still guilty of supporting the greater evil if they turn out to be such.

No. This is a nice lie that conveniently encourages one to vote for the major parties but no. If someone comes up to you and offers you a choice of being shot in the arm or shot in the leg and you say "I don't want to be shot at all" you have no moral responsibility for being shot or where you were shot.

More importantly, not voting sends a message. A very important message. When no one votes (as is the case in Russia), it makes it clear to everyone that everyone else thinks that the system is corrupt. The government can still say "99% of people voted! WOohoo! Democracy!" but everyone knows that it's fake, because nobody they know voted. That's why some of the most corrupt countries on earth have mandatory voting.

Not voting is voting you taking away a vote from one side.

Doesn’t work like that. I’ve had my red team grandparents saying not voting was the same as voting for blue team, and my blue team grandparents saying not voting was the same as voting for red team. Both things can’t be true. And even if they were, then not voting would be the same as voting for every team, in which case the difference in votes between each candidate doesn’t change. Not voting is just not voting.

Election denier vs right to repair denier. If you consider the former less evil, good luck to you.

Election denier is such a stupid phrase - right now Democrats like to act like they have never disputed an election, which is a total crock. Hell Stacy Abrams had to be defeated twice before she finally conceded. And then you have people like some of those in this thread that not only buy into it, but feel morally superior at being duplicitous. Sigh.

If you really can't see the difference between Trump's fraudulent "election was stolen" claims that led to a whole attack on capitol and that he still can't get over it to this day vs Stacy Abrams recount or whatever, there is nothing that can be be done to persuade your kind. It's like being too far gone to see any logic.

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