• @EldritchEnglish
    15•2 months ago

    Yes, that’s the whole reason wealthy fascists, foreign governments, and Republican establishment fund and assist nominally left 3rd party challengers. Especially in national elections where they have no chance. Specifically to disadvantage Democrats and the left in general, helping fascists win. They’ve been doing it nearly a half century or more now.

    Keeping the left divided is the best way to keep it out of power.

    • @Letme
      1•2 months ago

      I agree with you, but hate how we refer to democrats as “the left”. Democrats are “the center”, MAGA’ts are the extreme Christo-fascist right. We have no left, and the Republican party is all but extinct.

      • @EldritchEnglish
        10•2 months ago

        Democrats are not a monolith. There are highly right wing wealthy democrats. And then there are Centrist to socialist Democrats Like Bernie Sanders etc. The Democrats are a coalition party. And unfortunately the only realistic party the left has at the national level due to the way the system works. So whether or not you like it you need to get used to acknowledging it. Not doing so is What’s led to a lot of the division we’re dealing with now.

        Especially right now. A large chunk of Democratic Leadership is aging out or close to. A significant focused push could see a much more left-leaning Democratic Party. Maybe even someday a possible speaker Ocassio-Cortez. Parties, their make up, and their policy changes generationally. All we have to do is engaged with the system. Stop fighting for scraps on the side.

        • @Letme
          1•2 months ago

          Not sure if that’s a good thing. The Democrat party is barely strong enough to defeat the GOP even with their extreme right rhetoric and actions. The extreme left is dragging the democrats down. Time will tell, but I would rather see the democrats pick up the “real” Republicans, and put the final nail in the coffin of the GOP. To do that they might need to shed the extreme left.

          • @EldritchEnglish
            1•2 months ago

            That’s because they’re both a coalition, and their voters expect improvement. Often unrealistically from them. To the point that they let unobtainable perfection get in the way of whats achievable.

            Whereas Republicans/conservatives are fickle. Driven by their fears. They don’t expect or care about improvement. Just that “others” are hurt worse than them. The GOP itself found out the hard way that it isn’t really power. Someone always eventually comes along with equally empty promises and rhetoric but simply a more extreme tone. To steal their sheep away. All that borrowed and abused power evaporating completely. Because it was never theirs.

  • abff08f4813cEnglish
    1•1 month ago

    Last year, less than half of Democrats polled, 46%, said they want a third party. But that number increased seven percentage points this year, to 53%.

    Well of course. The national level Dem party is having to shift pretty rightward to ensure a win due to things like the GOP advantage in the Electoral College and such.

    Doesn’t mean that they’d take the risk this year (and risk things going to the GOP under a FPTP system). But once the threat to democracy has past. I can easily see a hypothetical future where the GOP basically collapses into irrelevancy (like the Whig party did), while the Dem coalition split up into three parties - the far-left Dems, the progressive Dems, and never-Trumper former Republicans.

    it appears that Democrats aren’t as happy with their candidate as Republicans are with theirs

    But this is almost certainly leaving out all the Liz Cheney-like minded folks who are supporting Harris. If we counted these, I imagine we have more former GOP defectors to Harris than we do potential Dem defactors to third parties.

  • @[email protected]
    0•2 months ago

    No, of course not. If Harris loses, there is a basically 0% chance of anyone other than Trump winning. But that doesn’t matter, because this stupid waste of a paywall didn’t even address the actual numbers, just some poll that doesn’t say anything about actual voter habits.

    What this stupidly worded title seems to imply is the spoiler effect, where a third party candidate may receive enough votes to change the winner of the election. To be clear, this is only possible because Trump is the main threat to Harris: if she were already ahead by 100 electoral votes, the spoiler effect would be impossible. But as it stands today, the odds of a third party candidate actually affecting this election are less than 1%, so no, Jill Stein and Bear Head Kennedy are not going to have any measurable effect on the election results.