this post was submitted on 14 Jun 2026
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Blue no matter who!!!
Yes blue is bad. But red is far fucking worse.
Glad Gretchen Whitmer can count on your support!
Again she's better than the alternative that ran against her if I lived in Michigan I certainly would have voted for her. If you can give me a better choice then please do. If you can't give me a better choice then shut the fuck up.
If people keep voting for any blue candidate, then there's no incentive for the Democrats to run people that will ever actually make a positive change, and things just keep sliding to the right and getting worse. I know it feels like now isn't the time to take that kind of risk, but people have been literally saying that for about 40 years now. It's a big part of why things are as bad as they are now. If people stood up to it like I was saying 20 years ago, we would never have had Trump. And because people aren't standing up to it even now, we'll probably have something worse within the next decade.
So, not voting for her is the better choice in the same way that putting disinfectant on your wound is a better choice than letting it fester, even though at first it stings a lot worse than just leaving it alone. I mean imagine saying "ahhh but this cut hurts so bad, now is the LAST time that I can afford to make it feel any worse!"...and then tomorrow you say "oh god it hurts worse now, now is REALLY not the time to make it hurt worse. I need to wait for a better opportunity at some point later...."
The best choices are rarely found by thinking only one step ahead.
That doesn't make sense. If people kept voting for any Democrat, then the Republican party would cease to exist. A new major party would pop up to take its place. I mean, that's sort of how we got the Democratic and Republican parties. We didn't start with them.
But, like, there's also the fact that if the Democratic party took over, it would likely fracture into it's progressive and centrist factions. That would push the Overton window further to the left. That's how it works, and also how it has worked, and until some form of ranked choice voting is implemented federally, it's how it will continue to work.
As a counter to your example, imagine your algorithm, but it's an infinite tree. You can seek every possible sum S~n~ to some number n. Doesn't matter what n is, but it can never see the entirety of the tree because not only does our view of the future get fuzzier the further we see, but the number of possibilities will become unmanageable to measure. There will occasionally be some sum T~n+k~ that'll outcompete S~n~. But, that doesn't mean S won't converge to an even better sum later on. Because we can only see so far down the tree. That's why a greedy algorithm is used. You have so many resources, and it's just a debate on how much big you can make n. You would have to determine exactly how your T sum is better, and right now, history doesn't really agree with you.
Thanks for the level headed and quantifiable reasoning. I agree the argument you're putting forth is the most compelling one and the one that most makes me question my own line of reasoning as well. Of course, like you say: it's always possible that something way down the line is going to turn out to make it all worth it, but because we can't see perfectly into the future and the world is really chaotic and hard to predict. I think that is basically the strongest argument out there for just picking the immediate best option.
On the other hand, I'm not exactly saying that we need to look all the way down the tree, maybe just like three or four steps ahead, instead of literally just one. Of course, the predictability goes down with each successive step. But I think we can at least think two election cycles ahead without losing too much precision. Especially in cases where the person running is really reprehensible to us, that helps even out the trade-off too, because in the same way that we have assured benefits from their victory, we have assured drawbacks. In that sense your argument cuts both ways a little. (But mostly against me, I won't deny) I think a lot of the disagreements on strategy here come down to people's personal values for these variables: the predictability, the confirmed costs/payoffs, the potential costs/payoffs. Which are pretty hard to be objective about.
I think the complexity of it that I just talked about would put things in your favor too, if not for the evidence (in my opinion) that the greedy strategy is exactly what has produced our poor historical results. So this is my biggest question for you because you said history isn't on my side. But to me, it seems like we have plenty of record of the same sort of "wait til the next election to be picky, this time we have to win, the stakes are too high!" rhetoric going back decades. And things are undeniably getting worse. So from my perspective, we have already been trying the greedy algorithm strategy for the last 40 years. For me that makes me feel like I have not only a theoretical explanation for why that would make things worse, but also historical evidence of it actually doing so. History seems super on my side to me.
I gel with your reasoning style so I'm interested to hear what you think I'm getting wrong about that perspective.
I think that is fair. I would argue that the multiple steps ahead would probably include things like primary voting and caucusing, and that is where we push for the greatest progressive advances. So, you are mainly right.
Basically, while I understand your approach, I mostly disagree that voting Democratic is the one step ahead... Well, no, that is probably correct, so long as the modifier is that the ONLY thing you do is vote blue. That would, to your credit, not necessarily push change. Like, if, for whatever reason, the Republicans suddenly were incredibly progressive, voting for them would be better than Democrats. It wouldn't happen, but purely hypothetically, voting Democratic in that instance would be bad. But, I think in order to get there, you have to primary or caucus out the worst choices. That is like two or three steps ahead. That choice can get better and better the more steps you do, like joining or starting a mutual aid organization, getting involved in your community, etc. That is like multiple steps. And each one is just their own sum to contribute.
What I will grant you is that we probably have been at a one- or two-step thinking for a long time now. And the hard part about accepting that is that it is difficult to get people out of that mindset. We are quite insular. We are quite individualistic. We are quite lonely. And telling people that it is their responsibility to change that is gonna get a lot of pushback. But, well, I think it is!
So, you are right, and your reasoning is right, but I think it concludes to something that might be wrong. I do push for voting Democratic because the alternative is worse, but I only push it until the alternative is better. And I go to the caucuses. I go to the primaries. I go to my local Democratic meet ups. I question my local representatives and senators, ask why they don't push progressive policies, and then if they fail to do better, I keep pushing for better, annoy the shit out of them, and then eventually, they get switched out or they get better. It looks like one-step, and sometimes (or often), it feels one-step.
So, right now, I criticize the shit out of Gaven Newsom. I criticize the shit out of bad Democrats. I push for better in primaries. And then... I vote the Democrat. Because the alternative is the Republican, and so far, they are worse.
So if not voting for her is the best choice who do you suggest that we vote for? Because not voting is the worst choice.
Thank you for responding politely, it is very appreciated.
Ideally, you would vote for someone that you actually like and want to have represent you. Not someone perfect of course, but someone who doesn't do outright repulsive and two-faced evil things like this lady was caught doing. But if no such person exists, then I think that not voting at all really is the best option, for the reasoning stated above. I don't want to misrepresent my standards to the political entities, because then I'm giving them an excuse not to meet my (what should be low) standards.
I don't really know about what's going on in Michigan, so I looked into it to tell you what I'd do.
It turns out that this horrible Gretchen person is term limited anyways. Probably why she's being so careless. There are two Democrats in the running it looks like. One being a huge asshole sheriff who wants to attract the AI industry by building data centers. and the other being Jocelyn Benson who wants to protect reproductive rights and has endorsements from local labor groups....buuuut she's married to a VP of a real estate company that wants to build a data center in Michigan... 🤔 although he did say he'd recuse himself from the projects if she was elected.
So, for example, I would never vote for the AI Sheriff, even if he was the only candidate. Same for Gretchen, if it were possible for her to run. Because I want to do my part to lift the bar higher than that. As for the other candidate I'd have to look a little deeper to say for sure, but the scandals I'm seeing tend to be in a more plausible deniability realm, and I don't see anything disagreeable in her policies themselves. So tentatively would vote for her.