Smug liberals will be condescending regardless of who wins any election.
Interesting how everyone blames the people and not the corporate party that doesn’t represent the people. If Democrats are struggling to get leftist votes then I suggest they do things that will make leftists vote for them.
Unrelated to the message - that’s a bad use of the meme, doesn’t fit at all.
Abstaining or voting third party is an exercise of choice. If you want your candidate to win, vote for them, as we all should do.
Vote for the candidate you support. If you don’t support any, you can choose not to vote.
No, the blame lies squarely on the DNC for deliberately ignoring the loud and clear message from third party voters that genocide is a red line in the sand. The blame further lies with the liberals supporting a decaying Empire and never lifting a finger to help anyone, just showing up at the ballot box every 4 years while the US commits manmade horrors beyond comprehension.
Join an org, like the Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL) or Freedom Road Socialist Organization (FRSO), this mess can’t be undone by supporting the Dems harder.
Ah yes, fascism light. No wonder people are voting third party lol.
I’m not in a swing state, I voted for a third party for the presidential race this election, just sent in my ballot last week. I don’t care about your opinion and you’re powerless to affect people like me.
Cry about it
This is why the American system is weird af.
not trying to start anything. Not even American. But I think Donald trump will win this one. Just because there’s so many crazy trump people. I love the people here at lemmy but this is the only place I see people talking shit on trump. Almost everywhere else I go it’s crazy trumpers and they are all avid voters. I hope Harris wins for the good of humanity but I just don’t think it’s gonna happen unless a bunch of young people actually go out and vote. It’s the south park turd Sandwhich giant douche thing all over again anyway. We’re fucked.
If you’re voting for the lesser evil, you are still voting to reduce harm.
Remember that. You can’t save everyone, but if you save NO ONE that’s on you.
If you have a problem with this line of reasoning then your actual problem is first past the post voting.
Abolish first past the post voting and you can finally actually vote for things you like, rather than against things you hate, but we’re stuck in first past the post voting, so, you must vote strategically.
Just curious, do you really expect Republicans or democrats to support legislation to end their stranglehold on American politics?
Do you really think that voting for these people is going to change their mind?
They already have in several states… So yes?
“In 2023, 74 bills were introduced supporting ranked-choice voting and 57 of these bills had only Democrat sponsors. In fact, just eight percent of the total bills received bipartisan support.”
No, but there’s one party that has shown support for it and one party that has attempted to outright ban it.
It’s an easy choice.
Ranked choice voting is still first past the post… There is still only one winner, the results aren’t spread proportionally. Ranked choice voting can give even bigger majorities with even fewer votes. Since you have only 2 real parties, it won’t change much in the US.
Your understanding of Ranked Choice voting, and what the point of it is, seems to be missing a big chunk right there in the middle…
You’re conflating “voting for a single-seat position” with any method of vote counting. There’s only ever one winner if there’s one seat, but there are better ways of counting votes than first-past-the-post. At least with ranked-choice, more people are happy with the outcome because the winner might be their second preferred option.
There’s one party that pretends to support it publicly as long as they can blame the Republicans for “blocking it”.
Ftfy. This is the Democrats go to game plan.
It is insulting to pretend Democrats support ranked choice voting while they’re suing to keep it off of the ballot in DC.
It’s almost as if a political party isn’t a monolith. Crazy.
There are some democrats that support ranked choice voting.
There are almost no republicans that do.
It is still an easy choice.
What are you quoting?
Dictatorships are a terrible place to live because the wealth of the nation doesn’t depend on the citizens. Illiterate slaves can dig-up a mine.
Democracies on the other hand are better places to live not because the people are better, but because the wealth of the nation is dependend on the productivity of the citizens. That’s the only reason you have a highway to the hospital.
Vote in the party you think will enact change, and protest / halt the economy until changes start happening. Right now politicians and corporations don’t care nobody is happy, it’s not affecting their bottom line. Id argue in recent years they accelerated their abuse because there are no consequences.
The parties in place won’t do it themselves, the people need to do it
“only republicans do bad things”
Every four fucking years of my entire voting lifetime is an influx of liberals that are so horny for voting between the lesser of two evil establishment shits that I want to jump off a cliff in Skyrim every time I have to read this type of divisive rhetoric that literally alienates real people with real concerns who would never support Trump. I wish Harris was as leftist as Trump makes her out to be but noooo “sMaLL bUsinEsEs” and “most LETHAL military” and “the bOrdER bill” and “Isntreal has a right to” suck my fucking glock.
I want to go live with the fucking socialist Linux penguins in Antarctica.
Currently at 32 points.
Is lemmy just easy to game, or opinions like this actually popular on this site?
Lemmy indeed does have lots of leftists, the main dev is a Communist.
And every four fucking years of my entire voting lifetime is an influx of ignorant pseudo-intellectual blowhard nonsense about third parties that- similar to their devoted followers…. don’t do jack shit between elections.
I want to go live with the fucking socialist Linux penguins in Antarctica.
Please do.
Show me on the doll where the green party hurt you.
2000 Presidential Election, Florida
GEORGE W. BUSH: 2,912,790 votes
AL GORE: 2,912,253 votes
RALPH GREEN PARTY NADER: 97,488 votes
That’s where the Green Party gave us Bush, Cheney and the Neo-cons. Thanks for playing.
So, you’re mad because your candidate wasn’t good enough to win over that many votes, and so you blame the party they did vote for for being better?
You’re implying the green voters would have voted for Al Gore.
Its a false logic to think you can just add those votes to the person you like because you think if they had their choice taken away they would agree with you.
There are literal people that raged violence against the poll workers and right wing lawyers that managed to convince a state to not do its duties and those people you can and should be mad at.
All Gore even dropped before he should have and was part of the argument used against him trying to get a recount because he wanted to be “respectful”.
This answer is just easier blame cause they are easier to feel like you can win against them in a fight compared to the wider corruption.
That’s like blaming January 6th on Bernie.
Neat!
Did you ask the person I responded to to show on your little doll where the liberals hurt them?
Because in a perfect little make-believe socialist society, we’re ALL equal, right?
So show that equality! Come on now. Don’t be shy. Be the change you want to see!!!
In was just poking fun at you clearly referencing the green party but calling it all third parties.
Im pretty sure I reference third parties. Period.
Okay so I was being a dick about it. I disagree, there are third parties on my States ballot that do work on local elections.
Fair enough.
This is exactly why we need ranked choice voting.
Winner takes all essentially demoralizes and alienates voters and drives people who agree with each other to fight because they’re trapped in a broken system.
So instead of fighting the system, it’s easier to just blame other people and alienate more of them against your cause, shooting yourself in the foot with ignorance. It’s kind of disgusting.
How would we get ranked choice passed using the current two party system though? I can’t imagine politicians voting to give up power in that way.
Maine has, and Alaska too. Although Alaska is trying to repeal it this election cycle.
How would that contribute towards changing the policy federally?
When you give ppl better options they tell others how awesome it is
I’d settle for getting rid of the electoral college at this point. We could’ve had at least 4 years of Al Gore setting us on the right path to avoiding the worst of climate change yet here we are having to put up with a potentially third popular vote upset in recent history.
Why not both?
(Oh yeah, the fundamentally corrupt and undemocratic system concocted by literal slave masters.)
Ranked choice is more plausible than removing the EC. Ranked choice already exists in some places and the Dems have a proposal (but are lacking the votes) to implement it for Congress.
Removing the EC would require a constitutional amendment so 3/4 for the House and Senate and ratified by 3/4 of the states. Or maybe it’s 2/3 for some of those, but either way it needs bipartisan support and why would the GOP remove a system that got their guy elected twice this century?
There is some kind of interstate compact thing to get around it, but making a huge change to elections via sneaky shenanigans won’t go over well at a time when a lot of doubts about election integrity have been widely promoted. Wrongly promoted, but still, doing sneaky things about elections is a real no-go right now.
Why is it so common to blame the third party vote for democrats losing in 2016? It sounds like if the democrats would take an anti-war stance like the green party does, they would have won most of those votes too?
Seems more appropriate to expect the party to reflect the population rather than the other way around.
It’s the Schrodinger’s Tankies. Simultaneously so insignificant as a voting block that it’s a waste of time to appeal to them, and so influential that it’s exclusively their fault when the dems lose.
Yeah. This is why some Democrats get called Blue MAGA and I don’t think they get it.
They treat lefties like the same kinda scapegoat the Republicans treat anyone not white. It’s an easy “other” group that can be considered outside the main group and fighting them is “the good moral duty of the Democratic Party.”
I sometimes wonder if that division and push for the center-left to be apathetic towards the further left is part of the Russian Psy-op that they are so afraid of cause that’s the only reason I can think of a party like this ignoring their youngest, poorest, or most emotional bases, that courting on the right makes them win.
That’s also falling for scapegoats. The call is coming from inside the house, and it has been for over three decades.
The center is apathetic and hostile to the left because they’re not the left. They’re not courting leftwingers because they don’t want them. They keep reaching across the isle because they fundamentally agree with their basic beliefs. It’s why Sorkin dreams about President Mitt Romney (D). The grand Neoliberal turn is disintegrating, and is being besieged by MAGA from the right and progressives from the left, and both the dems and the GOP are consistently moving right because while they find MAGA brutish and uncouth, they’re appeasable, whereas the demands from the left are fundamentally unacceptable to them.
Wasn’t Green Party seen sitting at a table with Putin?
I am a libertarian minarchist. Look it up before you form ideas.
I don’t like Harris but I’d much rather have her over Trump. And that’s how I’ll vote.
I strongly recommend everyone should research your local elections and vote for candidates that best represent your views and mindsets on a local level. The FPtP system makes third parties mostly unviable in influencing national policy.
…i’m a progressive libertarian: the terms used represent something entirely different from the perversion of twenty-first-century political branding…
…i’ve begrudgingly voted democratic in the past two election cycles only because i draw a hard line at open fascism; i’ll never forgive the republican party for forcing my hand and look forward to a future after they’ve imploded and i can resume voting for causes i support rather than the enemy of my enemy…
I too will vote Harris, but I think it’s important to understand that voting out of fear is not going to fix our extremely broken two party system. Voting third party is not a vote for Trump, I think it’s often a vote born of a broken two party system.
Despite knowing that I can’t bring myself to vote third party out of fear that I may not get another chance to vote if Trump takes power.
Honestly I think fears of a dictatorial takeover are way overblown. Not that I think he doesn’t want to, I just think he can’t, and even if he did I think it’d be 5min before he was shot by someone close to him (probably one of his own “security” team tbh.) And if that fails then a $100 price on his head and a greenlight is all we really need to get the job done by a private citizen, hell increase the reward and some of his own supporters will join in, they have no scruples.
I’m not saying we should vote for him, I’m just saying I don’t think we have to worry as much as some people think we do.
That is the system though. Democracy isn’t really about getting what you want. That’s impossible under any system other than a dictatorship where you are the dictator. Parasocial psychology has lead a lot of people thinking that Trump getting what he wants is what they want. But that won’t work out well for anyone.
Democracy is really about removing the worst people from power and preventing them from getting power in the first place. Over many years in something akin to natural selection you can have progress. But like evolution, it goes slowly.
Voting third party isn’t a brave choice, it’s just a fantasy. Even in a proportional representation system, it’s still a fantasy, just you’d see maybe a few powerless people sitting in a legislature complaining on C-Span (which nobody will watch) instead of on social media.
Politics is about power and compromise. Vote for a representative that has a reasonable chance of winning, and write to them to encourage them to compromise closer to your position on things. That’s actually effective, people that go on about a fantasy world where they just tick a box and whatever they want will happen are just being silly.
“Even in a proportional representation system”
In a proportional system votes for other candidates aren’t lost tho, which means it doesn’t force a two party system by design.
I don’t think it is stated enough how horribly weak the current US one seat FPTP system is.Proportional representation grants all power to political parties and eliminates the representative nature that a community representation (what you call FPTP) system offers. And the votes of the parties that aren’t in the ruling coalition are lost and therefore the votes of anyone that voted for those parties are also lost.
Voting is the feedback part of the system. If people aren’t voting honestly, politicians will take the wrong feedback. For example, democrats thinking they should move to the center to reach more republicans, rather than moving the the left to reach more third party voters.
The feedback part of the system is actually writing (or calling, or participating in public forums) to your representative. Voting is about choosing a representative that will most likely consider your point of view.
To the left of the Democrats are unreliable voters and everyone knows that. They might vote Democrat, or third party, or be “uncommitted” depending on whatever meme they last saw on social media. The Democrats know that which is why they aren’t putting a lot of effort to get those votes because it likely won’t bear any fruit. The GOP knows that too, which is why they fund people like Jill Stein.
Obviously the Democrats are going to shift right to try to entice reliable voters to vote for them. People that are a little more mature and are not living in a fantasy world where voting third party or being uncommitted are going to have any kind of positive outcome. People that understand the system well enough to know that you’re supposed to vote for someone that could feasibly win, and then write about their concerns to their representative rather than spending all day whining on social media about the system not being what they want it to be.
I’ve written to many of my state and federal legislators over the span of 20+ years. it’s not effective. We need campaign finance before, we need to overturn citizens United, and we need to change our two party system.
I understand your perspective but I disagree on some points.
It literally exactly is a vote for trump. We have shown you morons the math a million times by now, you’re just being willfully resistant to acknowledging what you’re doing to endanger the republic.
Is that based on the assumption third party voters would vote democrat otherwise? If I would either not vote or vote third party, how does my vote help trump?
Maybe the democrats shouldnt count votes they don’t have?
When the options are democracy or dictatorship and you choose not to vote… it’s kinda gross. I get that you got a failure of a system over there, but the fight to update your democracy should be done after you choose to have one.
Because under FPTP no vote or a third party vote is identical to a vote for the opposing candidate.
Maybe you should stop trying to justify being a fucking traitor.
So just saying that out loud makes it true, got it. You’ve convinced me I’m wrong.
Settle down and re-read what I wrote. I’m not voting for Trump. I don’t think it’s hyperbolic to say a third party is crucial for our Republic.
The math has been explained to you endlessly. You can’t escape voting for either Harris or Trump because you want to pretend you’re above it all and superior to us who have to live with the consequences of supposed good people like you standing there and doing nothing.
I again think you need to settle down. I am not voting third party because I like you apparently will just view out of fear.
That said, The math had not been explained to me so show it to me. post it for anyone who agrees with me. Show me the math.
Next you’ve decided that I have some feeling of superiority. I don’t. I simply think the two party system has failed us and needs to change. People in power have a stake in keeping a two party system for their own benefit, and it infuriates me.
No, I think their tone is completely warranted. Frankly I, too, am sick and fucking tired of seeing this shit plastered all over this website. You are a scourge.
It’s not even math. You need 270 electoral votes to win. They are not on enough state ballots to do that. It is literally not possible for them to win.
They disappear, and then every four years they emerge from whatever hole they were rotting in, to siphon votes from Democratic party candidates. It really is that simple.
Political parties don’t become successful by disappearing, and showing up for a few months every four years. That’s not how it works. Just put some critical thought into it.
The only way things change is if more people are informed and active. Do what you can to help implement ranked choice voting.
The state of Florida outlawed rank choice voting
Which is the exactly why you should be working to overturn such an undemocratic law.
Agreed. I’ve voted in every election I’ve been able to for 20 years, and I try to have reasonable conversations about things like this with people on the other side of the aisle. It becomes a bit demoralizing and I’m a bit disillusioned.
Last map I saw like half of the states have banned it.
Makes sense. There two party system is vehicular to the existing two parties. Why give a third option.
Much respect.
