Here’s a little lesson for dinosaurs like Nick Gillespie who have no idea how Reddit works. Reddit’s a community where everyone has a vote and anyone can post a link, which either makes it a communitarian hellhole or an online Galt’s Gulch, depending on what line the Koch brothers are telling Reason to pimp at any given moment.
If one asshole posts a link on Reddit, it doesn’t mean shit until the rest of the community votes it up. And if enough people vote it up quickly enough, it gets on the front page. When that happens, you might want to mention it on Reason. And, at this moment, this is the top-ranked link on Reddit:
In 2008, nationwide, under-25s outvoted over-65s. In 2010, wrinklies outvoted you punks TWO TO ONE.
All I hear is “waah, Obama didn’t do everything I wanted, so I’m not voting!” Well look what you got yourself, Mr “Both parties are the same”
Which party opposes the repeal of the military DADT policy?
Which party opposes reproductive rights for women?
Which party opposes OSHA regulations for safety and health of workers?
Which party opposes EPA regulation to stop pollution?
Which party thinks tax cuts for the rich solve all problems?
Need I go on? If you can’t tell the difference between the GOP and the Democrats, you’re not paying attention. Know what else? If you actually vote, Democrats will pay more attention to what you want.
But Wisconsin just voted in a GOP majority legislature and a GOP governor. Because you little shits stayed home in November.
PLEASE remember this next year.
Unlike the random shit Fonz chose to pimp yesterday, this is a pretty damn good point (even though I think the stats in the first paragraph aren’t quite right).
Lee
As a redditor for sometime, this is a very accurate description of the reddit community.
Reddit is a very good community that you subscribe to subreddits and that partially determines what gets posted on your front page.
So if you do not subscribe to the subreddits ‘AskReddit’ or ‘Politics’ they will probably not appear on your frontpage.
madmatt
except for a progresive wing of the democratic party which is ignored and told to suck up whatever hideousness is spewed out of committee the parties are indistinguishable…look how many of both parties voted for tax breaks for millionaires while being willing to sellout the unemployed.
homerhk
Can I just say a truly tremendous reddit post. Or perhaps all that pales into insignificance because some Obama supporters, you know, support Obama and are therefore are just as mindless as Bush supporters.
homerhk
madmatt – way to live up to your screen name. ‘the parties are indistinguishable’- is that really your view? I mean really? what on earth is the basis for this?
I thought the tax deal was made to do the opposite of selling out the unemployed.
A Commenter at Balloon Juice (formerlyThe Grand Panjandrum)
Poor Nick. He can’t help help it, he was born with a too tight leather jacket on his back.
PWL
Hear, hear. It’s the reason I still keep voting… Even if the bastards win, I did what I could (at the ballot box) to fight back…feel if you didn’t vote , and then you get fucked over, you have no right to bitch…like the song says “we get what we deserve…”
Dino
I can’t vouch for its reliability but:
Dino
@Dino:
here is the link: http://thesocietypages.org/sociologylens/2011/02/07/oldconservative-youngliberal-age-generation-and-voting-patterns/
Lee
@Dino:
I had read the same information about how not only was the young vote so low but the geezer vote was a bit higher.
As the reddit post points out: How is that working out for you?
@madmatt: Keep telling yourself that and see how it works out for you. You live in a two party system. You can either play the whiny hipster and not play or work to get things done.
kerFuFFler
It’s frustrating that many young voters don’t seem to understand that in as much as politics is like a game of tug of war, you don’t stop pulling for your side just because your whole team can’t agree on how far to pull. People need to vote, and they should choose candidates that can win and not throw their votes away on third party candidates just because the Democrats aren’t ‘progressive’ enough. Let’s just try to get the country to pull a little bit left at a time. When people see how well it works they’ll maybe stop being afraid of words like ‘liberal’, ‘socialist’ or ‘progressive’.
kerFuFFler
Why is my comment awaiting moderation?
Morbo
If nutpicking Reddit is going to become a trend, then surely Gillespie would be fine with sifting through r/libertarian to reveal the fine, upstanding citizens there, right?
Sentient Puddle
@madmatt:
In case you haven’t noticed, that’s kind of how things are for groups that are farther away from what passes as the mainstream in the country. If you want your kind of legislation passed, you have to work that much harder.
Lol
So what you’re saying is either:
The low turnout in 2010 of Dem constituencies was utterly predictable to anyone who had paid attention to the mid-term voting trends of the past few decades
OR
Obama used his time machine to punch hippies and disappoint the base in 2006.
The census bureau collects stats by age, gender and ethnicity. The charts are an interesting read and pop many narratives that certain people would have you believe.
Uloborus
@madmatt:
Delightfully, poll results show overwhelmingly that the progressive wing of the Democratic Party loves Obama and the job he’s doing. You are not the progressive wing of the Democratic Party. You are part of an actually very small group of nihilists who will find any reason to hate the government.
Our electoral problem is that the non-progressive politically uninvolved wing of the Democratic Party sat out the election, like they almost always do in a midterm, while the Republican base voted very heavily – because Obama got so much done and they’re furious our side is winning.
Cat Lady
What a pragmatic and sensible grown up thing to say, with the added benefit of being true. madmatt would rather cut himself and run away with the bad boy cuz that’ll show you. madmatt will NOT BE IGNORED!
BombIranForChrist
*sigh*
Once again, on the substance of the point being made, the reason why people didn’t turn out for Dems is to point out to Dems that they will not automatically get our vote just because Republicans are bad.
The problem with this “pretty damn good point” that mistermix praises is that it is really just this point:
“Wow, the Dems are voting for bad laws, BUT OMG SARAH PALIN IS CRAZY!!”
Wrong. This is how a peasant votes.
If you want Dems to support your views instead of the views of corporations et al, you have to fill them with the credible fear that they will not get elected if they don’t make an _honest_ effort to pass the legislation that people voted on them to support.
Yes, this will sometimes mean that the knuckledraggers will get into office, but I guarantee you that Obama’s newfound support of certain progressive policies is due to the fact that he is on the ballot in a couple years, and he has the credible fear that if he doesn’t support unions, decry DOMA, etc., he may not get elected.
That’s how it works.
Mike Kay (Peacemaker)
hahahahahahahhahahahhahahahah
hahahahahhahahhahahahahhahahah
ahahahhahahahhahahhahahahhahah
That was good. Thank for making my laugh. I needed it.
Sentient Puddle
@BombIranForChrist: Sigh.
I’m going to link this again. Because I’m not sure if it’s that some people aren’t paying attention or if they don’t want to pay attention.
Suck It Up!
That was a brilliant rant. people who say voting doesn’t matter need to take a look at how both parties bend over backwards to avoid pissing off old people.
While Dems in my blue state aren’t all that great at least they are not trying to pass bills to change the definition of rape or to make the murder of abortion doctors legal. They are also not trying to scare me to death with talks of the MOOSLIM bogeyman.
scarshapedstar
Yeah, we would be living in a socialist paradise if the 19-year-old firebagger army hadn’t ruined everything.
Smoke crack much?
RSA
Amen.
Mnemosyne
@BombIranForChrist:
Here’s the problem, though: if you keep promising to show up and never do, then the politicians stop courting your votes because they know you’re not going to actually follow through either way. You have to present them with the carrot before they’ll respond to the stick.
That’s why unions have so much power — they have an actual block that they can point to of actual people who actually vote in large numbers. Where’s your block? Who’s your Richard Trumka? What kind of public unity do you demonstrate that would make politicians understand that you’re an actual group and not just the usual slackers who don’t bother to show up for the midterms anyway?
Tuttle
Mnemosyne… were you just not paying attention in 2006 and 2008? When politicians courted our votes they won. When they then failed to live up to many, many of those promises they lost. How much more obvios of a stick and carrot do you want?
Where’s our block? Being tear-gassed and shot with rubber bullets at WTO protests for the past two decades. Often by police sent by Democratic politicians who gleefully demonized us alongside their Republican cronies. Where the fuck was Trumka then?
But BIFC is wrong about one thing. You’re not peasants… you just expect us to be.
gwangung
@Tuttle: Dude, YOU’RE not paying attention.
Voting is necessary, BUT NOT SUFFICIENT. What’s also necessary is participating in the party machinery, and working the gears so that YOU’RE the politician.
Sentient Puddle
@Tuttle: I want to be able to fly. So in the upcoming election, I plan to vote for the candidate for senate who makes the promise to repeal the laws of physics.
Now, let’s assume this candidate (who I shall refer to as Sen. Superman) wins. Upon taking office, Sen. Superman submits legislation to repeal physics, and so far so good. However, this does not mean physics is repealed. He has to get 49 other senators to agree to support this legislation, as well 10 others to agree to end debate after a sufficient period of time. And boy is Sen. Superman going to face opposition. While Sen. Superman might get some early support from people like Jim Inhofe and others who don’t believe in science, some senators are too deep in the pocket of the airline lobby, who wants to restrict flight to themselves. Others might be receptive, but have serious doubts about potential side effects, like the oceans possibly lifting up and just kinda floating formless in the air (would this be harmful to marine life, or just a mere oddity that we’d get used to?). And so on and so forth. 51 affirmative votes would be quite the challenge.
And this is not to mention the house, which is an unruly mob and might amend the hell out of it, say for instance, accepting most of Sen. Superman’s ideas, but rewriting the legislation to retain the third law of motion (which would totally fuck everything up goddamnit). And so Sen. Superman would have to work with them to come to some agreeable compromise. And this assumes the house doesn’t just table the legislation, citing the costs of implementation of this legislation (which to be fair, wouldn’t be cheap).
Then of course, we need the president to sign it (another choke point). And then surely some high school physics teacher will raise a constitutional objection to it, so it will have to survive Supreme Court muster, and I’ve read statements by at four sitting justices that are pro-gravity (with two strongly hinting that they support it as well).
But anyway, the bottom line is this. When you say something like this:
…it’s nowhere near as easy as whining “…but they PROMISED it!” Governing is hard shit.
Mnemosyne
@Tuttle:
Attention to what? Politicians ran against George W. Bush and his fuckups in 2006 and 2008. In 2010, there was no Bush left. And after 2 years of being told that Obama = Bush, a lot of people decided there was no difference between the parties, so why should they bother to turn out and vote?
So now we have Republican governors and legislatures destroying the country. Are you happy now that you punished your fellow Americans by withholding your vote?
In other words, not actually participating in the democracy you keep insisting is totally letting you down, man. Having a merry band of anarchists is not a voting block the way that union members or African-Americans or soccer moms are a voting block. They’re a disconnected group of people milling around who can’t quite agree on what politicians should do.
Again, if you can’t promise votes to politicians and produce those votes when you need to, they’re not going to bother with you. They’re going to court groups that can reliably deliver votes. The left in this country gave up on electoral politics after 1968, and look where that got us.
slightly_peeved
@Tuttle:
You know all those countries with better standards of living, and decent single-payer healthcare, and governments that don’t get all their policy from fortune 500 CEOs?
They vote like ‘peasants’.
The whiny sections of the US left would loathe politics of leftist parties in other countries. Because those leftist parties actually get shit done, and that means compromising, dealing, and putting results over grandstanding.