If you’re a liberal trying to convince a radical friend to vote to re-elect Obama, consider this…
There are only eight states where voting for president matters this year. If your friend doesn’t live in one of them, chill out. Have the discussion if you like, but don’t get angry. Voting for president in a safe state is a purely symbolic act, and life’s too short to damage friendships over acts of electoral symbolism.
And as for those eight states? One of them is Ohio, where progressive senator Sherrod Brown is in a tight race. If your friend lives there, go with that.
Then there’s Wisconsin, where progressive Tammy Baldwin is running to be the nation’s first openly gay senator. In, again, a very tight race. In Virginia, Tim Kaine isn’t great, but he’s running against the truly horrible George Allen, and that one’s going to be close too.
New Hampshire has a tossup governor’s race. Nevada has a tossup senate race. And all of Iowa’s House seats are ranked as competitive by the folks at Real Clear Politics, in a year when most others are going to be blowouts.
Colorado has a pot legalization referendum. Dude. Not decriminalization. Legalization. And it could pass, if folks turn out.
Which means that Florida is THE ONLY STATE IN THE COUNTRY where Obama is the only big reason for a left-leaning person to vote Dem. And Nate Silver says Florida has only a 1.9% chance of deciding the election this year.
The reality is — and I say this as a huge fan of voting — that for the vast majority of people you’re likely to encounter, whether or not they vote for Obama just doesn’t have any practical significance. And for the vast majority of the rest, you’ve got better arguments to make than the “Obama sucks but he sucks less than Romney” pitch so many of you have been leading with.
So chill out, liberals. Climb down off the high horse. Approach the conversation as a conversation, not a battle for the soul of America. Be receptive to your radical friends’ views, and listen to their arguments. You might even learn something.
If you’re going to have this discussion, be reasonable about it.
Because that’s your whole pitch, right?
studentactivism.net 
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October 21, 2012 at 12:52 pm
judith_butlertron
Recognise, as well, that your friend may not be voting because they are profoundly uninterested in what happens in a political system in which they have no desire to elect any of the contenders, and they may view your insistence that they ought to as your tacit approval of drone strikes, wiretapping, and militarised police brutality.
Consider the absurdity of holding the threat of civil rights losses over the heads of friends who’s political ideology makes them a target for FBI raids, police harassment, bat-wielding vigilante justice, and smearing in the media. To these people, you are asking them to pick which flavour they would like the boots to be that will kick their teeth in regardless.
The answer to making sure sex ed, birth control, and safe abortions are available to women is not to hang the fates of these women on whether or not your friend votes for the party that stood by and let those rights be taken by a minority of fundamentalists. The answer is to learn to provide those things. If you’re too busy to do that, why do you think your vote backed up by zero activism, zero education, and zero commitment to the political process your vote genuflects at will change anything?
I can see the benefit of voting the same way I can see the benefit of buying a lottery ticket, but consider that your friend might be more realistic than I am.
October 21, 2012 at 1:00 pm
Angus Johnston
I agree with all of that, JB. I’m a big believer in the power of voting to do good [1], but I also recognize the limits and the tradeoffs involved, and I recognize that smart, decent, engaged people can come to different conclusions on that subject than I have.
If you’re at all committed to making positive change in this society, voting can never be more than a tiny fraction of the work you’re doing. (And if all you’re doing is voting, you’re not doing much.)
I’d rather work with the people doing good non-electoral organizing than spurn them over the choices they make during the fifteen minutes every four years I spend voting for president.
[1] https://studentactivism.net/2012/09/22/party-politics-the-post-office-and-the-common-good/
October 21, 2012 at 2:12 pm
Maxwell John Love
Voting is a gateway drug to other forms of political participation, like organizing. I don’t vote or do electoral organizing because I think it’s making a serious difference by electing a candidate, but it’s making a difference because we’re going to #ChangeTheDebate locally.
October 22, 2012 at 11:48 am
noah
I don’t understand how talking to somebody about Brown or Baldwin will persuade them to vote for Obama. Every “radical” who I know who is not voting for Obama is still going to go to the booths and vote. They just aren’t going to choose a president, or are voting Green. Any suggestions for how to persuade those people, who I think make up the majority of radicals who won’t vote for Obama?