"Progressives should not make the same mistake that Ernst Thälmann made in 1932. The leader of the German Communist Party, Thälmann saw mainstream liberals as his enemies, and so the center and left never joined forces against the Nazis. Thälmann famously said that ‘some Nazi trees must not be allowed to overshadow a forest’ of social democrats, whom he sneeringly called ‘social fascists.’
After Adolf Hitler gained power in 1933, Thälmann was arrested. He was shot on Hitler’s orders in Buchenwald concentration camp in 1944."
I feel like we need something like the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact that is aiming to eliminate the electoral college, but for Ranked Choice.
Passing this federally is too hard. We need do to this state by state.
Until I can vote for a third party with RCV, then I might as well be saying that I have zero preference about the GOP and DNC options on the table.
Rightwing Dems that get to the primary off corporate donors in the primary will never let RCC take over
The only reason they win in generals is the only other option is Republicans.
To fix anything on the federal level we need the Dem party onboard and all on the same page, then heavy majorities, then fix the system
Look up the Moral Majority. They wrested control of the GOP from Nelson Rockefeller et al by showing up at every local Republican function with enough votes to make sure they got heard. They started out putting their sheriffs and county clerks on the ballots.
Dems are not letting that happen.
I’d argue that you don’t need it in every state. You just need it in enough states to make a 3rd party candidate viable.
Alaska does it (assuming they won’t repeal it in nov). Oregon is going to try and do it, if it hopefully passes. If we get two states proving it works and isn’t a problem, that momentum can snowball.
Please help support the RCV effort in Oregon if you can. https://www.oregonrcv.org/
I heard this a couple of days ago, and the more I’m looking into it, the more I find the green party a joke at best.
Alaska has a number of things. A population of conservationists amoung the general population who are likely disaffected. An environment that is being exploited harder than most states. Now ranked choice voting. Most people would see them as the environmentalist party. How much good could they do towards that cause if they got into that state legislature? What if they could take the congress seat or a senator? If they took the electoral votes it would be harder since the ranked choice only seems to be for the states choice, but they could prove they could win at some level. How many candidates are they running in Alaska? One, jill stein. How much effort are they putting in there for her? I can’t tell. The main criticism of them does not exist there, but they aren’t even trying. They can accomplish many of there goals there more easily than anywhere else. It’s the perfect storm for them. Pathetic.
I wish it were different, but the Green Party sucks in the two countries I’ve lived in. I want to vote for environmentalists, but they seem to be Russian shills in the US, and they’ve had literal stasi members in Germany, where they were so opposed to nuclear, that the country still uses mostly coal.
Problem is that RCV will only have a chance in deep blue states, and all it would accomplish is reducing the blue representation in congress.
To put it bluntly, all it would accomplish is more in fighting and contributing to the reputation that Dems are ineffective. Except, it would be the “blue aligned coalition” instead of “Dems”
The only real path to making this change is to give Dems a super majority so they can amend the constitution.
And, well, the minority of Red voters have a majority of power thanks to the electoral college, so a super majority is absolutely impossible for the foreseeable future.
Edit - it’d also cause disruptions in States that don’t adopt RCV, as “progressives” protest vote 3rd party and sandbag the Dems
After Adolf Hitler gained power in 1933
WHO GAVE HITLER POWER MOTHER FUCKER?
Nobody in history has been more vindicated than Ernst motherfucking Thälmann. A vote for a Social Democrat is a vote for fascism now just as it was then - and the Democrats aren’t even that!
It can be even more crooked than the article states. You HAVE to have 270 electoral votes to get the presidency.
If third party candidates in any capacity wins some electoral votes, there’s a good chance that no one at all will get at least 270 total.
When that happens, it means the House gets to pick anyone they want who was on the ticket, by majority vote.
In this manner, a third party candidate could get 135, trump could get 134, Harris could get 269, and then even though the cast majority of people would have voted for Harris, the House, which is currently republican led would simply just vote Trump into office.
This is also why it’s pretty much impossible for a third party candidate to ever become president, unless the third party was already the house majority beforehand. No matter how great a third party candidate could be, there’s just no way one could appear and take enough electoral votes to total 270 in an election, even if they were the clear majority winner by public vote. “The house always wins.”
The only time in my lifetime someone other than the top two candidates got even a single electoral college vote, it was by accident in 2004.
So, yes, this single vote, cast in error, has a larger count than 50+ years of 3rd parties combined.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2004_United_States_presidential_election_in_Minnesota
"The following were the members of the Electoral College from the state. Nine were pledged for Kerry/Edwards, but one made a mistake and ended up voting for Ewards/Edwards[10] and thus became a faithless elector. Minnesota’s electors cast secret ballots, so unless one of the electors claims responsibility, it is unlikely that the identity of the faithless elector will ever be known. As a result of this incident, Minnesota Statutes were amended to provide for public balloting of the electors’ votes and invalidation of a vote cast for someone other than the candidate to whom the elector is pledged.[11]
Sonja Berg
Vi Grooms-Alban
Matthew Little
Michael Meuers
Tim O’Brien
Lil Ortendahl
Everett Pettiford
Jean Schiebel
Frank Simon
Chandler Harrison Stevens"
Even where there is no prospect of achieving their election the workers must put up their own candidates to preserve their independence, to gauge their own strength and to bring their revolutionary position and party standpoint to public attention. They must not be led astray by the empty phrases of the democrats, who will maintain that the workers’ candidates will split the democratic party and offer the forces of reaction the chance of victory. All such talk means, in the final analysis, that the proletariat is to be swindled. The progress which the proletarian party will make by operating independently in this way is infinitely more important than the disadvantages resulting from the presence of a few reactionaries in the representative body. If the forces of democracy take decisive, terroristic action against the reaction from the very beginning, the reactionary influence in the election will already have been destroyed
Karl Marx 1850
Marx didn’t live long enough to see just how ineffectual that line of thinking actually is.
Is the US Socialist? Has Socialism been brought about by establishment parties anywhere in history?
Yes. Look up ‘the New Deal.’
FDR was a Social Democrat, not a Socialist.
If it wasn’t for his Secretary of Labor, Francis Perkins, who was socialist, none of the things that he passed would have ever come to fruition. He gets way too much for credit for the ideology of a female socialist
Slow motion is better than no motion.
It’s pointless to argue over who is a ‘real’ Socialist. I can come up with arguments about anyone you care to name to prove they weren’t ‘real’ Socialists. What are the policies that actually improve people’s lives?
FDR was okay, then his safety nets were stripped away. They were only ever temporary concessions because Capitalists were always the ones in control, and they still are. In this manner, it was eventually no motion.
Almost as if the point of socialism is to strip away the the means of production from the capitalists in order to install a dictatorship of the proletariat, and not simply apply social safety-net band-aids so that capitalism can continue to function.
American liberals are so exhausting in their selective application of definitions.
then his safety nets were stripped away.
Almost as if it’s important to get out and vote in every election.
Ronald Reagan sabotaged Jimmy Carter’s Iran policy and squeaked in with the help of spoiler John Anderson.
You yourself said it; there were good policies in place, the Right hated them, and used a lot of dirty tricks to get rid of the good policies.
Having good government is like controlling diabetes; you have to be vigilant all the time.
Nope, which is part of the problem.
FDR has entered the chat.
Look up the New Deal.
Hell, look up the 1956 GOP Party platform.
Yep, which is why Socialists answered the Reform or Revolution question in Marx’s time quite definitively. The answer is Revolution.
careful what you say to jordanlund. he’s a mod and despite his supposed love for socialism (and chaotic good t-shirt), he likes to ban accounts that promote violent revolution.
Admins and mods in the West are walking a fine legal line, and servers can be seized. Not saying I agree with it, but that I do recognize it.
If my relatively tame comments defending the basics of Marxism get me banned, then they will be doing me a favor.
Same capitalists trying the same failed tactics of voter suppression.
Every one of his perspectives of capitalism and it’s bourgeoisie governments still rings true.
Rings true, isn’t true in actual practice.
Sounds a lot like the Trumpers decide if something is true to me.
Rings true in practice
I don’t think “ineffectual” is the word you’re looking for there.
I agree entirely, in regards to politics in 1850’s Germany with its diverse multiparty political ecosystem.
As for current American politics, where we are deeply entrenched in a societal tug-of-war in an ostensible two-party system, where third parties can swing policy in a largely undemocratic direction by spoiling the vote in close elections, I disagree completely. Third parties serve no purpose in a two-party representative democracy.
If we can break the two party political duopoly, then I will never complain about another fringe party voter ever again. Until then, you better fucking vote for the lesser evil, because letting the greater evil win, as we learned in 2017-2020, is really fucking bad.
If anything, letting Democrats win the next few major elections could spell doom for the Republican party as a whole, and give us a chance to introduce some actual competition to the Democratic party.
I wish that I could snap my fingers and have it fixed today, but that’s not how societies work. Accelerationism always requires violence, and violence isn’t how you should uphold democracy, unless you are defending its pillars against a direct threat. A two-party duopoly is something we the people need to defeat.
That means we need to abolish the electoral college, introduce universal mail-in voting, defeat all right-wing disenfranchisement efforts, and introduce ranked-choice voting to all elections. These are radical changes that will take a lot of work to accomplish, and that will face a lot of opposition.
Under Democrat leadership, these things are possible. Under Republican leadership, we’ll be lucky if we still have elections.
Your solution to defeating the duopoly is continuing giving them power and participating in it?
It’s not a way to defeat the duopoly, it’s a way to survive under it.
Voting 3rd party is also not a way to defeat the duopoly.
Would you like your vote to matter after November?
Then yes, I’m pushing the duopoly this time around.
It’s not like your vote matters now. Money has all the power in this country, voters have none. When 1 billionaire has more political influence than entire states you have no power. You’ve surrendered your power to the donor class.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/11/opinion/politicians-voters.html nyt. “Despite extensive public outreach…11%…” The NEW YORK TIMES, of all publications!
This is the epitome of why Democrats hate Trump. He says the quiet things out loud. He has said ‘I dont care about you. I just want your vote.’
This article confirms this, the Princeton study from 2012 confirms this. Several sources have confirmed politicians don’t care about us, only the monied class
Who do you think has a better chance of fixing that? Putin’s orange Fleshlight? The chick he had dinner with? Brainworm? Some other rando that gets less than 1% of the vote?
I hear you…it’s a problem…
Throwing your vote away this cycle ensures that your vote will never matter again.
The vote thrown away is the vote that’s cast out of fear. The dnc’s entire platform for the last few decades has been. We are not the other guy. You were casting a vote in opposition to the other guy, not in favor of policy or legislation, but not the other guy, that’s a protest vote
No…I’m voting for policy this time around. If I get the state exception for state taxes I get a point and a half back.
Trump’s tariffs should fucking terrify everyone…think shit is expensive now, wait until that goes through.
What’s the 3rd parties offering that has a remote chance of dealing with either of those problems?
So if they can’t vote for their views now, and we keep pushing the duopoly, when do we get democracy?
That’s the neat part… you don’t.
When you start doing things that actually work.
Look up the Moral Majority and Jerry Falwell. They would show up at every local GOP organizing event with enough voters to make sure their candidates for jobs like mayor, sheriff, and county clerk got the nod.
Gotcha, I’ll keep organizing outside the useless electoral system.
What laws have you gotten passed?
That’s a neat way to say “being too lazy to actually make a difference, but I don’t want to feel bad about it”.
That’s the thing, they never do. They have been pushing the lesser evil splitting the vote bullshit for over 150 years. The only people that benefits is the wealthy
Were the party system changes before then more due to
-
a major party crushing the other major party, and then splitting, or
-
a minor party growing and eventually replacing one of the two major parties?
Bonus points if anyone has a source on this.
October Surprise comes to mind.
-
Give me a reasonable alternative and I’ll take it.
You don’t name a candidate to vote for, just say we shouldn’t participate.
Who do you think scares Donnie more, Harris or your non-participation?
If anything, letting Democrats win the next few major elections could spell doom for the Republican party as a whole, and give us a chance to introduce some actual competition to the Democratic party.
This will never happen. The replacement party will be fascist. The Republican Party’s fascism doesn’t exist because of “brainwashing” or “conmen,” it exists because fascism rises from decaying Capitalism. If you don’t get rid of the Capitalism, the conditions for fascism remain.
That means we need to abolish the electoral college, introduce universal mail-in voting, defeat all right-wing disenfranchisement efforts, and introduce ranked-choice voting to all elections. These are radical changes that will take a lot of work to accomplish, and that will face a lot of opposition.
Under Democrat leadership, these things are possible. Under Republican leadership, we’ll be lucky if we still have elections.
The Democrats will never work against their donors. This will never happen.
Especially when their donors are the same donors to the GOP
Absolutely.
That part. They know where we’re going, the only difference as far as I can see is some prefer it slower, to keep from spooking the populace, and others are willing to slaughter any part of the populace that resist.
One day, the lambs will stop screaming.
Are you doing a lot of things exactly the way they did in 1850?
Politics is
So, things like social media and votes for women [to name two] are meaningless?
So how’d that work out for him?
I see a ton of this here, especially from a certain instance.
Progressives should not make the same mistake that Ernst Thälmann made in 1932
The mistake Ernst Thälmann made was not throwing his support behind checks notes Paul von Hindenburg, the man who ordered the police massacre of the Spartacus League?
After Adolf Hitler gained power in 1933, Thälmann was arrested.
Who elevated Adolf Hitler to the Chancellorship in 1933?
It’s not old Junkers like von Hindenburg that they’d ally with. It’s other slightly different leftist factions and a few centrists.
The centrists were aligned with Hindenburg. Friekorps were just as avid commie-bashers as any National Socialist.
The main problem Ernst had was affiliating himself with the Russian Revolution and advocating for more of the same in Germany. That made him an enemy of nationalists during a period in which “International Jewery” was the boogie man under everyone’s bed.
The idea that he could just strike up common cause with people who wanted him dead is absurd.
Particularly, there was huge overlap in membership between the Freikorps and the Stürmabteilung. So it is important to note that the Freikorps was a direct precursor to the Nazi brownshirts.
The mistake Ernst Thälmann made was not throwing his support behind checks notes Paul von Hindenburg, the man who ordered the police massacre of the Spartacus League?
Um…no? Von Hindenburg was the conservative. They’d have thrown their support behind the centrist, Wilhelm Marx, who lost by about 3%, thanks (in part) to the 6.3% Thälmann took. The rest of the blame lay with the BVP when they protested against the Social Democrats by siding with von Hindenburg.
Who elevated Adolf Hitler to the Chancellorship in 1933?
Von Hindenburg, with the help of the governing coalition formed by the Nazis and DNVP, all of whom were conservative.
What point are you trying to make?
What point are you trying to make?
Muddying the waters. That’s the point these shills are trying to make.
They’d have thrown their support behind the centrist, Wilhelm Marx, who lost by about 3%
The Catholic Centre Party was in open - often violent - conflict with the largely atheist-leaning German Communists. The German Catholics were terrified of a repeat of the Spanish Civil War, where Spaniards were revolting against a religious dictatorship and burning down churches.
Von Hindenburg, with the help of the governing coalition formed by the Nazis and DNVP
Wilhelm was aligned with the DNVP as far back as 1923. He was the one who pushed through the Enabling Act of 1923, which the Nazis would ruthlessly exploit a decade later, with their help. And he continued to govern in coalition with the DNVP through 1928, when he was dismissed from the Chancellory by…
Von Hindenburg, with the help of the governing coalition formed by the Nazis and DNVP
So, to answer your question
What point are you trying to make?
My point is that blaming Ernest Thälmann for his minority party position in the German government through 1933 when it would make much more sense to finger Alfred Hugenberg and his DNVP, which abandoned Wilhelm in '28 and aligned with
Von Hindenburg, with the help of the governing coalition formed by the Nazis
So, first, the way you copy+paste that response is difficult to follow, counterintuitive, and unnecessary.
Second, yes the KPD were often in violent conflict with the centrist parties. Violence had been reciprocal, unfortunately. And I’m not sure why Marx (a centrist) aligning with the DNVP years before undermines the broader point that it wasn’t Marx who elevated Hitler to the chancellorship. Sometimes US Democrats have negotiated with Republicans, but that doesn’t mean they’re responsible for everything Republicans have done or will do.
In this case, Thälmann and the BVP share the blame for not seeing Hitler and the conservatives as a bigger, more existential threat. Whatever threat Thälmann perceived from the SPD, BVP, and Marx’s former allies (the DNVP), they obviously dwarfed in comparison to the threat of the Nazis. Not saying their fears were unjustified, mind you, only that they obviously chose wrong by not looking at the bigger picture. Maybe they thought they were doing the right thing in holding true to their principles and not joining forces with the SPD and BVP, but it’s obvious now that they should have taken strategic influence more seriously, for all of their sakes.
Lemmy users be like “bUt I cAnT VoTe FoR gEnOcIdE”
Sadly, Israel’s genocide is not on the ballot given that both candidates support “Israel’s right to defend itself” (read that with seething sarcasm). What is on the ballot is the prevention of genocide (or at least a flood of atrocities) in Ukraine, the invasion of multiple former Soviet republics, Women’s rights, minority rights, queer rights, voting rights…basically rights and the rule of law in general.
What is on the ballot is the prevention of genocide (or at least a flood of atrocities) in Ukraine, the invasion of multiple former Soviet republics,
The idea that the US can stop a war between two countries in the opposite side of the world already highlight something scummy going on. How exactly is voting red or blue going to change anything in the russian/ukrainian borders?
A Trump presidency would accelerate the genocide in Gaza, and bring genocide home for millions of Latinos.
Considering it’s American aid workers being killed in Gaza, it don’t matter. A vote for an AIPAC funded candidate is a vote for genocide.
Israel is killing Americans now and the currently sitting president is supporting them in doing so.
EVERY POLITICIAN RECEIVING FUNDS FROM ISRAEL RIGHT NOW SHOULD BE PROTESTED!
The genocide is already here for Islamic Americans, Trump just expands it to the rest of us. First them, then us.
And a third party would probably stop that. The right choice is to vote for a third party that is against it not between “genocide” and “genocide x2”
One, I don’t know any progressive that is planning on voting for RFK.
Two, can we stop this lie? Only a vote for Trump is a vote for Trump.
I could see quite a few older Democrats voting for the name “Kennedy”.
Pretty shallow vote of that’s all they are looking at, but I certainly can’t rule out the possibility I suppose. Don’t know if I’d call those people progressive, though.
A vote not for Harris is one less vote for her too. Not voting for anyone and then waking up getting the person you didn’t want winning should not get a Pikachu face. That single vote won’t matter statistically, but it’s the mindset that if lots of people think the same way, and they do, then it will matter.
It’s okay to vote thinking, ugh, fine…I’ll vote Democrat even though I hate the choices. If everyone thinking that way votes, we’ll have a left wing sweep. That would be a refreshing change of pace…then we can put pressure on those reps who listen to people to make the hard changes that right now always get opposed because of party.
To be clear, I did not advocate for not voting. I actually believe voting should be compulsory.
Voting absolutely should be compulsory, it would be such a moderating force on US politics if you couldn’t get more votes just by stirring up your base.
Unfortunately, I don’t think it will happen in the States within my lifetime. Too much identity tied up in the idea of freedom.
I’ve been shocked by the amount of pushback I get when I talk about compulsory voting. I suspect it has less to do with freedom and more to do with how classist US society is.
Many people here seem to have internalized the idea that it’s better for the country if ‘apathetic’ and ‘stupid’ people don’t vote. Of course the bulk of non voters are working people, the poor and those who benefit most from an increased voice in society.
I don’t think you need laws to force voting if you can keep the public informed and interact with them. It won’t be 100%, but anything has to be better than the low amounts the US has, caused by apathy and oppression.
I’m glad you didn’t mean to not vote, however that’s almost the default behavior these days because of the above mentioned. A change in the voting system would be another huge help, bringing in third party voters who would get a better chance to have their voice heard and their parties grow with that, as well as having more votes for the main parties with the alternate vote that would come with such voting. But to get that requires a change now with the existing one.
I think we would agree that election reform is sorely needed.
I saw that Canada tried to get election reform passed too (I don’t know the details) and it failed. You guys up north aren’t trying to follow us as a role model are you? Please don’t.
Unfortunately there are already too many up here that trying to emulate the States, even walking around with MAGA flags.
Just saw this: https://fedia.io/m/news@lemmy.world/t/1193896/Raskin-Beyer-Welch-Bill-Would-Bring-Ranked-Choice-Voting-to#comments
I hope they can follow through!
You do advocate for throwing your vote away and enabling the worst possible candidate though.
I advocate for people voting for the candidate they want to win.
Which you will not do, and you tell other people not to do.
Thumbs up
What? How could you have possibly gathered that from what I’ve said so far? In another comment I said I think that voting should be compulsory…which you replied to!
I’m able to follow the discussion just fine.
You seem to have a less than firm grasp on how the real world works.
They usually do surveys with ranked choice voting and then you can assume who wouldve voted for dem/rep if the third party didnt exist.
Only a vote for Trump is a vote for Trump.
The no vote protesters in 2016 sure helped Trump.
I mean unless you are intentionally being obtuse I feel like you know damn well what people mean when they say “A vote for X is a vote for Trump”. It’s not a coincidence that so many Republican allies and organizations are promoting and pumping up 3rd party candidates to run in various swing states and pull votes away from Harris, this isn’t a new tactic and historically has absolutely changed elections.
I do know what they are saying and I do not approve of the message. It shifts the blame onto people who voted for what they wanted instead voting against what they don’t want, which is what people should be doing in a democracy - instead of blaming the people who actually voted for Trump. Those people are the people that elect him, not the people who didn’t vote for him.
You see, your first mistake here was assuming that America was a functioning democracy.
It’s not.
Play the game right or you’re gonna have the game taken away from you before you have a chance to fix it. FPTP is a zero sum game.
If America isn’t a democracy, the actions of the government don’t shadow the will of the people; therefore no American citizen can be guilty of supporting “the genocide”, right?
Right?
Well I’m sorry if that’s how you interpret reality, honestly I don’t care about “the message”, I care about the goal of TRUMP NOT FUCKING UP THIS COUNTRY MORE THAN HE ALREADY HAS.
Yes, we should be doing all we can to persuade people not to vote for Trump.
No, you should do all you can to place an alternative candidate who is competitive
Sure, I’d agree with that too, but I’d say a literal rock should be competitive to Trump in a sane universe.
Until a bunch of morons say “that rock didn’t embrace my issue hard enough, so I’m voting for that stick over there instead” and we end up with trump again.
Fine, declare our universe not sane, we’d agree on that.
In this universe Harris is that only competitive rock.
Which means voting for Harris. Not some third party throwaway.
No, I said very plainly what I meant. If you think that Harris is the best choice for the country, I encourage you to speak to people who aren’t going to vote for her and to to convince them of that. No more so than people who plan on voting for Trump.
I don’t know how you can be this dense. Not voting for Harris means you are voting for Trump. There is only one out of two people that will be winning the election: Trump or Harris.
Voting for anyone else is throwing your vote away and enabling Trump. That’s reality. That’s how it’s going to work, weither you like it or not, and regardless of whatever fantasy you’re entertaining.
What you should be voting for is the vote that’s going to help the country head in the best direction among the choices you have. Sometimes that’s not what you want. It’s not what I want. I think Harris is too far right on many issues (though she’s def not worse than Trump on genocide) - but I realize that voting for what I want would be selfish because what I want has no chance of winning, but not quite what I want does have a chance. That chance diminishes if I vote for what I want, while increasing the chance of what I definitely DO NOT want winning.
I get what you are saying. I voted for Nader in 2000, still get shit for it today. No one has the right to tell you who to vote for, or to shame you for voting your conscience. But let’s not pretend there’s any third party siphoning off R votes like there are siphoning off D votes.
Vote your conscience, sure, but don’t try to pretend doing so doesn’t tip the scales of the actual outcome in a particular direction - it does, and you clearly realize it. That doesn’t mean you can’t make the selfish choice, but at least own it.
I was young and dumb and oblivious to that reality, and didn’t even know I was in a battleground state. If I had, I might (or might not) have voted differently.
I think we would agree on more than some might think. I think we disagree on just some of the nuance.
Very possible! 🙂
A vote for third party is a vote for Harris. You have to hold your nose and vote Trump!
But seriously, Libertarians are the largest third party by quite a margin. So third parties actually help Democrats. It is just the Democrats mentality that they are owed votes for not being Republicans, rather than a candidate’s or party’s job to try to appeal to voters that this narrative is pushed forward.
“How to show everyone you’re stupid, in one easy comment.”
Unfortunately, that’s not true. The Trump base is not as fractured as the Democratic base is. Voting 3rd party, statistically, ONLY helps Trump.
A 3rd party will not, cannot win a Presidential election, so Progressives who would otherwise vote for Harris, but instead back a loser like Stein or West are removing their vote from Harris, which has the exact same effect as +1 for Trump.
See here:
"Just 44,000 votes out of more than 10m cast in Arizona, Georgia and Wisconsin – less than half of 1% – were the difference between the Biden presidency and a tie in the electoral college that would have thrown the election to the House of Representatives, and hence to Trump.
If candidates from No Labels, the Green party and the People’s party peel off just 15% of the anti-Trump vote from Biden, and Trump’s base stays with him, Trump would win all five swing states comfortably and return to the Oval Office."
“Not true”? What part are you refuting? Are you saying that they count non-Trump votes as Trump votes?
Would you agree with me that if no one voted for Trump, he would not win?
You’re living in a fantasy. In real life where the rest of us are, a lot of people will be voting for Trump. And yes, any misguided third party vote is a vote for Trump.
Did you even read what this post is?
Yes, I read the article.
So, just to be clear: A progressive who doesn’t vote, or who votes in the general election for Robert F. Kennedy Jr. or Cornel West or Jill Stein — or whoever No Labels puts up as a candidate — is voting for Donald Trump.
This is precisely the lie I am referencing in my original comment.
I am tired of people blaming voters who didn’t vote for the fascist being blamed for the fascist winning. Blame those who actually voted for the fascist.
You’re overlooking the fact that it isn’t the quantity of votes trump has, it’s the quantity of votes that trump has COMPARED to the quantity of votes Harris has.
It is no matter if trump has 100 or 101 votes or any other number, in isolation.
It matters if trump has 100 and Harris has 99.
Especially if 5 people stay home, who would otherwise have voted Harris.
Sure, they didn’t vote for trump. They aren’t Trumpers. But their behavior directly caused Harris to lose. Therefore their actions, in a constrained system, resulted in trump winning.
It’s their ACTION not their VOTE specifically.
I’m not overlooking anything, I’m disagreeing with the framing. If Harris has 99 votes and Trump had 0, Harris wins.
In what world do you believe Trump will have 0 votes? The only framing you care about is a fairytale.
I love how you think your expertise in math a five year old would say some how makes your point valid, instead of just looking dumb.
We do blame those who actually vote for the fascist. We also blame those who effectively vote for the fascist by not voting for the only actual alternative. Your vote is not about you; its about the system you’re in. Making material change means working with what you have, instead of voting in a way to preserve a personal aesthetic.
Why do you think no one is blaming people that vote for him? Absolutely no one has ever said anything like that.
I did not mean to imply that no one is. But those who did not vote for him are not responsible for him winning, and should carry no blame.
am tired of people blaming voters who didn’t vote for the fascist being blamed for the fascist winning. Blame those who actually voted for the fascist.
I did not mean to imply that no one is.
Textbook definition of bad faith arguments.
I can’t talk to you anymore, I’m sorry but you refuse to learn. People like you helped get us in this mess 8 years ago.
I’m saying the candidate isn’t “Not Trump”.
If Trump has 47% of the vote, and you allow the “Not Trump” majority to be divided among 3 or 4 people, Trump wins.
Only one person can beat Trump, the Democratic candidate. Voting for anyone else only helps Trump.
We don’t have an Presidential election that goes “Well, OK, nobody got 50%+1 so knock out everyone but the top two and do it again…”
I’m well aware of how the election works. You did not answer my most important question.
Would you agree with me that if no one voted for Trump, then Trump would not win?
“No one voting for Trump” is not an option.
It was a yes or no question. You’re as good at dodging them as politicians! You should run third party. ;)
Disingenuous questions get the answers they deserve. :)
You are putting out a dangerous assumption that the republican party is voting in a rational way.
They aren’t.
Would you agree with me that if the sky was a bicycle, then we’d all be millionaires?
I learned about spoiler candidates in 8th grade civics.
Spoiler about spoilers: spoilers can spoil actively, or passively. It doesn’t really matter after the fact, the point is how their words and existence as a candidate influence the success chances for the 2 leading candidates.
lol. That makes no sense.
Let’s say Trump has 47% support… his theoretical maximum.
That means “Not Trump” is at 53%.
The problem is “Not Trump” is divided among Harris, Stein, and West. Stein and West draw from the Harris camp, not the Trump camp.
So instead of 47% Trump, 53% Harris, you get 45% Harris, 5% Stein, 3% West, Trump wins.
Do that in a few key states like Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin and Trump gets a 2nd term, actively making things worse for all those people who voted for Stein and West.
I believe ravhall agrees with you, they were saying what IAmTheTot says doesn’t make sense.
Correct
We could avoid this with ranked choice voting.
You need ranked voting
Unless you would otherwise vote for Trump. Then definitely vote for a Third Party.
If you don’t care if Trump wins, sure…
He’s saying instead of voting for Trump (if you were going to do that) vote 3rd party so you don’t vote for Trump… It’s a joke
If you live outside the ~5 swing states that decide the election you can go ahead and ignore shit like this saying you can’t vote third party.
Shoutout PSL
Depends on how “safe” the states are. If its by just 100,000 then that’s not as safe as you think. If it’s by 600,000 then yeah that’s pretty safe. But at the same time why vote for a party that won’t win?
Also, the PSL is not your friend. Back in 2020 they realized they weren’t gonna get the Peace and Freedom nomination in 2020, so instead of having solidarity with their fellow socialists, they threw their weight behind the joke candidate Roseanne Barr. They blatantly sabotaged their fellow socialists because they realized they weren’t going to win. They are not a party worth your investment.
Here’s a great article about them and their shit.
But at the same time why vote for a party that won’t win?
Building support for change has to start somewhere, while they won’t win this election the more support they get the more visibility socialism gets as well as showing that people aren’t willing to vote for genocide. At the very least it shows the amount of people unhappy the democrats aren’t taking a harder stance on Israel.
As for the PSL specifically, they’re the best option on the ballot in my state. Thank you for the link though I’ll take a deeper look when I have a chance.
So people who don’t live in swing states should vote third party until there’s enough of them that the state is in danger of going to trump (or whoever)? If they’re successful at some point that’s a threat.
How do we actually get third party candidates to win, not just “oh, Ross Perot Jr got 3% of the vote”?
However you slice it, we’re looking at like a 20 year struggle minimum to get election reform, and it would be at least the same length to elect a third party candidate to the office of president, but that’s a one off thing. (Or more likely that third party would be the new one of two parties)
If we’re committed to the struggle of improving things, we might as well improve a reusable process rather than have a single go at a third party presidential candidate.
If enough people are voting third party that it’s a threat then maybe the other parties should take notice and change to support the popular policies and win back support.
Also we can do more than 1 thing at a time. We should be pushing things like ranked choice voting while also showing our displeasure with the current parties where it makes sense to do so.
Giving support to third parties gives them and the issues they’re promoting more visibility to the general public.
If enough people are voting third party that it’s a threat then maybe the other parties should take notice and change to support the popular policies and win back support.
This does not work in a FPTP system. Every vote you peel off the Democrats just enables the Republicans and sets reform back even farther. The only way telling people to vote 3rd party is helpful is if they were going to vote for the GOP. Peeling votes away from Democrats HURTS the chances of other parties to be viable in the future.
You’re looking at things through there lens of 1 election cycle.
If a third party that’s against the genocide Israel is carrying out gets say 5% of voters in deep blue or deep red states would that not be a signal to the democrats that they should change their stance before the next election?
In a completely uncontested race? Totally fine with voting 3rd party to send a message to the Democrats.
That’s not what we’re talking about here. When the alternative candidate in a tight race is from a party whose goal is to abandon democracy altogether, that 5% is absolutely critical. In order to “send a message” to the Democrats, you give the GOP the ability to limit democracy even further for the next election. If there even is another election. And the Democrats can’t implement the changes you want to see even if they wanted to because they lack the power from losing the election. That’s a ridiculous trade-off.
No. If 5% of my voting base sits out over a single issue, I’m going to lose my interest in trying to triangulate their support and move in another direction to identify a more persuadable bloc of voters. That goes more if the abandonment is repetitive, and if the issues constantly change, or if the issue is something I can’t bend on for electoral reasons.
If one bloc of voters is easier to please than another, then I’m moving in their direction, even if it’s rightward. Unfortunately it’s winner-take-all, and you’re either in power or you’re not. There are no half-wins.
Not funding and supplying a genocide seems to be a pretty clear and easy issue to change especially when 60%+ of democrats are in favor of it. We’re already violating our own laws by continuing to do so.
The democrats are already moving to the right even with the left continuing to vote for them. They think they can win over some centrists republicans (even though they can’t in a meaningful number) by adopting right wing policies while not losing the left because at the moment they know votes are guaranteed because “republicans worse”.
Having voters in areas that effectively don’t matter this cycle show there displeasure in the genocide we’re enabling is the least we can do to counter it.
I directly answered your question, and you seem to have ignored what I said. Plus you really should reexamine your assumptions about the importance of Gaza, the “ease” of withdrawing support, how much Democrats have moved rightward, and how many centrist Republicans vote for Democrats.
Your level of frustration with the process is inversely proportional to your awareness of these trends, of which Democratic leaders are likely well aware. Moreover, you seem to be valuing the strongly-held opinions of voters in non-swing states (what you’re calling “deep blue states” or “areas that effectively don’t matter”) more highly than the maybe-less-strongly held opinions of voters in swing states. If 5% of Democratic voters in California want sushi, and 5% of Democratic voters in Pennsylvania want steak, I’m picking steak and telling the California voters to take a hike. Their opinion doesn’t even register on my radar thanks to the electoral consequences of pissing off the Pennsylvanians who wanted steak.
They think they can win over some centrists republicans (even though they can’t in a meaningful number) by adopting right wing policies while not losing the left because at the moment they know votes are guaranteed because “republicans worse”.
I don’t think they think that. I think we’ve swallowed that lie hook, line and sinker for 40 years and they will keep throwing the same bait as long as we keep biting while they keep moving right.
The presidential election is not the time for any of that. You have a fundamental misunderstanding about how elections work if this is the only time you care about third parties.
It definitely isn’t the only time I care about third parties. Continued direct action in the community is the most important way to affect change. The election is just a useful event for publicity and gaining support for groups.
There’s 0% chance my comment is going to convince enough people this election cycle that it effects a non swing states election. It’s about slowly building support for groups.
Georgia surprised us before, maybe they will again.
I’m with you. I’m all about building support. Just as long as people understand there’s a time and place for it.
People have said that for 40 years. It’s always the right time to do the right thing.
Eta and for 40 years things have gotten worse for everyone but fat international corporate conglomerates and VERY wealthy people. The time is now.
And for 40 years voting in your local elections has changed things. That’s when you vote for change. If you think the presidential election is the time to vote differently you’re not paying attention, plain and simple.
He can write executive orders all day long but unless he’s repealing a previous order, it requires Congress to fund them.
And you might think he’ll just blunder along like last time, and I’d like to point out he did a lot of damage last time, but I believe he is FULLY aware of Project 2025 and I think he would try his best to enact much of it because it involves loyalty to him and enriching him. Either way, I’m not interested in finding out.
I’m planning on voting PSL and you can too.
They’re running de la Cruz on a platform of Palestinian statehood and an end to arms shipments to Israel.
PSL and De La Cruz are only on the ballot in 18 states for 220 Electoral College votes. They literally cannot win.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ballot_access_in_the_2024_United_States_presidential_election
Taking votes away from Harris only helps Trump.
Both the red and blue party are supporting a genocide. Taking away votes for them helps mankind
If winning were the only effect that voting had then you’d have a great point.
No ones taking votes away from Harris, if she wants to get psl voters she can take up policy positions they support.
Winning really is the only effect and sometimes, not even then.
All a third party really has to do is become popular enough to break the narrative that only red and blue can win. Once it happens it’s a landslide because everyone is feed up with the current system. If red and blue start to lose votes and popularity they are forced to change their politics
Votes are used to determine ballot access in future elections, funding, event presence and of course, by the two major parties to figure out where they could pick up an electoral vote or two by tacking a third parties platform onto their own.
Why some parties and political movements even use voting as a means to organize and raise awareness around their platforms and issues!
No third party has reached those thresholds in years.
2020:
- Democratic - 51.31%
- Republican - 46.85%
- Libertarian - 1.18%
2016:
- Republican - 46.09%
- Democratic - 48.18%
- Libertarian - 3.28%
2012:
- Democratic - 51.06%
- Republican - 47.20%
- Libertarian - 0.99%
2008:
- Democratic - 52.93%
- Republican - 45.65%
- Ralph Nader - 0.56%
2004:
- Republican - 50.73%
- Democratic - 48.27%
- Ralph Nader - 0.38%
2000:
- Republican - 47.86%
- Democratic - 48.38%
- Ralph Nader - 2.74%
As we all know, time doesn’t pass and yesterday is today. Nothing ever happens for any reason. The world is exactly the same as it was decades ago.
Tell you what, I’ll put my money where my mouth is. I’ll personally donate $1,000 to any 3rd party that cracks 3% nationally in the upcoming election.
And before then?
Even if the threshold for funding and ballot access isn’t met, voting third party helps get your party at events, tells the major parties how popular their platform is and builds support and awareness.
The last time a 3rd party got any significant portion of the vote was Ross Perot in '92 and '96, it had 0 significance.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1992_United_States_presidential_election
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1996_United_States_presidential_election
18.91% in '92, 8.4% in '96.
Before that, you have to go back to '68 where a racist 3rd party won 13.5% of the vote, and the South, also had no significance beyond that election.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1968_United_States_presidential_election
She’s on the ballot where I live. I’m probably voting for her.
Hell yeah.
Hell yeah! Celebrate throwing away your vote! Wooo!
The vote is counted. It gets tallied for the candidates it’s marked for.
Yes. And who do you think has a chance to win the election?
Any candidate who gets 270 electoral votes.
Right. And PSL cannot get 270 votes from 18 states. It’s literally impossible. You’re throwing your vote away.
We desperately need more third-party options in politics, but voting for third parties in presidential elections doesn’t make that happen—the US voting system isn’t a business that adapts its products to meet consumer demand.
in presidential elections
Or in House of Representative, or Senate. The real power is in Congress.
Local elections is where most of the current people in power got started. Anyone voting for third party in the presidential race missed the boat.
And it’s a hell of a lot easier to reform voting there too.
Vote progressives into local offices so they can get experience to work in state offices so they can get experience to work in Congress so they can get experience to be a good presidential candidate. Also to fill offices at every level with progressives.
Don’t feed up on the propaganda all it takes is a bunch of celebrities endorsing third parties and then they become popular enough to make a change. The moment the red and blue start to lose votes and their grip on power they have to go in damage control mode and change their politics to please people and get votes back.
voting for third parties in presidential elections doesn’t make that happen
In a winner-take-all system, the marginal votes on the winning and losing side don’t matter. Third parties are an extrapolation of this principle. But when you’re voting in a state that is 60/40 for a given party, any individual vote for a given party is equally meaningful.
The only real benefit to valuing a Big Two party over a Third Party is if you’re in a swing state, where the odds of your vote being the tipping point are reasonably high. And even then, the powers invested in the partisan state secretary and county election’s commissioner offices render that decision relatively meaningless.
People losing their shit at Ralph Nader and Pat Buchanan in 2000 seem to have completely overlooked the impact of the mass voter disenfranchisement under Jeb Bush and Katherine Harris, the Butterfly Ballot design that confused voters into voting Buchanan over Gore, as well as the transformative impact of the Brooks Brother’s Riot and the subsequent SCOTUS decision to halt the vote count in Dem leaning districts.
At some level, Americans must stop treating their elections process as free and fair, and then deflecting blame of defeat onto anyone who doesn’t vote for your favorite candidate.
Tbf, it very much appears similar to battered partner syndrome. It’s going to be painful either way, but if I stay blah blah blah.
That… is the exact opposite of what the article is arguing. If one side of the political spectrum (inevitably right-wing) unites, they immediately run over the side that is split up into different fragments that are arguing over just how much of a school lunch should be subsidized by the government.
And we have seen this in the modern day as well. A couple months back basically the entire Left/Center-Left of France had to unite to try and prevent fascists from taking power and… it is unclear if they actually succeeded.
Its fun to parrot the exact same text every single time a topic comes up. But shit like this is a lot more important than meming about Subway and it is well worth understanding what efforts do and don’t address and think through those problems. Otherwise we just leave ourselves more and more vulnerable to hate.
The point though is that ranked choice allows you all the benefits of 3rd parties without the downsides.
One can just as easily argue that that is the point of primaries in the US and other countries. You get a wide range of left and right leaning candidates and you downselect based on who the majority wants as well as general election theory to handle moderates.
And… the end result is that people get incredibly pissy when their candidate doesn’t win and disenfranchise themselves. Theoretically, a very strict ranked choice model that requires ALL candidates to be ranked could help with that but you still get into the realm of “protest votes”. See: People who refused to vote for Biden because he had shit stances on genocide and who would have given trump, who is openly genocidal, the win.
The reality is that we need to actually educate people on how governments work to undo decades of “haw haw, douche or a turd sandwich” levels of narrative. But we also need the politicians to actually unite against common threats. The fascists already understand that. But the Left continues to infight at every opportunity.
Yup. We need ranked choice balloting first.
