Point A. Mathematically, the third party voters did not cost you the election. Not in terms of the raw popular vote comparison, not in terms of the electoral college vote comparison.
Point B. No candidate is owed your vote. A “third party” candidate must be judged on the same merits as a “first”/“second” party candidate. The first and second party candidates are both complicit in genocide and/or genocidal incitement. They are literally war criminals. The only argument you can make for the preference of the first/second party candidates is not based on merit, but popularity alone. It’s circular logic to justify a population voting for a candidate on the basis of popularity - “we must vote for them because we’re voting for them”. This only appears to make sense when viewed in terms of an individual choice, but the logic completely breaks down when viewed in terms of group behavior. I cannot stress enough that this is an absolutely basic question in terms of civic engagement in a so-called “representative democracy”, and yet a staggering amount of you have not even thought about it.
Start from scratch on the logic. What is the ENTIRE framework we’re using to select candidates, as a population? When compared against other frameworks, how do we evaluate which framework is ideal, based on its long-term consequences for a society? If you have not already thoroughly answered this question for yourself, you are not qualified for this discussion in the first place.
All of that is fine and dandy except we live in reality.
Reality is a cold hearted bitch. The actual choices were between the status quo, with the occasional bone thrown out way, and billionaire backed fascism, where all of us will be actively fucked for at least the next four years, and likely longer because the fascists are unlikely to ever allow elections where they have a chance of losing.
Those were the only choices, not voting or voting third party was exactly the same as voting for the fascists. Congratulations, you did it, Trump won.
Start from scratch on the logic. What is the ENTIRE framework we’re using to select candidates, as a population? When compared against other frameworks, how do we evaluate which framework is ideal, based on its long-term consequences for a society? If you have not already thoroughly answered this question for yourself, you are not qualified for this discussion in the first place.
What does this have to do with the price of tea in China?
Point B would be true in a world where the US is a properly functioning and fair democracy. It is not. Elections are popularity contests, and the easiest way to become vastly more known and popular than other candidates is by throwing money at it. Without big donors, your party doesn’t stand a chance. At best you have zero impact, at worst you act as a spoiler candidate and get the exact opposite of what you want in power.
In such a system, candidates aren’t owed your vote. You owe your neighbors to vote in such a way that potential harm is minimised. A 3rd party vote, if unviable, is never that. In the US electoral system, it doesn’t make sense to vote for someone, it makes sense to vote against someone. Which is a deeply sad reality and shows that the US is in dire need of electoral reform.
Again. I am excruciatingly well aware of the “realities” of the U.S. electoral system. They are handicaps that are currently preventing the best candidate from being selected. None of them change the fact that the population is responsible for selecting the best candidate. Of course the handicaps exist, that’s why we’re not selecting the best candidate. That does not somehow release us of the responsibility of selecting the best candidate. That makes literally no sense.
That does not somehow release us of the responsibility of selecting the best candidate.
You never had that responsibility in the first place, the US electoral system never bestowed that upon you. That privilege goes to party chairs and big donors. You have the responsibility of selecting the least worst option, which is similar but fundamentally different.
The only way to get this responsibility is through extensive electoral reform, but the money in politics has decided against that so you’re not getting it. And you have next to no viable way of getting it anyway.
Point B: This is wrong and you’ve obscured the idea.
" we ( potential third party voters ) must vote for them because we ( left voters as a whole ) are voting for them "
It’s not circular logic, they are two different groups.
So as someone who wants the DNC ( and the GOP ) to disappear, here’s what I think are the important questions:
At what point does a third party become viable?
How do you build support for a third party when the spoiler effect is real and everyone knows it?
IMO a good idea would be a threshold system. So anyone can join the party and say, " I will vote if there are X commited voters ". If not, the party stands down. They get to build support without spoiling the vote.
This is all theoretical of course since the US may have just had it’s last election.
I have an answer for 1. and that answer is “Never”. a third party is never viable as long as we have First Past the Post voting.
As for 2, you don’t put any effort into third parties until after we fix the voting system. You work within the system and push for voting reform, or else it will never happen, and we’ll be stuck with First Past the Post forever.
The game plan is to push for one of two options, either Approval or STAR. Those two voting systems are the only Condorcet compliant systems that can fix our mess of an election system. There are some other fixes that come afterward, like ditching Primary elections (they’re not needed under Approval or STAR) and ditching the electoral college, but those can come after we fix the core problem.
To reiterate, you cannot solve anything of the problems of our system from outside it. You must hijack one of the two parties and use that to fix things. The same way the Evangelical racists hijacked the Republican Party in the 70s and 80s.
you cannot solve anything of the problems of our system from outside it.
So, so many people simply can’t grasp this. They want to use some imaginary cheat code to get what they want, immediately. That’s not how this, or a lot of things in life, work. Change in politics comes from lots and lots of effort from within the system to change the system. That or violent revolution. But the catch with violent revolution is that in the chaos that ensues, worse forces can fill the vacuum. Not to mention all the dead people.
I’d argue that violent revolution never results in something better. Those worse forces will Always move to seize power.
Violent protest is good, that coupled with people talking shit out like reasonable adults can result in something good, but there’s always that point where some unelected jackass comes in to murder the old guard, and then slaughter anyone who was working within the system to make things better.
Point B is not “wrong”, and you have not showed it is. The population as a whole is responsible for selecting the best candidate. These subdivisions, “right”, “left” and “really left” or however you want to depict them, are just cultural constructs (yes, like the election system itself) that affect people’s decision making on how to vote. Like any other idea.
How does a third party “become viable”? Define “viability”. Any party is “viable” in this system with a few votes on ballot petitions, associated paperwork, and the population voting for them. Again, this points to circular logic. It creates an impossible, circular dilemma if a population is deciding not to vote for a party because they think the population is deciding not to vote for a party. As long as they have that literally insane mentality, the third party is impossibly out of reach, like any other religious or irrational mentality, or any mentality in general, that successfully govern’s people’s behavior. What else do you want to hear? A “third party” becomes viable when they realize the insanity of that thinking and reject it.
How does a third party “become viable”? Define “viability”. Any party is “viable” in this system with a few votes on ballot petitions, associated paperwork, and the population voting for them.
Hmmm. I wonder how a population comes to vote for a 3rd party in significant enough numbers to win a national election. Hmmmm. This is a tough one. How could that possibly happen?
I’m going to spitball here. Maybe a 3rd party would have to start by supporting city/county/state 3rd party candidates across the country so that over time that 3rd party eventually has an actual presence, let’s say, in the House of Representatives, which boosts name recognition even more, so that one day maybe there’s even some in the Senate and then, holy shit, all of a sudden there’s an actual chance at winning a presidential election.
It’s comical to state that all the population has to do is vote for them, without grasping that all these other steps don’t need to happen first. I’m going to run the Barbie Party candidate in 2028 and when they don’t win, I’m going to blame the populace for not voting for them.
Uh-huh, and yet some of the population ARE aware of these candidates without being spoon-fed their “name recognition”. So if social and conventional news media filter out all candidates but those of a preferred uniparty, those should be ignored? Bullshit, wrong.
Point A. Mathematically, the third party voters did not cost you the election.
But they could have in any given election. I wasn’t wearing a seat belt, but I didn’t crash, so it didn’t affect me…this time. Well guess what? This time we crashed. It just didn’t happen to be their fault…this time. This time the seat belt was voters who didn’t vote.
Point B. No candidate is owed your vote.
It isn’t about owing. It’s about acknowleding that only two parties have the possibility of winning and adulting up and voting for the one CLOSEST to your ideals. The one whose voting history makes the most sense for whatever social/economic class you fall under. Not holding out for an impossibility or going bust with the option FURTHEST from your ideals.
The only argument you can make for the preference of the first/second party candidates is not based on merit, but popularity alone.
I guess we’re living in a reality where voting history doesn’t matter.
The “spoiler effect”, “lesser of two evils” logic is irrelevant. The population, under a “representative democracy” system, must follow a process by which they select the BEST candidate and elect them. That is the only rational course. Not splintering off by the millions, and then even an overwhelming majority, into the psychotic logic that you must vote for a politician based on whether or not their party affiliation won the previous election. THAT REMOVES ALL ACCOUNTABILITY FROM THE POLITICAL SYSTEM.
It isn’t about owing. It’s about acknowleding that only two parties have the possibility of winning and adulting up and voting for the one CLOSEST to your ideals.
That is not “adulting up”, that is compromising the fate of humanity to mass murderers. And you STILL have not addressed the issue that the entire population is fully capable of voting for ANYONE, specifically, PEOPLE WHO AREN’T MASS MURDERERS. That the best course of action, absolutely INDISPUTABLY, is to SELECT AND THEN VOTE FOR THE BEST CANDIDATE. Not the SECOND TO WORST CANDIDATE.
Just stop replying to me. This is absolutely disgusting and you’re flat out creeping me out at this point.
A) The third party voters convinced a lot of people not to vote.
B) You owe it to yourself to vote for the better option. All that over complication you’re doing is meaningless. Third parties can’t win. In reality the choice was Trump or not-Trump.
The only argument you can make for the preference of the first/second party candidates is not based on merit, but popularity alone.
I mean yeah, obviously. Anyone over the age of 22 should have been able to tell you that the only two candidates with a chance of winning in '24 were the Republican or the Democrat.
It’s circular logic to justify a population voting for a candidate on the basis of popularity - “we must vote for them because we’re voting for them”.
We (my peers) must vote for them because we (the rest of the country) are voting for them.
It seems like you don’t understand the simple fact that most americans genuinely like the Democrat or the Republican. They don’t get elected because everyone has deluded themselves into thinking everyone else is going to vote for them, they get elected because the average person sees Trump or Biden and says “I like that guy.”
I mean yeah, obviously. Anyone over the age of 22 should have been able to tell you that the only two candidates with a chance of winning in '24 were the Republican or the Democrat.
How is that “chance” determined?
We (my peers) must vote for them because we (the rest of the country) are voting for them.
Everyone is making this decision. Not just your peers. You cannot simply brush aside the fact that the entire population, for each individual in it, is making a voting decision based on some mental process they have.
It seems like you don’t understand the simple fact that most americans genuinely like the Democrat or the Republican. They don’t get elected because everyone has deluded themselves into thinking everyone else is going to vote for them, they get elected because the average person sees Trump or Biden and says “I like that guy.”
There’s certainly a large element of that. I would argue because, as Noam Chomsky said, “The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum.” They only view their candidate in the context of “the other” candidate, with a tightly controlled narrative around them. For the huge contingent of the population trapped in this bubble of idiocy, the topic, and the comparisons to non-genocidal politicians, must be forced. You cannot allow yourself to be kettled by this trick that they play, and forced into a decision where the parameters are manufactured for you. There is no escape from that.
Does their predisposition to falling for cult of personality, “politicians shaking hands and kissing babies despite the fact that they’re mass murderers” tactics, somehow release them of their civic responsibility? No. They have the same responsibility as all of us in a democracy. They have completely failed. So what is the path to fix this? Rehabilitate your thinking. Rehabilitate their thinking. Get us back to the level where people understand what it means to participate in a democracy and taking responsibility for what they have to do, instead of being cowed into choosing between preselected candidates complicit in genocide.
Point A. Mathematically, the third party voters did not cost you the election. Not in terms of the raw popular vote comparison, not in terms of the electoral college vote comparison.
Point B. No candidate is owed your vote. A “third party” candidate must be judged on the same merits as a “first”/“second” party candidate. The first and second party candidates are both complicit in genocide and/or genocidal incitement. They are literally war criminals. The only argument you can make for the preference of the first/second party candidates is not based on merit, but popularity alone. It’s circular logic to justify a population voting for a candidate on the basis of popularity - “we must vote for them because we’re voting for them”. This only appears to make sense when viewed in terms of an individual choice, but the logic completely breaks down when viewed in terms of group behavior. I cannot stress enough that this is an absolutely basic question in terms of civic engagement in a so-called “representative democracy”, and yet a staggering amount of you have not even thought about it.
Start from scratch on the logic. What is the ENTIRE framework we’re using to select candidates, as a population? When compared against other frameworks, how do we evaluate which framework is ideal, based on its long-term consequences for a society? If you have not already thoroughly answered this question for yourself, you are not qualified for this discussion in the first place.
All of that is fine and dandy except we live in reality.
Reality is a cold hearted bitch. The actual choices were between the status quo, with the occasional bone thrown out way, and billionaire backed fascism, where all of us will be actively fucked for at least the next four years, and likely longer because the fascists are unlikely to ever allow elections where they have a chance of losing.
Those were the only choices, not voting or voting third party was exactly the same as voting for the fascists. Congratulations, you did it, Trump won.
I saw these responses coming and worded my comment correspondingly. Read. More. Carefully.
What does this have to do with the price of tea in China?
Point A is absolutely true.
Point B would be true in a world where the US is a properly functioning and fair democracy. It is not. Elections are popularity contests, and the easiest way to become vastly more known and popular than other candidates is by throwing money at it. Without big donors, your party doesn’t stand a chance. At best you have zero impact, at worst you act as a spoiler candidate and get the exact opposite of what you want in power.
In such a system, candidates aren’t owed your vote. You owe your neighbors to vote in such a way that potential harm is minimised. A 3rd party vote, if unviable, is never that. In the US electoral system, it doesn’t make sense to vote for someone, it makes sense to vote against someone. Which is a deeply sad reality and shows that the US is in dire need of electoral reform.
Again. I am excruciatingly well aware of the “realities” of the U.S. electoral system. They are handicaps that are currently preventing the best candidate from being selected. None of them change the fact that the population is responsible for selecting the best candidate. Of course the handicaps exist, that’s why we’re not selecting the best candidate. That does not somehow release us of the responsibility of selecting the best candidate. That makes literally no sense.
You never had that responsibility in the first place, the US electoral system never bestowed that upon you. That privilege goes to party chairs and big donors. You have the responsibility of selecting the least worst option, which is similar but fundamentally different.
The only way to get this responsibility is through extensive electoral reform, but the money in politics has decided against that so you’re not getting it. And you have next to no viable way of getting it anyway.
Absolutely right on point A.
Point B: This is wrong and you’ve obscured the idea. " we ( potential third party voters ) must vote for them because we ( left voters as a whole ) are voting for them " It’s not circular logic, they are two different groups.
So as someone who wants the DNC ( and the GOP ) to disappear, here’s what I think are the important questions:
IMO a good idea would be a threshold system. So anyone can join the party and say, " I will vote if there are X commited voters ". If not, the party stands down. They get to build support without spoiling the vote.
This is all theoretical of course since the US may have just had it’s last election.
I have an answer for 1. and that answer is “Never”. a third party is never viable as long as we have First Past the Post voting.
As for 2, you don’t put any effort into third parties until after we fix the voting system. You work within the system and push for voting reform, or else it will never happen, and we’ll be stuck with First Past the Post forever.
The game plan is to push for one of two options, either Approval or STAR. Those two voting systems are the only Condorcet compliant systems that can fix our mess of an election system. There are some other fixes that come afterward, like ditching Primary elections (they’re not needed under Approval or STAR) and ditching the electoral college, but those can come after we fix the core problem.
To reiterate, you cannot solve anything of the problems of our system from outside it. You must hijack one of the two parties and use that to fix things. The same way the Evangelical racists hijacked the Republican Party in the 70s and 80s.
So, so many people simply can’t grasp this. They want to use some imaginary cheat code to get what they want, immediately. That’s not how this, or a lot of things in life, work. Change in politics comes from lots and lots of effort from within the system to change the system. That or violent revolution. But the catch with violent revolution is that in the chaos that ensues, worse forces can fill the vacuum. Not to mention all the dead people.
I’d argue that violent revolution never results in something better. Those worse forces will Always move to seize power.
Violent protest is good, that coupled with people talking shit out like reasonable adults can result in something good, but there’s always that point where some unelected jackass comes in to murder the old guard, and then slaughter anyone who was working within the system to make things better.
Point B is not “wrong”, and you have not showed it is. The population as a whole is responsible for selecting the best candidate. These subdivisions, “right”, “left” and “really left” or however you want to depict them, are just cultural constructs (yes, like the election system itself) that affect people’s decision making on how to vote. Like any other idea.
How does a third party “become viable”? Define “viability”. Any party is “viable” in this system with a few votes on ballot petitions, associated paperwork, and the population voting for them. Again, this points to circular logic. It creates an impossible, circular dilemma if a population is deciding not to vote for a party because they think the population is deciding not to vote for a party. As long as they have that literally insane mentality, the third party is impossibly out of reach, like any other religious or irrational mentality, or any mentality in general, that successfully govern’s people’s behavior. What else do you want to hear? A “third party” becomes viable when they realize the insanity of that thinking and reject it.
Hmmm. I wonder how a population comes to vote for a 3rd party in significant enough numbers to win a national election. Hmmmm. This is a tough one. How could that possibly happen?
I’m going to spitball here. Maybe a 3rd party would have to start by supporting city/county/state 3rd party candidates across the country so that over time that 3rd party eventually has an actual presence, let’s say, in the House of Representatives, which boosts name recognition even more, so that one day maybe there’s even some in the Senate and then, holy shit, all of a sudden there’s an actual chance at winning a presidential election.
It’s comical to state that all the population has to do is vote for them, without grasping that all these other steps don’t need to happen first. I’m going to run the Barbie Party candidate in 2028 and when they don’t win, I’m going to blame the populace for not voting for them.
Uh-huh, and yet some of the population ARE aware of these candidates without being spoon-fed their “name recognition”. So if social and conventional news media filter out all candidates but those of a preferred uniparty, those should be ignored? Bullshit, wrong.
But they could have in any given election. I wasn’t wearing a seat belt, but I didn’t crash, so it didn’t affect me…this time. Well guess what? This time we crashed. It just didn’t happen to be their fault…this time. This time the seat belt was voters who didn’t vote.
It isn’t about owing. It’s about acknowleding that only two parties have the possibility of winning and adulting up and voting for the one CLOSEST to your ideals. The one whose voting history makes the most sense for whatever social/economic class you fall under. Not holding out for an impossibility or going bust with the option FURTHEST from your ideals.
I guess we’re living in a reality where voting history doesn’t matter.
Oh, now it’s “could have”.
The “spoiler effect”, “lesser of two evils” logic is irrelevant. The population, under a “representative democracy” system, must follow a process by which they select the BEST candidate and elect them. That is the only rational course. Not splintering off by the millions, and then even an overwhelming majority, into the psychotic logic that you must vote for a politician based on whether or not their party affiliation won the previous election. THAT REMOVES ALL ACCOUNTABILITY FROM THE POLITICAL SYSTEM.
That is not “adulting up”, that is compromising the fate of humanity to mass murderers. And you STILL have not addressed the issue that the entire population is fully capable of voting for ANYONE, specifically, PEOPLE WHO AREN’T MASS MURDERERS. That the best course of action, absolutely INDISPUTABLY, is to SELECT AND THEN VOTE FOR THE BEST CANDIDATE. Not the SECOND TO WORST CANDIDATE.
Just stop replying to me. This is absolutely disgusting and you’re flat out creeping me out at this point.
Removed by mod
A) The third party voters convinced a lot of people not to vote.
B) You owe it to yourself to vote for the better option. All that over complication you’re doing is meaningless. Third parties can’t win. In reality the choice was Trump or not-Trump.
It’s like talking to flat earthers man. They honest to God believe a 3rd party candidate for president can win at this point in American history.
How do you introduce common sense to a brick wall?
I mean yeah, obviously. Anyone over the age of 22 should have been able to tell you that the only two candidates with a chance of winning in '24 were the Republican or the Democrat.
We (my peers) must vote for them because we (the rest of the country) are voting for them.
It seems like you don’t understand the simple fact that most americans genuinely like the Democrat or the Republican. They don’t get elected because everyone has deluded themselves into thinking everyone else is going to vote for them, they get elected because the average person sees Trump or Biden and says “I like that guy.”
How is that “chance” determined?
Everyone is making this decision. Not just your peers. You cannot simply brush aside the fact that the entire population, for each individual in it, is making a voting decision based on some mental process they have.
There’s certainly a large element of that. I would argue because, as Noam Chomsky said, “The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum.” They only view their candidate in the context of “the other” candidate, with a tightly controlled narrative around them. For the huge contingent of the population trapped in this bubble of idiocy, the topic, and the comparisons to non-genocidal politicians, must be forced. You cannot allow yourself to be kettled by this trick that they play, and forced into a decision where the parameters are manufactured for you. There is no escape from that.
Does their predisposition to falling for cult of personality, “politicians shaking hands and kissing babies despite the fact that they’re mass murderers” tactics, somehow release them of their civic responsibility? No. They have the same responsibility as all of us in a democracy. They have completely failed. So what is the path to fix this? Rehabilitate your thinking. Rehabilitate their thinking. Get us back to the level where people understand what it means to participate in a democracy and taking responsibility for what they have to do, instead of being cowed into choosing between preselected candidates complicit in genocide.