Voting for someone that does not represent you because you are more scared of the other guy is indistinguishable, as a signal, from someone that fully supports them. By voting against your own interests you are actively undermining the democratic process.
Democracy has forever been synonymous with class based societies. It has split entire countries into two barely-distinctive political parties (conservative and “progressive”) that are nevertheless permanently at each other’s throats. Even in its most libertarian-friendly forms, it has constantly failed to avert hierarchy, coercion and the authoritarian machinations of majority-groups.
If you actually look at my comments, you will see that i have not posted anything pro trump. Why is being critical of biden and establishment dems pro trump? Definitionally it is not.
have i gone to your account and commented on multiple comment threads that i wasn’t originally a part of to come and say you are lib spam? no, so i already have fucked off lol. you are the one that needs to fuck off.
Abe Lincoln could be argued as a 3rd party candidate who won since prior to him it was mainly the whigs and democrats as the two main parties.
Now if you asked what grassroots-led 3rd party candidate overwhelmed the two major parties in a shocker of an election, that obviously never happened.
The last Whig president*, Zachary Taylor, was a political outsider that beat out an experienced politician (familiar?). He was running under the Whig banner because the whigs didn’t have a solution for the issue of slavery- Zachary Taylor was a crude extremely rich celebrity soldier and slave owner who never voted. He was ambiguous on his stance on the future of slavery in America. But the anti slavery wing of the whigs hated this. Taylor ruined the Whig party and it never recovered. Lincoln picked up the anti-slavery whig voters, creating the Republican Party.
The modern day Republicans are only held together with trump and I’m not sure what will happen to their party afterwards. Maybe there’ll be another party “flip” when the Republican Party crumbles, a new more left wing party will rise up as the democrats absorb the former Republican voters, causing the progressive democrats to flee the party. This would be the next success of a “3rd party” candidate. But this won’t happen as long as trump continues to be on the ballot.
*there was Millard Fillmore as the 13th, but this was because Taylor died in office and Fillmore succeeded him as president.
You just sailed over the point where moderates fight us and it’s considered fair game. We fight moderates and they have a meltdown. Moderates are relying on leftist and progressives to win general elections while fucking them over at every opportunity.
Surely you can see the foolishness of that strategy yes?
And yet it’s irrelevant. I have no reason to engage that point, because people immediately being horribly hurt by looming electoral consequences supersedes the importance of long-term systemic change.
Nobody disagrees that systemic change is needed, but it is not the most important or immediate problem.
Unfortunately, many countries have First-Past-The-Post voting systems, so voting for a third party is often, mathematically, basically the same as voting for the competition.
It’s called “The Spoiler Effect”, if you want to look it up, and it’s why we have many of the two party problems we have today in modern democracy. Ranked Choice/Single Transferrable Vote are much better systems.
Well, many democracies do not vote for their president directly – parliament elects one. They are usually from the strongest party, although if enough smaller parties can get a majority, they can elect the president.
No, it isn’t always. In Germany for example, you have two votes per state and federal election. One vote goes to a candidate in your district (fptp, yes) but the other vote is just for a party. The parties put up lists of candidates and parliament gets filled proportionally to the votes they got nationally or statewide.
Now all these smaller parties could form a coalition to get the majority or just use their extensive array of minority opposition powers that the law grants them.
I don’t think it’s a moderate, left, or right problem. More a “the current power structure will never support it” because it works for those in power now to their advantage.
That just sounds like an attempt to deflect blame away from moderate voters. They undermine, sabotage and attack every effort by progressives and leftists. Then they turn around and expect us to show up in the general election after fucking us over for four years.
“Well he-” so would anything of your progressive agenda do better under Trump?
“We need a revolu-” yeah, it’s happening. The USA is slowly becoming an xenophobic anarcho-capitalist religious theocracy for the old & rich. Accelerates greatly when Trump holds power.
“I just won’t vote either!!!”
Ok. Go ahead. Just don’t complain later when Israel has a $150 billion dollar defense bill coming its way versus 15 billion. You likely will regardless though.
Or just hand the election over to the guy who is going to push the pedal down all that stuff you claim to care about. We’re trying to minimize our losses as best we can, and right now, Biden seems to be the best that Democrats can muster up. Not the best situation to be in, but he’s still miles ahead of Trump on everything. Any issue you care about, well you’ll be reading about them in history books as an afterthought if Trump comes to power… if history books haven’t already been censored to just ignore any controversial issues altogether. Who the hell even needs history books when we have the Bible, the only source of information a citizen would ever need, that and TNN, the Trump News Network.
If third parties really want to make a change, they need to go after smaller, local elections, you build up a movement from the ground up. Any third parties in national elections that have almost no presence anywhere else are highly suspect and likely just there for the attention and/or to draw votes from one candidate or another.
Sad that the system disincentives people in safe states to take their vote seriously. I get it, though. I protest voted in a safe state in 2016. Just… remember that if things go south, the knowledge that your vote was pointless doesn’t always erase all of the guilt.
local will effect local im afraid. I have been suffering under the worse of two evils half the time for the last several decades and very much prefere the lesser. Much would be different if deregulation had not happened along with lower taxes for wealthy along with gutting environmental regulations. etc
I’m not content waiting around another 16 years hoping something will change. Especially when nobody telling me to keep hanging on has any confidence the next 16 years will be any different.
Im not waiting but im not sacrificing better in the hopes worse will lead to even better. Personally I far prefered biden, obama, over trump and I think your perspective would be a bit different if you experience bush, bush2, and reagan. ill take slightly better now over maybe somehow worse will get us to magically transform to way better.
“vote for the lesser evil” has always sucked… but there’s a pretty big difference between neoliberal and guy who directly says he wants to be dictator, already tried to overthrow the government once, and is promising mass deportation (on a genocidal level) and theocracy
if he wins, it’s the end of the ability to vote third party…
“I’m going to vote against the dude that is giving weapons to Israel, who gives weak-effort strongly worded letters to try to stop being assholes in the butchering of Gaza. Nevermind that in doing so it ensures the win of the fascist megalomaniac who will shove weapons faster, and has given full throated support to Israel, along with the party that says that everyone in Gaza should die. That’ll teach them. Fuckin moderates, compromise with me or I’ll help Gaza burn faster.”
If you think cutting off arms to Israel and promising not to block strikes is “everything” you really aren’t paying attention. And please, take a moment to consider what compromises Biden has made with progressives and leftists. Give me some examples.
Let’s have an honest discussion about where in between “nothing” and “everything” compromises have been made for the policies and decisions leftists and progressives are fighting for.
“I’m going to vote for a dude that will ensure the comfort of westerners at the cost of black and brown lives around the world and I feel good about this because the alternative is worse. Of course my life is more important than someone in Gaza! The status quo of this system isn’t stomping on me as much as it can and I’d like to keep it that way as long as I can. Yes, please focus your stomping boot somewhere else and I’ll continue to vote for that boot. There’s no ethical line I won’t cross to save myself from oppression because I’m a coward who refuses to listen to the oppressed”
Democracy is already dead if we are forced to vote for genocide. It might just take those comfortable with the status quo longer to figure that out.
The GOP is running out of cash saving the orange fascist from the results of his own actions. They’ll go bankrupt and then we’ll have a one party system where everyone will have to vote for whatever our party brass puts on the ballot for us.
“We like how things are and while we like some of what you offer and suggest you want it all or nothing which is too much of a shock so we’ll stick with what we know. But right now we’re literally trying to fight off a fascist Hitler wanna-be, how about we fucking discus this later?”
Considering Biden was on the picket line with the auto strikers, I disagree. Considering Biden is trying to shovel weapons to a Taiwan and to Ukraine, and yes unfortunately to Israel as well, he at least has criticized and made requests for ceasefires and hostage exchanges.
Is it perfect? Absolutely not. Is there more they could do? 100% yes. Is it better than it was 4 years ago with what Orange? Hands down.
Republicans would be 1000000x worse. And clearly you want that, over what the other side has done. Be honest with yourself and stop wasting our time.
Considering Biden was on the picket line with the auto strikers, I disagree. Considering Biden is trying to shovel weapons to a Taiwan and to Ukraine, and yes unfortunately to Israel as well, he at least has criticized and made requests for ceasefires and hostage exchanges.
Oh by “discussion” you thought I meant you say what you think, get your way and the rest of us just shut up and deal with it? That isn’t what I meant. I hope I’ve clarified that for you. This right here is a discussion and it’s only happening because you need something from me. The moment you don’t need my vote you’ll go right back to the kinds of “discussions” you’re talking about.
3rd party candidates will never win. Ross Perot did the best in 92 and did not capture a single state.
There is no 3rd party candidate currently doing as well as Perot was doing in 96 - when he dropped out of the race - much less as well as he did in 92.
He literally can’t, because the compromise progressives want is to stop the attack on Gaza and Biden can’t stop that, only Bibi can and he is absolutely intent on killing everyone in Gaza.
Cutting off aid to Gaza isn’t going to stop the attack because Israel isn’t reliant on current aid to make it happen. They have a stockpile built up from decades of support.
So, Biden tells Israel to get fucked, he loses the campaign donations from the Israel pac to get elected.
Someone go tell Bloomberg that campaign money is a better indicator of electoral victory than voters. I’m sure he’d be happy to hear that he won the presidency.
Watch Trump come out during the RNC convention and condemn Israel and the genocide. Just raw dogging that cognitive dissonance. Get Dan Scavino on the phone. Let’s do a focus group and just fuck this shit up. /s
I just realized America’s entire history has been right wing propaganda.
There’s a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can’t take part; you can’t even tacitly take part. And you’ve got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon all the apparatus and you’ve got to make it stop. And you’ve got to indicate to the people who run it, to the people who own it, that unless you’re free, the machine will be prevented from working at all
Leftists and progressives did compromise though. A lot of us voted for Biden in the 2020 general election. Zero compromises came back the other way. As we head into the election there’s two major issues Biden could compromise on.
Don’t support genocide.
Don’t block strikes.
But the fact that moderates aren’t interested in compromising on either of these things and has failed to provide any other meaningful opportunities for compromise means:
Moderates would rather lose to fascists than compromise with leftists and progressives.
In the USA, voting Third Party is just helping Republicans, aka. the Fascists.
If you want to change something, organise and unionise.
But dont throw away Democracy, just to be the smuggest guy in the concentraition-camp in the end…
Voting for someone that does not represent you because you are more scared of the other guy is indistinguishable, as a signal, from someone that fully supports them. By voting against your own interests you are actively undermining the democratic process.
Democracy has forever been synonymous with class based societies. It has split entire countries into two barely-distinctive political parties (conservative and “progressive”) that are nevertheless permanently at each other’s throats. Even in its most libertarian-friendly forms, it has constantly failed to avert hierarchy, coercion and the authoritarian machinations of majority-groups.
look at their post history, they do nothing but shill anti-biden, pro-trump, 24/7
If you actually look at my comments, you will see that i have not posted anything pro trump. Why is being critical of biden and establishment dems pro trump? Definitionally it is not.
Removed by mod
Removed by mod
have i gone to your account and commented on multiple comment threads that i wasn’t originally a part of to come and say you are lib spam? no, so i already have fucked off lol. you are the one that needs to fuck off.
fuck off, maga spam
Removed by mod
trans rights now!
Removed by mod
sure cause i have said so many positive things about trump
spam
Removed by mod
says the account now spamming me lol
spam
Removed by mod
Moderates sabotage those efforts.
But they occasionally work. Name 1 3rd party candidate that has won the presidential election and shut the fuck up.
Abe Lincoln could be argued as a 3rd party candidate who won since prior to him it was mainly the whigs and democrats as the two main parties.
Now if you asked what grassroots-led 3rd party candidate overwhelmed the two major parties in a shocker of an election, that obviously never happened.
The last Whig president*, Zachary Taylor, was a political outsider that beat out an experienced politician (familiar?). He was running under the Whig banner because the whigs didn’t have a solution for the issue of slavery- Zachary Taylor was a crude extremely rich celebrity soldier and slave owner who never voted. He was ambiguous on his stance on the future of slavery in America. But the anti slavery wing of the whigs hated this. Taylor ruined the Whig party and it never recovered. Lincoln picked up the anti-slavery whig voters, creating the Republican Party.
The modern day Republicans are only held together with trump and I’m not sure what will happen to their party afterwards. Maybe there’ll be another party “flip” when the Republican Party crumbles, a new more left wing party will rise up as the democrats absorb the former Republican voters, causing the progressive democrats to flee the party. This would be the next success of a “3rd party” candidate. But this won’t happen as long as trump continues to be on the ballot.
*there was Millard Fillmore as the 13th, but this was because Taylor died in office and Fillmore succeeded him as president.
Huh that’s pretty neat.
Make 1 president that won’t win if y’all keep it up and sue the fuck up
You just sailed over the point where moderates fight us and it’s considered fair game. We fight moderates and they have a meltdown. Moderates are relying on leftist and progressives to win general elections while fucking them over at every opportunity.
Surely you can see the foolishness of that strategy yes?
And yet it’s irrelevant. I have no reason to engage that point, because people immediately being horribly hurt by looming electoral consequences supersedes the importance of long-term systemic change.
Nobody disagrees that systemic change is needed, but it is not the most important or immediate problem.
Free pass for moderates. Lectures for everybody else. Got it.
No thanks.
Unfortunately, many countries have First-Past-The-Post voting systems, so voting for a third party is often, mathematically, basically the same as voting for the competition.
It’s called “The Spoiler Effect”, if you want to look it up, and it’s why we have many of the two party problems we have today in modern democracy. Ranked Choice/Single Transferrable Vote are much better systems.
Well, many democracies do not vote for their president directly – parliament elects one. They are usually from the strongest party, although if enough smaller parties can get a majority, they can elect the president.
Yeah but FPTP is used for parliament in those countries, which means the party that chooses the president is elected via it.
Ranked Choice, STV, or Mixed Member Proportional Ranking are much better systems. I wish more countries used it.
No, it isn’t always. In Germany for example, you have two votes per state and federal election. One vote goes to a candidate in your district (fptp, yes) but the other vote is just for a party. The parties put up lists of candidates and parliament gets filled proportionally to the votes they got nationally or statewide.
Now all these smaller parties could form a coalition to get the majority or just use their extensive array of minority opposition powers that the law grants them.
That’s called MMPR and I wasn’t aware Germany did that. That’s a great way to ensure equal representation.
Which moderates will never support.
I don’t think it’s a moderate, left, or right problem. More a “the current power structure will never support it” because it works for those in power now to their advantage.
That just sounds like an attempt to deflect blame away from moderate voters. They undermine, sabotage and attack every effort by progressives and leftists. Then they turn around and expect us to show up in the general election after fucking us over for four years.
Do you prefer Trump?
“That’s not the point!!! The mode-”
So you’d prefer Trump.
“Listen, Joe is commiting geno-”
Trump literally bankrolled anything Netanyahu wanted while in power. Remember the map they made together for a free Palestine in 2016? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trump_peace_plan
“Well he-” so would anything of your progressive agenda do better under Trump?
“We need a revolu-” yeah, it’s happening. The USA is slowly becoming an xenophobic anarcho-capitalist religious theocracy for the old & rich. Accelerates greatly when Trump holds power.
“I just won’t vote either!!!”
Ok. Go ahead. Just don’t complain later when Israel has a $150 billion dollar defense bill coming its way versus 15 billion. You likely will regardless though.
Also unions are being nailed to the cross for all to see 🤷🏿♂️. They are trialing it in Florida rn, his role model state. https://www.wlrn.org/government-politics/2023-06-30/floridas-new-union-law-sb-256
Cant wait to see this as Federal policy right? They’ll try.
Your call though. Im saving up all I can so my friends & I can be safe when shit falls off the cliff.
“You literally didn’t respond to a single point I made!!!”
Keep crying troll.
4th panel is what you’re going to get when a republican wins the white house because “leftists” voted for a spoiler candidate.
Moderates will too. Maybe they’ll look back and think “Perhaps we should have compromised a bit.”
What’s to stop them from compromising with the base of the party that won and become even more auth facist as a result
Are you saying moderates would rather compromise with fascists than leftists and progressives?
Moderates compromise with whoever controls the most seats in legislature
Why are you so afraid of giving a straight answer here?
Or just hand the election over to the guy who is going to push the pedal down all that stuff you claim to care about. We’re trying to minimize our losses as best we can, and right now, Biden seems to be the best that Democrats can muster up. Not the best situation to be in, but he’s still miles ahead of Trump on everything. Any issue you care about, well you’ll be reading about them in history books as an afterthought if Trump comes to power… if history books haven’t already been censored to just ignore any controversial issues altogether. Who the hell even needs history books when we have the Bible, the only source of information a citizen would ever need, that and TNN, the Trump News Network.
If third parties really want to make a change, they need to go after smaller, local elections, you build up a movement from the ground up. Any third parties in national elections that have almost no presence anywhere else are highly suspect and likely just there for the attention and/or to draw votes from one candidate or another.
I live in a solidly red state. The odds of it flipping in the next 20 years is nil. If I vote 3rd party, it
Sad that the system disincentives people in safe states to take their vote seriously. I get it, though. I protest voted in a safe state in 2016. Just… remember that if things go south, the knowledge that your vote was pointless doesn’t always erase all of the guilt.
Your third party vote count will be below the lizardman constant and will be ignored.
Everyone ignores the lizard people until they can no longer be ignored 🦎🦎
If you want to cause infighting in the RNC, organise a campaign to write in the name of some other Republican. Mitt Romney, or Liz Cheney.
You mean “forever”.
We’ve tried. Moderates fight us there too.
not where im from. third parties do decently in local races.
Glad to hear it. How long until that results in some material improvements for the American people? 10 years? 20? 30? I’ve already waited 16 years.
local will effect local im afraid. I have been suffering under the worse of two evils half the time for the last several decades and very much prefere the lesser. Much would be different if deregulation had not happened along with lower taxes for wealthy along with gutting environmental regulations. etc
I’m not content waiting around another 16 years hoping something will change. Especially when nobody telling me to keep hanging on has any confidence the next 16 years will be any different.
Im not waiting but im not sacrificing better in the hopes worse will lead to even better. Personally I far prefered biden, obama, over trump and I think your perspective would be a bit different if you experience bush, bush2, and reagan. ill take slightly better now over maybe somehow worse will get us to magically transform to way better.
Perhaps that’s because you have enough that’s worth protecting and then you turn around and shame people for acting differently because they do not.
Stop attack leftists and progressives. Go after moderates.
This reeks of right wing propaganda.
this is literally, 100% right wing propaganda
“vote for the lesser evil” has always sucked… but there’s a pretty big difference between neoliberal and guy who directly says he wants to be dictator, already tried to overthrow the government once, and is promising mass deportation (on a genocidal level) and theocracy
if he wins, it’s the end of the ability to vote third party…
“I’m going to vote against the dude that is giving weapons to Israel, who gives weak-effort strongly worded letters to try to stop being assholes in the butchering of Gaza. Nevermind that in doing so it ensures the win of the fascist megalomaniac who will shove weapons faster, and has given full throated support to Israel, along with the party that says that everyone in Gaza should die. That’ll teach them. Fuckin moderates, compromise with me or I’ll help Gaza burn faster.”
“Fix everything NOW or I help the fascists make everything worse!”
Thats all I’m hearing. “Everything must be 100% or I’ll turn this bus and speed back to Fascistland, so help me!”
We tried compromising, you guys didn’t want to.
Now that you need us you pretend to care
If you think cutting off arms to Israel and promising not to block strikes is “everything” you really aren’t paying attention. And please, take a moment to consider what compromises Biden has made with progressives and leftists. Give me some examples.
Let’s have an honest discussion about where in between “nothing” and “everything” compromises have been made for the policies and decisions leftists and progressives are fighting for.
I don’t play games with sea lions.
Sounds like you’d rather lose to fascists than compromise with leftists and progressives.
“I’m going to vote for a dude that will ensure the comfort of westerners at the cost of black and brown lives around the world and I feel good about this because the alternative is worse. Of course my life is more important than someone in Gaza! The status quo of this system isn’t stomping on me as much as it can and I’d like to keep it that way as long as I can. Yes, please focus your stomping boot somewhere else and I’ll continue to vote for that boot. There’s no ethical line I won’t cross to save myself from oppression because I’m a coward who refuses to listen to the oppressed”
Democracy is already dead if we are forced to vote for genocide. It might just take those comfortable with the status quo longer to figure that out.
Ok now do moderates.
The GOP is running out of cash saving the orange fascist from the results of his own actions. They’ll go bankrupt and then we’ll have a one party system where everyone will have to vote for whatever our party brass puts on the ballot for us.
Easy.
“We like how things are and while we like some of what you offer and suggest you want it all or nothing which is too much of a shock so we’ll stick with what we know. But right now we’re literally trying to fight off a fascist Hitler wanna-be, how about we fucking discus this later?”
“Don’t block strikes and don’t support genocide.” is “all or nothing”?
When? You didn’t want to discuss it at any point in the last four years.
But right now we’re literally trying to fight off a fascist Hitler wanna-be, how about we fucking discus this later?
When? You didn’t want to discuss it at any point in the last four years.
Considering Biden was on the picket line with the auto strikers, I disagree. Considering Biden is trying to shovel weapons to a Taiwan and to Ukraine, and yes unfortunately to Israel as well, he at least has criticized and made requests for ceasefires and hostage exchanges.
Is it perfect? Absolutely not. Is there more they could do? 100% yes. Is it better than it was 4 years ago with what Orange? Hands down.
Republicans would be 1000000x worse. And clearly you want that, over what the other side has done. Be honest with yourself and stop wasting our time.
Oh by “discussion” you thought I meant you say what you think, get your way and the rest of us just shut up and deal with it? That isn’t what I meant. I hope I’ve clarified that for you. This right here is a discussion and it’s only happening because you need something from me. The moment you don’t need my vote you’ll go right back to the kinds of “discussions” you’re talking about.
3rd party candidates will never win. Ross Perot did the best in 92 and did not capture a single state.
There is no 3rd party candidate currently doing as well as Perot was doing in 96 - when he dropped out of the race - much less as well as he did in 92.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1992_United_States_presidential_election
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1996_United_States_presidential_election
Heck, there isn’t one doing as well as Anderson did in 1980:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1980_United_States_presidential_election
All a progressive 3rd party candidate can accomplish is a Biden loss.
If you want 4 more years of Trump, vote 3rd party.
Sounds like Biden should make some compromises in order to get those votes then doesn’t it?
He literally can’t, because the compromise progressives want is to stop the attack on Gaza and Biden can’t stop that, only Bibi can and he is absolutely intent on killing everyone in Gaza.
Cutting off aid to Gaza isn’t going to stop the attack because Israel isn’t reliant on current aid to make it happen. They have a stockpile built up from decades of support.
So, Biden tells Israel to get fucked, he loses the campaign donations from the Israel pac to get elected.
https://www.opensecrets.org/industries/summary?cycle=All&ind=Q05&recipdetail=S
https://www.opensecrets.org/news/2023/12/pro-israel-pacs-poised-to-spend-big-to-unseat-progressive-members-of-congress-in-2024-election-cycle
https://thepoliticswatcher.com/pages/articles/congress/2023/12/7/aipac-donations-congress-members-unveiling-influence
There is no equivalent donation machine on the Palestinian side, they have bigger things to worry about.
Someone go tell Bloomberg that campaign money is a better indicator of electoral victory than voters. I’m sure he’d be happy to hear that he won the presidency.
Watch Trump come out during the RNC convention and condemn Israel and the genocide. Just raw dogging that cognitive dissonance. Get Dan Scavino on the phone. Let’s do a focus group and just fuck this shit up. /s
I just realized America’s entire history has been right wing propaganda.
-Mario Savio
You got close, but considering voting third party pretty much assures Trump wins, meme logic aside, it’s more like:
Leftists and progressives did compromise though. A lot of us voted for Biden in the 2020 general election. Zero compromises came back the other way. As we head into the election there’s two major issues Biden could compromise on.
But the fact that moderates aren’t interested in compromising on either of these things and has failed to provide any other meaningful opportunities for compromise means: