American gen Z voters share how they feel about Kamala Harris’s presidential bid, why they like or dislike her as a candidate and whether they think she could beat Donald Trump, as the vice-president races towards winning the Democratic nomination for November’s election.
‘I think she’s just what we need’
“I think [Kamala Harris] is the only one that makes sense. She will get the votes Biden couldn’t. She could get the Black, Asian, Latino, women’s, LGBTQ+ and youth votes. She stands more for progress and equality than an old white dude and if she wins it will be historic. The Democrats need a bold move and I think she’s just what we need.
“I hope the Democrats realize what an opportunity this is for them.” Will, 22, construction worker from Portland, Oregon
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The other danger to avoid (again) is the assumption that because polls and news looks good for a candidate, a single vote won’t matter, which results in a lapse of not voting. Repeat a few million times. Lead suddenly gone.
Vote, even if everyone is claiming it’s a solid win. Vote as if your vote does matter, don’t even debate if that’s true or not.
Well said. Even if you are in a solid-whatever state, the degree to which that is true is important. A 5 point lead is different from a 10 point lead, is different from a 20 point lead. The closer you can make it, the more you force people to pay attention to you.
At the same time, if you know your candidate is going to win and you live in a shitty two-party system, then the only means you have to protest about the policies of the party you primarily support is to give them a no vote when they’re guaranteed to win.
Example, everyone knew the Labor party was going to win in the UK election, it was guaranteed after the 14 years of incompetence from the Tories. That being said, Labor really wasn’t promising much. The only party that were offering any real change were the Greens.
So what do you, knowing that Labor are going to win but not agreeing with their policies? You let them know by voting for other parties, and then Labor reassesses their policies on the votes they lost.
The only means? How about writing a letter? Attending a town hall? How about protest? We have far more influence than a single vote.
Also, I don’t think anyone in Labour is reassessing any policies on votes they lost to the Greens in this example, due to how few votes the Greens got. That said, I do believe people should vote for whatever they think will do the most good. If someone is a single-issue voter on environmental issues, voting Green is a sound way to support the policies they care about. Not to push dems, that is unlikely to happen, but to actually support the policies they care about.
And then a bunch of people do that because “my guy is going to win anyway so it doesn’t matter” and you end up losing. Remember Brexit? never be too confident.
And vote blue to the bottom of the ticket! Let’s take the whole government and then push them hard to fix this broken system!
Local is always as important, if not more, than the Presidential race. Midterms as well. In a world so highly interconnected and real time, we should be so much more democratically inspired, and yet apathy reigns.
Part of that has been a directed effort. Oil lobbyists, russian and chinese bots, other corporations, etc all have a vested interests in spreading disinformation and doomerism to encourage apathy.
They also keep everyone poor and stressed so we don’t have time or energy to think about anything else… Let alone something as nuanced and important as politics/democracy
That is absolutely a part of it as well.