We know voting in bourgeois USian democracy is only affected by people in swing states (and even that is "which ghoul do you want to administer the dictatorship of capital") but hear me out.
A comrade recently posted about ironically or unironically (I didn't read enough into the thread) voting for AfD in Germany and it reminded me of a WaPo article that read:
"Several U.S. military leaders have advised Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth that prolonging large-scale operations against Iran is unsustainable and risks weakening their ability to confront threats elsewhere, including the U.S. homeland, according to people familiar with a recent assessment prepared for the Pentagon chief."
So it got me thinking, by continuing to overextend the military, as empires do, are we actually seeing "two, three, many Vietnams"? Is the way to exhaust the empire's military into submission to vote for Trump? On one hand we have the King of Hubris (hubris being the guarantor of empire decline) and on the other hand things might have played out this way while wearing a Democrat mask, too, as we know the real driving force is capital accumulation and Epstein island retreats. The down side is the harm that comes to marginalized and oppressed people, which again also happens under Dems when it's their turn to protect capital accumulation and Epstein island retreats. I know in Germany it's different because there are several parties but in the US we're a one party state, but with typical American extravagance, we have two of them (shout out to Julius Nyerere). So would voting for Republicans be a net positive for the world and the demise of capitalism? Should we just abstain from voting? Vote blue for harm reduction?
A big piece of evidence for this theory comes from my personal experience- how many people I know afk that are now (recently) radicalized. People I wouldn't expect in a million years to actually be down with changing the system are now fervent revolutionaries. Comrade Trump is the greatest left wing organizer since Lenin. That's right I said it.
There have been several threads about the topic of voting for Trump specifically before, and threads about the topic of accelerationism in general before, and the answer now is still the same as it was in 2024, in 2020, and really since the dawn of politics: accelerationism is not an effective strategy. There is nothing particular about the present day situation that makes it any different from the historical precedent which countless people have already written about. To put it simply, a successful revolution requires a large-scale, organized revolutionary movement with the support of the masses, capable of resisting the status quo. Accelerationism is making things worse without the means to make things better, which is historically how you get fascism. What we must remember is that things will always get worse of their own accord, but slowing down that worsening is how we get the necessary time and means to build a successful revolutionary movement.
Yes, Marx tells us that the sharpening contradictions of capitalism will take us to socialism and then communism, so is your idea of slowing down that worsening voting for Democrats, 3rd party, or not voting at all?
From your point of view, do we create two, three, many Vietnams by simply letting capitalism's decay take its course, or do we have to do something? This is, of course, unrelated to building people power, which should go on (and is going on more intensely than before where I live) regardless of what the ruling class does.
My own strategy in 2024 was voting for the PSL, but I knew other leftists who abstained or voted Democrat. The idea with voting third party is that it "puts proletarian politics on the agenda": for non-leftists it creates more visibility for these ideas and shows that they have a base of support, for leftists it can be a morale boost to know how many people already stand behind our ideas, that sort of thing. This being said, I don't think it's worth people's energy to scold others for either abstaining or voting Democrat, since the amount of things we can achieve through electoralism are limited to begin with.
As for the second point, let capitalism's decay take its course in a sense. Your focus should be on agitating and helping others, that's the way to both slow the worsening and build people's power.