Trying to build viable third parties by voting for them in presidential elections is like trying to build a third door in your house by repeatedly walking into the wall where you want the door to be.
No, no, THIS time protest-voting to allow fascism will work to usher in a real left-wing movement in this country, promise! /s
Yeah, fascist government are known for doing some voting reforms after all
this way of thinking assumes that having "muhh team" win will result any change, when historical record shows that the two party system has degraded quality of life for most people over last 40 years with no end in sight.
but sure keep voting for your team lol we can revisit this topic when we are all living hand to mouth and have even less economic power
But but, building a real third party from the ground up in local elections and/or changing our voting system from first past the post takes a lot of time and real effort. That's a lot of hard work. It's a lot harder than just showing up to one election every 4 years and casting a vote that makes you feel like you're special and smarter than everyone else.
Yeah, I've recently talked with my therapist about this choice between very slow, very hard work and sitting on my butt dreaming. And about the idea that it's better to avoid action than to act, if I'm not sure I'll act right. And how it apparently came to me in my teens, when I've been doing martial arts for some time, girls would smile at me often, and in general I thought I might be too stupid and happy and there should be something smarter. That 'smarter' was, of course, just another teenage idea of being wise and not like everyone else. Fucked up my life for a decade.
By the way, people who'd be removed and theoretical and talk about some imagined third movement created via some magic other than voting - would be called 'idiots' in ancient Athens. Because they are on the side of an idea, not real politics. Then it became a rude word.
Any such decision to try and find a smart shortcut, or that it's better to wait and see how it goes instead of sweating, - are all wrong and are exactly what propaganda works for. Being honest is smarter than being dishonest. And voting for the party most fitting your ideals is smarter than for the lesser evil.
except that you could end up with a 3rd entrance by doing that ... eventually
No you won't.
But if you put the door in while building the house (local and primary elections) you'll have installed it at the right time.
I think you'd have brain damage way before you get to that point
so not only would you have an extra door you'd still be smarter than people voting 3rd party in a first past the post system. Win/Win
Depends on how cheap the drywall is.
You may avoid brain damage, but your get cancer form the dust on the way through.
Especially if you ram that not-door long, hard, deep, and strong enough, really get up in there and penetrate that wall. If you run out of steam you could even switch to an electric appliance, but in that case be gentle (though not too gentle...).
Um.... I'm not sure where this is going, and at this point I'm afraid to continue? 😔
You'll get a boatload of spoiler effect elections until people start voting tactically again. Third parties need to start locally and not participate in the presidential elections for a long time.
There is a path to voter reform by creating hung parliament and require voter reform in a coalition agreement. Once dominant running for governor or a senator becomes possible.
Primary elections are how parties change. Primary elections are how the Republican party became what it is today. They are often the highest-leverage vote you can cast if you're in a solid district.
Yup. People don't realize there is already a not horrible approximation of runoff voting that still avoids the spoiler effect.
And just look at what happened when Sanders realized that. He went from being a meme about how nobody watches C-SPAN to one of the more influential politicians on the Left.
Well I'd say it's still pretty bad with the super delegates and such. But yeah it's runoff system of sorts and people should pay more attention to it.
But a lot of the "system is broken" angst comes from people being not happy over who the majority of people vote for. But that's just democracy, baby.
But the Electoral College, yeah that shit is broken.
Primaries are still subject to spoiler effects and such.
In my very blue state this year where the top two in the primary go on to the general, there was a local position which had a whole bunch of well qualified Democrats vs just a couple of Republicans. (Incumbent not running)
The dem vote was split enough that we very nearly had just the two Republicans in the general. Like less than 60 votes away.
Remind me who won in 2016? How do you think all those Bernie supporters felt about the election that was still very much influenced by FPTP dynamics.
Primary elections aren’t democratic either (see party delegates). I feel like people who say this are rarely politically engaged in their communities. Same with the people who say to get involved in local city politics to make change.
Ultimately you’re supporting a facist system that is historically atrocious and currently financially supporting a genocide almost singlehandedly but go ahead and keep telling people that the best way to maintain some semblance of moral character is to vote in this sham.
Too bad the dems skipped the primary and just anointed their candidate.
You'd need to grow the third party / greens by having them become a viable party in local elections and state elections first. The greens have failed to do that. Which means they have no chance except to spoil the election.
Big money donors will never allow green candidates to get into significant office. Money runs politics and billionaires own entire state houses these days
True. I think about it now as a kind of physics problem. You have political energy measured in dollars on each side. Volunteers to help bring the political message across for free can be converted into dollars too. There are a lot of people concerned or outright scared out of their minds about environmental concerns like climate change. One sight has multiple orders of magnitude more political energy to spend. For example on counter measures, or boosting extreme vegan voices to cause disruption, advertising or media stories or think tanks or lobbyists. And the "technology" to manage this political energy is rapidly advancing too. So no amount of "this is the right / wrong choice" argument is going to change anything. There is only power.
There are big money donors, which are not billionaires. The most common one are unions.
"Why would I vote for a primary party candidate who supports ranked choice voting when I can just throw my vote away on a third-party candidate that will never be elected? I've got principles!"
Because apparently throwing your vote away will somehow convince politicians to move left or something, despite all the evidence that it won't.
The Republicans move right during the general, and are sometimes pulled that way by the libertarian candidate (or rfk jr). The Dems usually don't get pulled left because they're so focused on moving to the right during the general to try to get the moderate republican vote
Voting for either side is just accepting the status quo.
Third party vote today is just laying ground work for a generational fight. There is no other way to get the attention from the politicians.
They rule on behalf of donors and two party system ensures they ways win, they just take turns.
Ranked choice voting seems like a great way to create huge political instability. Let's take the system that has worked decent for 248 years and completely replace it with something less well tested. We already have uncertainty we don't need to mess with the system more.
You don't want to mess about with that democracy nonsense. We've had a monarchy that has worked decent for a millennium, and you want it replace it with some untested, newfangled system?
Status quo lover over here what world are you livin in
worked decent
This is how we know you're not here in good faith 😬
Want to build a viable third party for presidential elections? Start small at the city/county level and eventually you will have candidates at the state/federal level. Today's city council is tomorrow's senator/president. Does it really surprise anyone that a relatively unknown and unproven candidate outside of the two major parties doesn't get any traction in a federal election?
That takes money, lots of it and the 2 main parties have huge corporate donors who will never give money to an environmental party
That's already the goal of state chairs for third parties.
Oh it's that easy eh?
I think you might need to reread my post, I didn't say it was easy. It's reality, which generally isn't easy.
we aint getting elected viable third party until the two party regime is denied legitimacy which is done by not voting for either party. deny them engagement by voting third party, anyone really.
Look up The Moral Majority and Jerry Falwell.
Falwell made himself a big deal in the GOP by getting his troops to show up at every single local Republican event with enough votes to make sure that they got everything they wanted. It started small with sheriffs and county clerks, and then Congress members.
Exactly. Anytime a small party runs a presidential campaign it's not only a waste of time but it's a waste of money and resources that could have gone to actual races that could affect actual change. Plus they help to delegitimize and demoralize the movements.
The GOP pushed both the Greens and the Libertarians to siphon votes from the Dems.
https://www.bostonglobe.com/2024/09/10/metro/jill-stein-new-hampshire-ballot-republican-help/
I was a youth at that time and my only memory of the Moral Majority is the boob scene in Airplane! 🤷♀️
one of my earliest memories
This doesn't work for the left because cults are a right-wing phenomenon. Lying and brainwashing people is inherently authoritarian.
By that logic, every Union is a cult. All I said was that people should organize and show up and vote.
If only there was some kind of proven road map where countries who has been dominated by their ruling elite using the two party trick went on to form a kind of labour movement that forced a third choice on the ruling class....
Actually most people are not aware. So its better to spell it out.
glances at the current state of the UK Labour party
It's been known to work for a bit, but its also been known to collapse right back into the old two-party dichotomy. I think the hysteria around third parties baked into every election since the Bush Era SCOTUS-powered election theft in Florida is overblown, particularly when so much of the electorate lives in one-party dominant states. But I've also noticed successful outsider parties - the German Greens, France's En March, the UK Liberal Dems - seem to embrace Corporationism as quickly as any of their German Christian Democrat / French Socialist / UK Tory peers.
And then there's always this specter of fascism floating on the edge of the political establishment. Your Alternative for Germany, your National Front, and your UKIP create this existential crisis for liberal voters, such that they're persistently terrorized into voting the "safe" centrist candidates in while ostracizing any candidate actually running on the things they say they want.
The Ruling Elite have the effective roadmap to keep the proles in line. Continuously finance a paper tiger on the right-flank of the election cycle. Make immigration a boogeyman issue that mobilizes the reactionaries within the state to turn out in droves. Then dangle a weak liberal as a release valve - a Starmer or Biden or Macron or Olaf Schultz - that nobody particularly likes, but the liberal-leaning base are told is "electable" because they can win the support of the conservative national media.
People are bombarded with this false choice - weak liberal or strongman conservative - decade after decade, all the way around the edge of the Atlantic, until the institutions these weak liberals are supposed to support are falling apart and the strongman conservatives can easily take over.
Its a doomed system.
Hey bro... just for vote my guy tho, trust me bro. You are not a bigot, is u?
The labour party is certainly flawed but you have to remember all they've given the people of the UK, in the brief times they've been in power (relatively speaking).
I'm not claiming it will fix everything but I would argue that the UK and just about every country thats had a labour movement that got into power benefited from it. Well, the 99% did.
Unless you know when the revolution is coming, it might be better to make alternative arrangements. Short of running to the hills and joining a commune, we're quite deliberately not given any other option than to vote for better oppression.
Maybe in America. But check other countries. They have preferential voting systems.
I was a proud third party voter for a long time but changed my mind after watching CGPGrey’s video about first past the post. It’s not really ABOUT trying to change minds but FPTP voting rules really do mean that a two party system is bound to very basic human psychology.
It's not even psychology, it's just the optimal strategy.
Game theory, which is just maths, matters more than psychology, even
Any chance I get!
Many countries with FPTP have multi-party systems, including Canada and the UK.
Some of these third party people could get elected to the senate if they tried, but have to try for the top job with no experience because their ego can't take that they don't know everything.
Tbf, they have before. Ron Paul for instance was a Libertarian who ran as a Republican and won, and they do run for local offices a lot (at least the Libertarians, never seen a local Green on the ballot), they just also put forth a presidential candidate because if they can get like 5% or 15% of the vote (I can't remember which) they get federal funding and have to get included in the next debates instead of the debates only being R vs D.
Idk about the other third parties, but the Libertarians are doing exactly that.
If I run hard enough, I'll put a me shaped hole in the wall though.
Okay Wile E. Coyote.
Only as long as the you shaped hole is lucky enough to avoid any studs.
768 votes wth is wrong with Americans bruh
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pakistan_Tehreek-e-Insaf
If you can create a successful grassroots political party in an environment where your party members and constituents are constantly attacked, murdered, bombed, jailed, tortured, votes faked, votes destroyed, and vote miscounts, you can definitely pull it off in the USA.
It took Pakistan only 20 years to cause a collapse of their corrupt 2 party system and challenge the military dictatorship. People never believed PTI would mount any sort of challenge, but they did by building a solid populist movement, despite facing all of the above.
The "you must vote the lesser evil" is a fallacy that both parties in the USA perpetuate in an attempt to convince you to believe 3rd party voting is a waste of time.
You can't just sit back and complain about the rigged system like "but muh first past the poll voting" as if either Democrats or Republicans will change the system in any way to make it easier for their rivals.
This is exactly why I dislike the Democratic party in particular so much. They are a corporate monolith that pretends to care about your leftist demands by handing out pennies worth of change to get your vote, then the second they refuse to actually significantly change something you demand, they have the audacity to blame you, the voter, for not sucking up to their shitty policies when they inevitably lose the election.
Current case in point: "There is no genocide in Gaza, and we believe we can win without our constituents because our opponent is a mentally insane baby ".
Shittiest take on this community by far.
They have a first past the post parliamentary system, derived from the UK. The US has a separation of powers between its executive branch and its legislative branch.
The way to build third parties is by reforming the democratic system state by state to have a ranked choice system open non-partisan primary to select the top two final candidates followed by a general election between these two candidates for each election to elect a representative or president.
It helps mitigate the flaws of the ranked choice system to have it stop at the final two and let the voters choose between these final two choices. It helps get candidates that are at the center of voter opinion distribution.
This means the hard work of mobilizing together and working across partisan lines, recruiting the majority of Americans that are pro-democracy in each and every state.
The way to build third parties is by reforming the democratic system state by state to have a ranked choice system
Spending decades to tinker with the mechanics of an election system that excludes 40% of the population via its baseline construction? Seems like you're going to keep getting the same results.
What good is Ranked Choice Voting in a state like Florida, where 1.7M people are excluded through the state's Felony Disenfrachisement system? FFS, the state voted on an amendment to reform Felony Disenfrachisement and the legislature just cancelled it out. Gerrymandering means you'll never see a non-conservative state senate and you're unlikely to see more than a moderate conservative occupy the Governor's mansion.
That's not a FPTP problem, its a problem of targeted state-wide ethnic disenfranchisement.
Shittiest take on this community by far.
It's an myriad of reasons from what I can tell. Americans are conditioned to think along the status quo lines even if there is certain degree of freedom of thought. The American corporate media carves the political landscape to intentionally but subtly influence folks to pick either only Democrats or Republicans.
Another reason is that, I suppose rugged invidualism won out in the American society for better mobilisation. As you rightly pointed out, there just isn't grassroots activism among American people (not counting civil and lgbt rights which are undoubtedly grassroots activism and successful ones at that). But this isn't what it used to be. Before and in the early 20th century, there have been other third political parties still gaining respectable number of votes, the last one being the Socialist Party led by Eugene Debbs. He won a respectable 1 million votes as a presidential candidate while campaigning from prison during World War I.
Not sure what happened why political grassroots activism that could counter either Democratic and Republican parties died out, but my guess is that the proliferation of mass media in the 20th century may have had a hand to convince people to stick with two parties, as well as heavy emphasis on individualistic values.
I tried making a similar argument on Facebook in 2016 when Trump won.
I didn't vote for either of the top two, but I did vote 3rd party. I voted on someone that i felt would be just as good a fit as the other two at that time. I wanted change, and tried to get so-called friends to change the way they thought about voting. Some of those people were the kind to say "my vote doesn't matter. They'll elect whomever they want in office."
I even went so far as to draw a very shitty comic that pointed out the other options on the ballot, and how we as a society could push for political change BY VOTING.
Sigh.... I was called a classless human being by an immigrant from the UK I went to college with. Her friends, and even one professor kept blowing up my DMs calling me trash for not supporting Clinton. That election really showed me the true colors of people. Since then i just tell people i am "unaffiliated" when they ask which party i support.
this instance is well known for takes like these when it comes to politics unfortunately. its better to not engage with any sort of political posts on here.
Love shit like this because you all lack the same fundamental goddamn knowledge.
It's up to the states who goes on the ballot. There are only three political parties in the United States with enough support to get on all 51 (50 States + DC) ballots. Those are the Democrats, the Republicans, and the Libertarians. The Libertarians are just as fascist as the Republicains, but they don't have the guise of Christianity to cover it up, so they get pretty few votes. Beyond those three, It is entirely dependent on the state who you get to vote for. I, for example, get four choices in my state. The big two, the libertarians, and the Legalize Marijuana Now parry. The latter is a small party who's soul goal is getting marijuana legalized. Wanna vote for the Green party? Tough shit. I suppose write ins are an option, but there's roughly 200,000,000 people who vote, so good luck convincing even half of them to write your name down without a party supporting you.
In other words, "Lesser of two evils" isn't a mindset. For a lot of us, it's literally the only choice.
You mean in the USA? I guess the more viable path is to campaign to fix their democracy from within the democratic party. And then make new parties.
Yes that has worked really well so far
To be far the US has seen many different parties come and go.
Spliting from within the party is the usual way.
Whoever splits to the left will just be considered the new "spoiler 3rd party" by the mainstream liberals
Also
What's fake about the effect a FPTP voting system creates?
Changing the voting system so that third parties are actually possible.
You need a cardinal voting system, otherwise you'll fall prey to Durverger's Law and Arrow's Impossibility Theorem.
I favor STAR, it's the best system designed to date.
I'm not gonna answer that question. I don't have the perfect answer ready for you.
Instead I will tell you what happens when you vote third party in FPTP. Okay, you have a .nl TLD so I guess ssyou're either in a much better electoral situation or just picked it because it's cool, but I will use the example of the upcoming US presidential election.
Now, let's say the race is really even and it's over. Flipping just one of several key battleground states would've placed Harris in the lead, but unfortunately, Trump won. You look at the votes in your state: Trump won by under 600 votes. Nearly 100,000 people voted for a third party candidate that's actually to the left of Harris. They would've preferred Harris, but because they voted third party, they elected Trump.
If this sounds familiar, that's what happened in 2000. Al Gore could've won. Should've won. But 3rd party candidate Ralph Nader was further left of him and received a bunch of votes that needed to go to Gore. In Florida, he had nearly 100k votes, and the difference between Bush and Gore was literally triple digits. And it wasn't even the only state where Gore lost because of the Spoiler Effect
It's an inherent flaw of the FPTP system and yes, it sucks. It means a vote for a third party is a wasted vote.
Smaller elections. Get state representatives, win a few seats in the house, a few senators… When your party actually contributes to governing then you can discuss running for president. Until then you won’t beat Nader or Perot
We need to demand approval choice voting. Every time we hear anything about third parties in this country, we need to use it as a launch pad to tall about approval choice voting
lemmy.world going hard against third parties over the past few days, what has spooked them?
The potential of Trump winning. Unless you live outside of the U.S. or are very privileged a Trump victory would only be devastating.
In a first past the post system like the U.S. has, doing anything but voting for Harris is in fact supporting Trump.
CCP Gray actually put out a good video a while ago explaining why voting 3rd party in a FPTP system only hurts your interests.
In a place like Germany where you have proportional voting none of this applies and you should 100% vote for the best party.
Trump winning would have major ramifications for people outside the US also.
voting` 3rd party in a FPTP system only hurts your interests.
This position assumes that you as voter give a fuck if one or the other party wins.
Why would people care about these politcal parties that essentially do the same thing? If they do sure, vote for your guy but practically speaking for most people shit gets progressively worse as we cycle one geriatric clown for another.
Why not change things up?
The primaries are over. The risk of Trump is too high and people spreading 3rd Party ideas right now many be trying to demotivate progressives from voting for Harris. I mean, I'm not a big fan of Harris, but I'll still be voting for her over Trump.
News that Republicans are actively helping 3rd party candidates so that people voting for them will help Republicans win.
Honestly that's not a bad strategy. The biggest weakness of the Democrats is the wide range of political views
They support a genocidal cop as their presidential candidate.
I'm going to hold my nose and vote for Kamala but I won't shame people who can't bring themselves to do it.
And this criticism of 'the greens only show up every 4 years' is in bad faith. The greens run in other elections as well, you just only hear about the presidential elections because that's the only time they get some media attention.
This list has a bunch of school board members, city councillors, even a mayor on it. They do run in local elections, and even win sometimes.
And this criticism of 'the greens only show up every 4 years' is in bad faith.
No, it's really not. The Mayor of Galesburg, IL, a town of 30.000 is the highest office any green politician holds in the US. This is fucking ridiculous.
By their own admission, only 130 Greens are currently in office in highly influential positions such as Zoning Board of Appeals Alternate or Cemetery Trust Fund Committee. This party is a fucking joke. And that's the party whose presidential candidate accepts an invitation from Putin.
I'm "lucky" enough to live in a state where my vote doesn't matter at all. I'm completely free to not vote for genocide. What an awesome "democracy".
I’m going to hold my nose and vote for Kamala but I won’t shame people who can’t bring themselves to do it.
It must be nice, being privileged enough to see who wins this election as a fashion choice instead of something that will affect your life.
Noooo you must enjoy voting for our designated ghoul and voice your full throated support every day until November or else it's basically a vote for Trump. Also, you can't ask us to change any platforms whatsoever cause that's divisive and a vote for Trump.
It's really astounding to see how quickly Democratic sycophants mimic the MAGA folks they mock on the right. These are the same people that were telling those of us who wanted Biden to drop out that we were all secret Trump supporters paid by the Russians even though it was clear he was going to lose.
The wall will wear down eventually. I think.
Sure, but you're going to hurt yourself a whole lot more and have a fucked up wall doing so. Not an ideal way of doing it.
Either the wall or the house because the people going in the doors happily add termites.
This is the same tone set by the people who whined that we were refusing to vote for Biden and oh look now Biden isn’t in the race anymore because we refused to accept him.
Keep accepting the one candidate that they spoon in front of us without asking if we actually want that one
This is the same tone set by the people who whined that we were refusing to vote for Gore and oh look Nader didn't win Bush did.
Gore won the vote. The election was stolen by the supreme court and Roger Stone it was not the fault of a 3rd party at all if the law had been followed gore would have been given Florida https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brooks_Brothers_riot
It's a little different because people complained, Pelosi (aka the party listened) acted.
I our current political system, the game theory just doesn't work for much besides a two party system.
Exactly.
Its applying leverage to the party saying meet these criteria or get spoiled. It's basically a union for protest votes, and it's effective. Which makes it extremely important in the current two party system because it's the only way certain issues will get addressed.
Yeah absolutely how can I ever vote against war and imperialism if both parties are in favor of giving endless money to defense contractors? You're basically saying I have to force myself to vote for the American military death machine in every single election or I'm a bad person and maybe you have a point but if you have to make that argument I think you should have a long look in the mirror
Biden didn't drop out because some online leftists refused to vote for him, he dropped out because big donors that back the Democrats wanted him to.
Those same morons didn't vote in the primary to oust him.
What primary? No alternative was offered, no debates happened.
Biden being forced out is a great example.
Democrats will only appeal to people not voting for them already. People showing them they won't vote for Genocide you already changes policy.
When the pressure gets too high Democrats will cave. If they want your vote make them work for it never let them fearmonger you into giving it for free. Jill Stein 2024 baby.
I dunno about this analogy. I think the doctor proved that with enough time, anything can become a door.
American shower thoughts
no it isn't.
There will never be an acceptable time to vote third party according to liberals. Unless you're fine with an infinite state of groveling towards people in power. If we can't even push them left on genocide when it could cost the election, we can't move them left on anything. The status quo is fine for people who have the resources to deal with it and people not effected by Police brutality and other negative effects.
The way to push them left is to actually push them left—protesting, calling your representatives, donating to campaigns you support, voting for candidates in local primaries where your vote is exponentially more influential, et cetera.
But voting in a presidential election doesn’t push anyone anywhere. For one thing, pushing is a continuous, incremental feedback process, while the outcome of a presidential election is a discrete binary one—there’s no map between the two. But more significantly, this buys into a narrative that the media has constructed over the past few generations, in which voting is a semiotic process with the people signaling their desires with their votes and politicians signaling their response with legislation. This leaves the media in full control of the political process by interpreting for each side what the other “means”: because the votes and bills in themselves are devoid of meaning beyond their real effects, the media is free to insert whatever meaning suits them.
I do these things already. I can't change people's minds on a mass scale. Genocide is a redline for me. Harris said she will earn support and she is fine with courting former Regan staff and Dick Cheny's vote. It is on her. Liberals are hostile towards protesters. I'm okay with not being allies with those people. I'll vote down ballot against GOP. If I can help get Greens to 5% I'll take it. Plus my State is gone to Trump already. (FL)
I don't know what the right time is, but it's definitely not presidential elections.
That's 100% the right time lol. They get ballot access and funding from these elections.
Exit polls have shown green voters wouldn't have voted Dems anyway. I don't get the hostility. There is no vote being lost, and Harris said she wants to earn support and is fine with courting people like Dick Cheney. It is a harder path for third parties but I still think they should run.
Yes but the other two doors open straight into hell.
And even if the candidate wins, then what? They have no say in Congress. It's the House of Reps and the Senate that passes legislation. Your new third party candidate can only choose to sign or to veto bills passed by the House and Senate.
Beau on it https://youtu.be/-KX8xddKfeM
Do you apply this same logic to Trump winning the election or are presidents only this powerless when they have a D next to their name and are being criticized for supporting abhorrent legislation?
Progress is slow. Start with killing the popularity of the second party/party you absolutely don't align with/party that will move the needle away from your party first.
And then you promptly split the vote, allowing a party ideologically furthest from you to dominate.
Why do you care if the person you voted for wins?
Outside of "not letting the other person win", you should vote for who you align with, or who represents you best.
If more people stopped caring about voting for "the viable candidate", we'd probably see a third party in American politics...
Why do you care if the person you voted for wins?
Because it's an election with consequences, not an online fandom.
Because it’s an election with consequences, not an online fandom.
Not to most of these people pushing third-parties.
All elections have consequences. I know that Americans like to be dramatic (especially on Lemmy, Reddit is far more tame in this regard), but voting for someone that wants to promote policies that you support is how those policies are promoted.
I say this time and time again on here, but America isn't special. Many countries have two main parties, but while third parties don't always see power, they maintain Influence everywhere. Hell, you can argue that the Tea Party, Brexit, Irish Unification, MAGA, Immigration reform in Germany, all of this is due to influence outside of the main parties.
Because the policies those people put into effect have very real consequences for citizens. Especially when one candidate is openly hostile towards significant marginalized groups in society and wishes to bring them harm. This isn't a team sport. This is a struggle for survival for many who stand to lose a lot of rights and freedoms for simply being who they were born as.
So yes, we should care who wins. Those two people are your options. Third party is not.
That's not what I mean. What I mean is that people won't vote for a candidate they agree with because they're not going to win.
That should be painfully obvious. Similar sentiments are obvious on Reddit, Twitter, even Mastodon. Why is Lemmy so tone-deaf and blinded when it comes to opposing opinions?
we’d probably see a third party in American politics…
No, we wouldn't. There are still people who's closest candidate is one of the two main parties.
That's the argument, no?
I don't give a fuck if America has more than "two" parties, but either one of two things is true:
If I had to guess, the former is probably more true than people on social media and the left would like to believe.
I've never voted for a major party presidential candidate in my life. It has never cost anyone anything, because I used to live in a deep red state and now live in a deep blue state. There's a better chance of helping a candidate hit thresholds that would qualify them for things like campaign funding, then there is of Tennessee or Illinois being the pivotal swing state. The vast majority of Americans are in similar situations, there's only a handful of states where your presidential vote matters at all.
Despite this, and the fact that I've voted for Democrats down ballot, liberals hate me, and are always trying to fight me over it. Why? Because the presidential race is the only thing anybody cares about. For all the countless, identical debates over the presidential race, I've seen virtually no discussion on here of other elections. Culturally, your take on the presidential race is how your political identity is defined. That cultural tendency is so powerful that it can even bleed into foreign countries.
The more people focus on my presidential voting behavior, which has no potential to affect anything, the more it reaffirms that such behavior is important. The reason that people care so much about my vote is not because they care about the outcome, it's because they want me to display a sign of loyalty, to bend the knee, to conform to their norms. But if everyone's going to treat it as an expression of identity, then, all else being equal regarding the outcome, it would be better to define myself according to what I actually believe. The fact that people get big mad over someone voting third party even in an extremely solid red or blue state is all the more reason to do it. My vote doesn't affect your life at all since it's totally irrelevant to the outcome, so stop obsessing over what amounts to a personal decision.
There are multiple people just in this post alone advising people to vote in local and primary elections. What are you talking about?
"Advising people to vote in" is not the same as "caring about" or "paying attention to."
Is there any mention of specific candidates? Any passionate arguments over the details of specific races? Any discussion of political theory or historical precedent or anything like that in that context? Has anybody called someone a Nazi because of how they're voting for down ballot?
No. Because what people care about and pay attention to is the presidential race, unless you're some kind of weird nerd or responsible citizen or something.
You don't need to vote for a main party. However, your vote isn't mathematically significant
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These snarky jabs are missing the point. I'm not a major party prodigal son casting a spite vote, I am actually not interested in either of their platforms and want to force them slowly over time to change.
Deny the two party regime legitimacy.
That's laudable, but the way to do that is to vote in primaries, not to vote third party in the general election
I'm not a major party member, so I can't vote in their primaries
i don't agree with what you say
well, you should tell everyone that you agree so that the public thinks you're associated with me, and then try to change me whenever we're alone
How about you get a fucking therapist and work on your own issues like the rest of us, thx.
we don't even need that many people to do third party vote to shake the regime. once it goes above few percent they will notice, in double digits they will have to start asking questions.
That's not how it works. You want to force the party left then build movement from the ground up. Go out on the corner and collect signatures to change your voting system to ranked choice instead first past the post. Run for local office as a socialist or green.
The fact that all you have to do is once every 4 years push a button should tell you that it's not the right thing to do to effect change.
Presidential elections are not about voting for a perfect candidate, very few elections are ever about that. They are about putting someone in power you are most capable of negotiating with. The person that is both capable of winning and closest to your ideals.
It does actually work that way, at least sometimes. If a major party loses enough votes to a third party, it forces them to adjust their platform at least enough to win back would-be voters.
Whenever third party voters honestly tell people that they are voting third party because it closely aligns with their values, and that neither major party is even slightly compatible, major party apologists and cheerleaders come out of the woodwork to saying actually you're one-of-us, you just don't know it yet, and if you just vote hard enough for my candidate then things will get better. It's been over a hundred years of least dirty of two shirts, and it's not getting better.
Insane levels of cope from the party that's suing states to remove the "unviable" third parties to protect their genocide candidate's chances at beating someone who is literally incapable of forming basic sentences
Another .ml user spouting bullshit. Look at that.
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You should get out of the shower...
The parties are already there or you couldn't vote them, this example is stupid. Supporting parties with blood in their hands is endorsing evil.
Voting for a third party, like trying to walk through a third door, is an indication of intent. Going through the door would be getting them elected to office.
And yes, supporting a party would be endorsing whatever evil policies the party supports—but voting isn’t an act of endorsement. Nobody knows how you vote; it has no meaning as a personal statement. Its only meaning is in the differential effects of the policies of the two candidates your vote decides between, in the most likely scenario in which it is the deciding vote.
You absolutely should support and endorse a party you believe in, but don’t mistake voting in a presidential election for either of those things.
Voting is a direct act of endorsement
Its only meaning is in the differential effects of the policies of the two candidates your vote decides between
There aren't only two candidates.
You absolutely should support and endorse a party you believe in, but don’t mistake voting in a presidential election for either of those things.
There's no confusion, a party perpetrating war and genocide is evil and if you support them you are evil too.
Look, you're either saying america is a functional democracy or no citizens are on the hook for the crimes of the government.
Which is it again?
It kinda looks like your arguing that voting doesn’t work.
Ignoring tactical voting doesn't work
And yet, they weren't.
What about their arguing?
All this anti-third party logic fails as soon as the goal is outcomes regardless of which political party ends up taking credit. Just 5% of the GE puts another platform on every ballot in the next cycle. And, that immediately places immense pressure upon the duopoly.
It's so simple there's now a massive amount of state-sponsored propaganda trying to prevent too many from figuring it out.
The presence of minor parties on the ballot doesn’t “place immense pressure on the duopoly”—it just tips the balance toward one or the other component of the duopoly. Which is why either party will actively encourage it when it suits them.
Edit: There’s a historically-proven method of forming new parties in the U.S., which is why it’s not still the Whigs vs the Federalists. In the past, distinct factions would form within one of the dominant parties, until the parent party imploded and two or more new parties emerged. That process of internal fission was suppressed after the Civil War, and that’s how the “duopoly” now maintains its power.
Of course, a different voting system would serve the same purpose (arguably better), and the suppression of alternate voting methods is also duopolistic. But the existence of minor parties under the current system just reenforces the duopoly by channeling dissent away from internal factions.
The problem is that any third party that manages to eventually displace a member of the duopoly immediately replaces that party in the new duopoly.
Because the duopoly is a result of First Past the Post (FPTP) voting. As long as we use FPTP the duopoly will persist, just with different parties filling the two roles.
Anything short of switching away from FPTP for some form of Rank Choice is going to be a band-aid, mere temporary relief, and not even a very good one.
Which is the point. Voting third party won't fix the system, certainly not at the presidential level. So work with what you have now, and work towards something better in the areas where it's actually possible.
There you go again caring about which political party takes credit. Repeating the same fallacy over and over again only works on idiots, meaning the vast majority of humanity. See: The Engineering of Consent (1947), The Manufacturing of Consent (1988).
You know Democrats are cooked when they start attacking third party voters instead of Trump voters.
Especially now people really start paying attention to the third parties.
If it's easier to reason with third party voters than trump voters, it seems like the logical thing to do.
EDIT: also worth pointing out the difference between "attacking" trump voters as individuals, because they have proven themselves to truly be deplorable, and "attacking" third party voting as a decision.
Democrats have done far more to reason with Republicans this election cycle than they have with third party voters on the left who at least don't want genocide but know that the duopoly is never going to budge on their undying support of Israel. Let alone other actually progressive policies.
There's not much reasoning going on. Only dishonest claims about how Democrats actually stand for things they don't stand for such as "Biden is actually the biggest ally of Palestinians", and screaming insults.
For what its worth I agree. The Democrats are killing themselves from within. Say what you want about Trump but they are smart enough to target the moderate crowd. Meanwhile Harris is busy dodging hard questions about her political stance. The liberal media likes to brag about how good the Democrats are doing but the reality is they have lost a lot of ground and Harris is too far left for most of the swing voters. People have not been happy with the way Biden is running things and it shows.
I also find it funny that Harris is adapting the Trump strategy. She is increasingly responding with insults and slander instead of being a cool collected alternative to Trump. Her association with Biden is also not doing her favors and many people just don't know her well enough to support her.
I suppose Lemmy isn't the place for political discussion. Lemmy as a whole is far left and it shows. This might be a shock but social media isn't a good representation of the bigger political views. If you go on a platform dominated by the right you will end up with people calling you far left because you don't believe in racism.
Democrats would rather get really mad at people who don't want to support Genocide than just stop supporting Genocide.
If Democrats truly believe Trump is the next Hitler you'd think they would try to appeal to voters a little harder. Maybe the Democratic party is not as scared of Trump as their fearmongering suggests.
Note: Linkerbean is a republican pretending to be left leaning, here just to dissuade left-leaning folk from voting dem.
I said so to them a while back and their reply, since deleted, was "Cope." https://lemmy.world/comment/12097015
Downvote and move on, but you'll get only nonsense if you engage.
This comment got reported. And while trolling is not allowed. Attacking an individual is also not allowed. So I'm not sure if attacking them for being a troll is allowed.
If you think a post is trolling (ie: just trying to stir up anger rather than trying to make an argument for something), please report it. If you think a poster is serial trolling please point it out in the report.
I'm open to feedback.
You got some links to support this?
Dude shills anti genocide position based on my experience
Stupid fear mongering like this is why your politics is stuck in the last century.
But whatever floats your boat.
Cool, thanks!
Third parties are mathematically impossible until we ditch first past the post voting:
https://youtu.be/s7tWHJfhiyo
We need our vote to be a list, not a checkbox.
This is the way. It is possible and unlikely to have a third party win under the right conditions, like with how the Republican Party became a national party after Lincoln was elected as a third party candidate. But ultimately there will always only be two parties with the outdated FPTP voting method. If only George Washington knew about and pushed for a better voting system than FPTP.
I don't think they really existed yet in his era. You've got to remember that Australia, a much younger country, invented the secret ballot. It was known as the "Australian Ballot" for a long time.
IMO, it's not the full story to say the Republican party was a third party that year. The previous opposition to the Democrats had a rift and came apart. I think you are underselling what "the right conditions" are. This is more like a new party filling a void.
That year the Democrats themselves (regressives as this was well before Southern Strategy) split into two. Running both a candidate for "states' rights" style slavery and another for "fuck you, slavery everywhere" style slavery.
All it takes is a bunch of celebrities endorsing third parties and it's done. At some point in your lifetime you will probably see a third party winning in the usa and it will simply happen with media and celebrities redirecting everyone vote. It happens all the time in other countries: people get tired of the local rulers and to keep protests and disorder at bay the government through mass media redirects attentions to a new and fresh party that already got bribed and corrupted by the ruling class.
In Australia government funding is distributed to political parties based on the number of first preference votes they get as well so even if your first choice doesn't get in, you still helped them by putting them first.
FPTP is not real democracy for this reason.
I like CGP Grey and all, but power dynamics is an important aspect of poltics. An aspect he completely ignores in favour of spreadsheet thinking.
Yeah so proportional representation systems kinda suck. Israel has one and it ended up with a conservative party making concessions to far right crazies to form a coalition. Sure minorities are in the parliament, but they have zero power because the only thing that matters is the backroom negotiations between parties to form a coalition.
The biggest problem with FPTP is the name. Really we should call it a community representation system (which is what it is) and call proportional representation system a "party coalition" system, which is what it actually is. In a party coalition system the negotiations between party leaders to form coalitions is all that matters, everyone else is just there to fill seats which are owned by the parties.
In a community representation system each seat is own by a representative of the community who can vote against their party or leave their party. Parties are incentivized to keep the community leaders happy or they could lose seats.
If you want third parties, it's better to go with a ranked choice system. That gives people more choice over who represents their community, and allow them to have compromise options in case their top choice doesn't get enough votes. You don't actually have to give parties full ownership of the seats (making them redundant) to have more options.
That's bc he explains each concept mostly in isolation of others, leaving other concepts for separate videos themselves. But in e.g. Rules for Rulers, he very much discusses power dynamics. And I thought he had another one - in addition to the more mathematical one - illustrating FPTP using the animal kingdom, where technically people might assume one thing to be true, but based on power dynamics in practice it never is.
So watch Rules for Rulers yet if you haven't - it may change literally everything about your understanding, as it did mine.
Edit - references:
I also generally prefer a Condorcet Method (ranked choice, single winner) over mixed-member-proportional, but either one would be a massive improvement over our current system.
I'll take Approval voting, even.
Switzerland has a good system, just copy it. (Yes, not the same country, size difference and so on and on but its still a thousand times better than the US system)
If you're going to use a genocidal cult as your counter-example to democracy, why not just talk about the nazis?
Who's we?
The working class I guess? Certainly no one with power.
Math doesn't decide what people vote, they are free to vote anything they want. Parties don't automatically side with each others because another is most likely to win. This video is rooted in the mindset that politics and elections are a horse race between left and right.
What's preventing third parties from winning it's not math but the propaganda and the power of the red and blue party. The ruling parties didn't become this powerful mathematically. Over decades and centuries the ruling class paved their way and ensured their power with violence and repression.
If third parties aren't mathematically impossible, where are all members of third party during midterms? Local elections? The work it takes to make real lasting change is done down ballot, where are they at those times? Why do they only creep up during presidential races? The above analogy may not be perfect, but it's pretty damned close... but we could also compare third party to all the lazy animals in the story of the little red hen...
In case your not familiar with the children's story...