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?
we aint getting elected viable third party until the two party regime is denied legitimacy which does by not voting for either party. deny them engagement by voting third party, anyone really.
Just keep smashing yourself into the bricks to “deny the wall legitimacy” or whatever. I’m sure it will work this time.
let me keep doing the same thing while expecting a different result 🤡
let me keep doing the same thing while expecting a different result 🤡
Says the people who keep voting 3rd party in federal elections and are certain that this time the result will be different.
*all elections
So you don’t agree that starting from the ground up won’t work? Why not? Too much effort or takes too much time?
If you are talking about viable third party candidate, then my position is: current political stage has no room for one hence why i shill more a narrower scope goal of “deny the two-party regime legitimacy”
Something that people can get behind, act upon individually and directly while avoiding getting sucked into political left/right circle jerk.
Bigger picture would obviously involve a proper 3 third party candidates to upset the duopoly. Either by winning outright or forcing the two parties to provide concessions to the voters instead of current “get fucked peasants, I am serving my corpo daddies”
These 3p candidates need for voting public set the stage for them by making third vote a viable path for a politician/movement.
My original thesis enables this while not getting into the political weeds but it does not stop others from building on it. If people got their 3p, then they should shill it! Even if every person votes for their own guy but sufficient amount of people do it, then it would still lead to awkward situation why are there 9% of voters who did not chose “regime”
That takes money, lots of it and the 2 main parties have huge corporate donors who will never give money to an environmental party
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.
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.
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.
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.
And there are scenarios under runoff voting where similar can occur (e.g. two seats, 2 right wing, 4 left wing) and is where the “election theory” aspect of things that certain folk are still bitching about (because that is the most important thing to have happened in the past 8 years, clearly). The party needs to take the results of the primary and downselect who actually runs to avoid splitting their own vote.
No voting system is perfect. But people should really understand what we have and what their NEED improves and fails to improve rather than just insisting “new is better”.
I have high hopes but my logical side says they can just be pandering like any of the other politicians: they know people support it, they know it will fail. They look good for backing it even tho they aren’t worried about changing the status quo either
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.
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.
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
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.
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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.
Deny the two party regime legitimacy.
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.
Voting is a direct act of endorsement
endorse | verb [with object]
to declare one’s public approval or support of.Your vote is expressly not public—you’re prohibited from keeping or sharing any proof of your vote.
There aren’t only two candidates.
In the event that your vote actually decides the election, it does so by giving the winner one more vote than the runner-up; at that point those are the only two candidates at issue. And that’s the only event in which your vote matters.
Spin it as much as you want. Anyone supporting, endorsing, or voting for a party with blood in his hand fueling a genocide is directly complicit in the crime
This post was reported for disinformation. To me this post reads like an opinion and hyperbole.
If we do assume that the post is making a factual claim; I’m not a lawyer and I don’t know if voting has ever been used to claim that someone is complicit in a crime. Im open to being pointed to evidence.
I blame the Armenian genocide on you and you alone.
Deny it all you want, you were complicit AF.
how so?
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?
And even if the candidate wins, then what? You have no say in Congress. It’s the House of Reps and the Senate that passes legislation.
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?
What? Trump was the leader of the party and had a cult following through and through. You’re making no sense.
I’m not making sense? You just stated that congress has all the power while now arguing that Trump would have all the power because he’s “the leader of the party.” That doesn’t make sense as you can’t have it both ways unless you’re just trying to spread misinformation.
Seriously? Ok one more attempt. Trump is the leader of the republican party. The people in the republican party selected him as their leader. I don’t know how to make it any clearer but I’ll try with a tiny fib: Trump is the republican party. The republican party is Trump.
Trump tells his party “hey write up this legislation, do it because I’m the leader of the party that you are in”. Notice that part “because I’m the leader of the party that you are in”. That’s not “because I am president”, it’s “because I’m the leader of the party that you are in”. And by and large, the republican party will do that. They will listen to their party leader (the one they selected) and write up the legislation, try to pass it in the House of reps, try to pass it in the senate, and then it will land on Trumps desk.
To be more specific, the party will meet, they will discuss what they want to do, listening heavily to what the president/leader wants to do because it was his “vision” for america that got them elected, then write up legislation.
A third party candidate does not have party members in the house or senate that will do that.
If that doesn’t make sense to you, you have some reading to do. I think I’m out.
Maybe in America. But check other countries. They have preferential voting systems.
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It kinda looks like your arguing that voting doesn’t work.
Ignoring tactical voting doesn’t work
If I run hard enough, I’ll put a me shaped hole in the wall though.
Only as long as the you shaped hole is lucky enough to avoid any studs.
lemmy.world going hard against third parties over the past few days, what has spooked them?
They support a genocidal cop as their presidential candidate.
“I am concerned about the genocide in Palestine, so I am going to take actions that will clearly make things much worse for the people in Palestine because that is the ethical thing to do!”
Why are you assuming that person will vote for Trump?
Never said they would. But realistically you have to acknowledge that a third party candidate has no chance of winning this election. If your only concern is Palastine then not voting for Harris actively makes things worse for the people in Palastine, even if Harris is not doing enough to help them. Your options are bad, or worse.
If you’re trying to build support for third party candidates for future elections then don’t give me any bullshit about Palastine, because that will not help them in any way.
The genocide will continue as scheduled, Trump or Kamala…
“If you don’t vote for my guy, regime will fuck Palestinians even harder, do you want more blood on your hands?”
Pathetic argument, DNC can’t even muster proper position on the issue beyond, Trump might fuck them harder.
Welcome to today’s American folks 🤡
“If you don’t vote for my guy, regime will fuck Palestinians even harder, do you want more blood on your hands?”
Pathetic argument,
That was literally your argument: https://lemmy.ca/post/28969976/11652757
My God, give it a rest.
You’re an idiot with the laziest opinions I’ve ever seen and you. Can’t. Shut. The. Fuck. Up.
Grow up, read some books and come back in a few years when you find an adequate mood stabilizer ffs.
rheee!!!
She is a different person now, trust me bro
Who does your team support tho?
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
The primaries are over. The risk of Trump is too high and people spreading 3rd Party ideas right 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.
It seems like Harris turning half Republican and supporting a genocide is what’s demotivating progressives from voting for her and people spreading 3rd party ideas is a symptom of that.
Oh look, yet another .ml troll
What did I say in my comment that isn’t true, and do you have an actually convincing argument for that besides calling me a troll?
🙄
Post at !meanwhileongrad@sh.itjust.works
How do you have a four year old account with only two comments?
Anyway, still better than Trump.
To answer your question, I joined Lemmy when it was a niche open source project then left because nothing was happening until the mass migration happened
Fyi, accounts that only make political comments, especially ones that have suspicious comment history come across as astroturf or hacked accounts.
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.
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.
The labour party is certainly flawed but you have to remember all they’ve given the people of the UK
You’re going to have to fill me in, because it seems Keir took office and immediately declared that there is no money left in the banana stand.
They couldn’t even restore funding to the H2 connection from Manchester to London, and that’s shit that was already paid for.
True or not, it would take something very special for the new Labour government to have already of given things to the people of the UK, seeing as Parliaments only been back for 2 weeks, don’t you think?
I mean, I have moderate expectations at best. I hope they don’t make things worse but, at the same time, I also think they’ll fall well short of achieving time travel.
Were you expecting time travel? I think you might be disappointed, if so.
I also think they’ll fall well short of achieving time travel.
It’s crazy when something as simple as rejecting the Cass Report and ending the instructional abuse of Trans People is equated with SciFi tiers of impossibility.
I’m sure that made sense, followed on naturally from the conversation and didn’t just sound like unhinged ranting and deflections in your head, at least.
Oh no. JK Rowling has entered the chat.
Hey bro… just for vote my guy tho, trust me bro. You are not a bigot, is u?
LOL and how do you suppose we make third parties viable? Thoughts and prayers?
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.
Changing the voting system so that third parties are actually possible.
And why would anyone do that when everyone takes time out of their day to express their approval for the existing 2 parties?
The problem is that these systems are way more complex and have edge cases where someone unpopular gets elected. Making major changes to a system that has worked for 248 years seems like a recipe for disaster.
and have edge cases where someone unpopular gets elected
As opposed to the current system, where someone unpopular always gets elected?
Making major changes to a system that has worked for 248 years
It hasn’t worked. It’s deeply flawed and we currently use the worst-possible process, rooted in ancient history.
Not by voting for people in elections they can’t win. Vote at the local and state level or in primaries for people who will enact voting reform.
Like who?
I don’t know where you live so I don’t have any relevant suggestions, sorry.
Name anyone anywhere
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
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.
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.
You don’t need to vote for a main party. However, your vote isn’t mathematically significant
👍
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.
How active is your local Lemmy community? Mines is pretty dead but voting for the specifics you call for is still mentioned.
Of course people aren’t going to be discussing the specifics of local races in the general politics community. It’s entirely disingenuous to argue that’s an indicator that nobody cares about local races.
I don’t agree that that’s an “of course.” There should be discussion of specific local races in a general politics community. Like I said, presidential votes only matter in a handful of states. If you add up the populations of swing states, I’m sure it’s higher than any individual state, but there are still some pretty big states where millions of people live that that aren’t included in that. And yeah, everyone is affected by the presidential race, but everyone is affected by congressional races too. If you want to say, let’s say 90% of the content should be on the race that’s relevant to people living in Pennsylvania, Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, and Wisconsin, and maybe North Carolina that’s fine, but if the rest of us have to see their content all the time, then they shouldn’t mind if they have to see like 10% of the content relevant to the people who live in some of the other 44 states.
And to be clear, this isn’t something I’m saying about Lemmy in particular. Go anywhere in America, from the deepest red state to the deepest blue state, and ask about the latest story-of-the-week about the presidential race, and people will know about it and have an opinion on it and care about it. Ask them about local races, and they’ll be far less knowledgeable far less invested, and will probably try to fit it into a framework based on the one race they actually care about, even if they can’t affect it in any way.
There would be so much more potential to cut through battle lines if people would go like, “OK, fine, you don’t like either candidate, you don’t have to vote for them. But do you mind if I ask what state you live in? Maybe there’s someone running for congress or governor who’s more to your tastes. I’d be happy to look into who’s running and discuss them with you.”
But nobody wants that shit. We want the battle lines, we want the group identity, the team sports. We don’t want to do research about boring shit nobody cares about, we want a constant stream of engaging news stories and hot takes that we can all experience together, as a culture.
“no one talks about X”.
Is shown that many people talk about X.
“No, not like that!”Misinterprets what I said to create a strawman
Is explained to that that’s not what was meant
Repeats strawman.
Thank you for explaining what you’re doing. But we were well aware of it.
“I know you are but what am I?”
Highest level of discourse.
You’re the one coming in here and asking why anyone cares who wins an election that’s not even in your country.
You can rightly fuck off. Most of us care very deeply who wins.
Not surprised you and the other people downplaying the election are from .ml
I shill voting 3p at every level as tactic to clown the two party regime.
But nothing stops people from getting into the weeds in local elections though.
But yeah the whole vibe… If you don’t want my guy, you lack empathy OR you just don’t care about hurting people is very 🤡 approach to essentially shame people into compliance.
The shaming campaign from the DNC has been very strong recently.
This entire discussion is only happening BC it was posted in a sub that is not controlled by the group who runs news and politics subs on Lemmy world
