If every internet leftist got together and voted for a candidate it's incredibly unlikely that that would change the outcome of the election. The radlib would say that this is worth it because even if it's unlikely it's still worth it, but is it?

Getting people to vote has a cost. If you're trying to make a larger difference donations and canvasing are a way to do that. If you're giving time and money to affect an election instead of helping with the building of a radical project, you're wasting resources

Not only is that a terrible allocation of resources, it's actually counterproductive to the aim of electoral wins. The only time we get concessions that make a difference are when they're scared of radicals burning things down.

But let's say you're not a total idiot and you aren't going to waste resources on that, you just want to tell leftists to vote Biden. As much as you don't want to think about it, this too has a cost.

1. Youre still spending time. You could be using that time organizing something real. Im not doing the tank LARP of telling everyone to use every second of their day for revolutionary activities but since your stated goal is to influence politics, you could do something effective

2. It looks bad. Think of all the groups of people that Biden as a segregationist rapist is repulsive to. If you're trying to convince people to do radical organizing and you also tell them to vote for him for harm reduction they're not going to want to listen to you

It doesn't matter if you're technically correct, no one is going to want to hear what you're saying.

3. It functionally limits the scope of what people can see as an avenue for change. Would you rather have a person who goes to vote when they want change or someone who doesn't consider voting and takes action? As much as you want to say that people can do both, they don't.

If more people stopped seeing voting as an option there'd be more people out in the streets building something that could make a real difference. Don't give people an easy way out, they will take it

4. It puts off exactly the kind of people we should be organizing with. There's a lot of poor people who think of themselves as "apolitical," who hate politicians, and who could really benefit materially from a local radical org.

They would dismiss your opinion on politics forever if you told them to vote for harm reduction. One of the most powerful things we have going for us as communists is our organizing can be seen as "against politics" and that it's making a material difference to people's lives

If you want to piss that away for a fraction of a fraction of a chance at harm reduction, your politics are completely irrelevant

Also all this is premised on the idea that the state would act significantly differently based on the outcome of the election and that also the behavior of the state would be worse with Trump over Biden, both things that it's reasonable to be skeptical about in the first place

This whole critique applies equally to Bernie, despite him being significantly better for us than those two

Additional point, I think you could make an argument that voting for third party candidates, especially joke ones because when Biden loses the news is going to show all the huge numbers of third party voters which could help show how many people hate the system

Don't think it's an especially strong argument and I'm not going to be voting anyway, but it's funny

Tfw someone calls you, a disabled poor trans woman who's been to prison, privileged for not voting