Had Donald Trump been the U.S. president hosting this week’s APEC meetings, I have no doubt that the headline from the event would have been unchanged. It would have been: “He’s a dictator.”

The only difference is it would be Xi Jinping who was saying it to describe Trump.

Other than that, though, a Trump-hosted APEC meeting would likely have been unrecognizably different from the successful and productive forum hosted by President Joe Biden.

  • @[email protected]
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    -21 year ago

    And people have been playing with third party nonsense since the beginning of the country pretty much. It doesn’t work because of our voting system, it’s never worked. In the history of the country, no third party candidate for president has ever come close to getting enough electoral votes to win. The highest ever was Theodore Roosevelt, and he got 88 out of a necessary 256 to win, barely a third of the needed number.

    More notably, the most successful third parties overall, with Roosevelt’s Progressive (Bull Moose) party excluded, have largely been regressive, such as the American Independents with George Wallace, the Dixiecrats with Strom Thurmond, th Constitutional Union AND Lecompton Democratic in the 1860 election… Progressive third parties do not have a good track record, probably because it’s a lot easier to get people to vote for a lost cause if they’re doing it out of hate than it is if they actually want to improve things.

    Bernie and AOC and others are being a fuckton more successful than third party candidates have been for the entire history of the nation.

    They definitely need more support to overcome the entrenched forces against them, though. That’s why they need people like us to support progressive candidates in primaries, and we need more people like them willing to do the hard work of getting into the democratic party and changing it from within.

    Now, in a small election in a district where another party has a realistic chance, great! Vote that way. But most places aren’t like that.

    And don’t forget voting third party when they have no chance can cause great harm. I would have thought the election of 2000 would’ve been enough to sear that into all our minds forever.

    • @goldenlocks
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      1 year ago

      It doesn’t work because of our voting system

      Then vote for candidates that support ranked choice voting.

      Bernie and AOC and others are being a fuckton more successful than third party candidates have been for the entire history of the nation.

      At controlling potential third party voters and pulling them into the Democratic party so they can maintain their personal wealth.

      They definitely need more support to overcome the entrenched forces against them, though. That’s why they need people like us to support progressive candidates in primaries, and we need more people like them willing to do the hard work of getting into the democratic party and changing it from within.

      Super delegates are not debatable. They prove the party is undemocratic, and a lost cause. The entire purpose of the justice democrats is what you said, and they failed.

      The democratic party will not change, and will not save impoverished people in this country. Another party will.

      And don’t forget voting third party when they have no chance can cause great harm. I would have thought the election of 2000 would’ve been enough to sear that into all our minds forever.

      You do far more damage voting for Democrats and then complaining that they have bad policy. They would be forced to have good policy if you instead left with your vote and supported the Green party.