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?
“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.
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
Can’t wait for Blue MAGA to win so they can go to brunch and not do any form of direct action or mutual aid for 4 years while the genocides continue, then shit on leftists for not voting hard enough at the next election.
Right. Because we have all been so lucky to be in the receiving end of all the generous policies and the overwhelming selfless charity from those third party candidates!
I for one am overflowing with love and blissful ass-kissery for all the work those candidates have done for everyone- every year in between the elections!!!
Let me list all the things they’ve done for us all:
- ……
Yaaaaaaaay!
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.
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.
If you vote for Republicans or Democrats, you’re supporting the same duopoly that got us to this point. If you’re terrified of Project 2025, keep in mind the Republicans will eventually win again, even if not this election.
If you’re not in a battleground state, the easiest longterm solution is to vote 3rd party. This is the tactical decision to gather support and break the duopoly, without increasing Republican win chance since your vote won’t affect the election
This just may be the dumbest thing I’ve heard today.
The libs will have nobody to blame but themselves
If you’re feeling disturbed by this rhetoric but you don’t want to vote for the greens, consider party for socialism and liberation. They’re running de la Cruz on a platform of Palestinian statehood and an end to arms shipments to Israel.
And what are their chances to win currently?
1 in 19 quintillion, roughly.
Yikes.
I wouldn’t know, I’m not much of a gambler so the odds aren’t really in my mind.
Ok fascist blue MAGA 👍
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.
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.
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.
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.
To convince Greens or Carlins (people who don’t vote because the Democrats are still too evil from their point-of-view) to vote for Democrats, you need to understand yourself and them. Once you do that, you’ll be able to offer more convincing arguments to support your position.
If you’re voting for Democrats, you possibly agree with the following scale of evilness:
- 10 Hitler
- 9 Stalin
- 8.5 Trump
- 8 Republicans and people who vote for them
- 7
- 6
- ~5-3 elected Democratic party members
- 2
- 1 you
- 0 Jesus
The thing is that Greens and Carlins see the world very differently:
- 10 people making the biosphere unlivable thru overpopulation
- 9 factory farmers and commercial fishing companies
- 8
- 7 Hitler, Stalin
- 6
- 5 George W. Bush, Putin
- 4 Trump, Republicans, and people who vote for them
- 3 Gore, Obama, Democrats, and people who vote for them
- 2
- 1 Sanders
- 0
- -1
- -2
- -3
- -4
- -5
- -6
- -7 them
- -8
- -9
- -10
The Greens’ and Carlins’ priorities are very different. They may think that choosing to make the biosphere unlivable is the worst thing you can do, because without a biosphere that supports life, nothing else matters.
They may think that torturing trillions of fish to death every year, and enslaving hundreds of billions of animals in torturous conditions every year, is worse than all genocides and wars in all of history combined. They think that supporting even a single genocide is bad.
They may think that given the choice between popular Hitler, popular Stalin, and unpopular Gandhi; they’d rather vote for Gandhi than the popular lesser evil, because that specific evil is omnicidally evil. It’s better to vote for good and fail, than it is to vote for evil and succeed.
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Tankies and accelerationism, who could have guessed?
Historically, they blame socialists.
This is the most horrible way to convince people to vote with you. I, personally, would tell you to go fuck yourself if I weren’t already voting for Harris. Please stop that. You need to convince people why they should vote for your candidate by showing them the difference, not this “or else” bullshit. and if they are not convinced, you let it go. People are free with their damn votes.
“Or else” isn’t bullshit when it comes from the perspective of anyone who actually has something to lose if Trump wins.
Everyone who is on the fence or doesn’t feel like they need to vote are just speaking from positions of privilege because they don’t personally have as much on the line. I just find it hard to sympathize with that perspective.
It’s actually sad that you would talk about privilege. That may apply to some people. What if for example your cousin is living in Palestine? What then? What privilege do you have? If you vote for Harris, you’re guaranteed more of the same.
The privilege that you have is that you don’t have family members dying from policies that Harris endorses. And I think Trump would be even worse, so there’s a practical argument that people should vote for Harris anyway, but that’s a tough sell if it’s your immediate family or your best friends who are in the literal crosshairs.
But the same thing can be said for the people ignoring the faults of Kamala…
Especially when they’re just begging for an end of genocide, or fracking destroying their communities, or any other of multitude issues where Kamala and Trump have the same policies even though the majority of the Dem voting base disagrees with them.
It seems odd to act like the “high road” is the one where genocide is ok, when we could just have someone who was anti-genocide…
There’s fall less people willing to hold their noses to vote for genocide and fracking than the other way around. And very few people who are only voting for Kamala because her border, genocide, and fracking policies are the same as Trump’s.
The people that want that are still voting trump, if they told you that it would change your mind…
I hate to break it to you, but they lie about this shit all the time so even if they lose they win.
I’m sorry, how does Trump improve any of the issues you describe?
He doesn’t, neither does Kamala…
So why get mad at someone who’s line isnt the same place as yours?
You can tell at them to throw their morals out the window, or unite with them and demand just a little more than the bare minimum you would accept
Why is no one allowed to ask for anything more than your bare minimum? And why would you risk trump to not help get more?
I don’t logically understand your position, I understand what it is, just not why it’s your position.
Can you elaborate on how this:
just speaking from positions of privilege because they don’t personally have as much on the line. I just find it hard to sympathize with that perspective.
Isn’t applicable to you wanting people to ignore genocide? In some cases where it’s literally their close family over there as the victims?
He doesn’t, neither does Kamala…
Then why even have this argument?
How about we swing this double edged sword the other way? Why try to alienate women who lost their rights with the overturning of Roe v. Wade because of Trump’s supreme court appointments? Or what about every LGBTQ+ person in the US who is trapped at the edge of their seats because members of the supreme court have stated they’d like to revisit Obergefell v. Hodges, too?
How about all of the kids who are shot to death at school because of unchecked gun proliferation that Trump’s party has blocked attempts to regulate? Or people who are drowning to death in medical and student debt that Trump blocked attempts to solve, while he just has a “concept of a plan” that no one is able to describe?
Or maybe we can look at his previous presidency, when his hateful rhetoric caused sharp rises in hate speech and crimes committed against people of color and the socially vulnerable? The rise in white supremacist/domestic terrorist groups? The election denialism that resulted in January 6? The complete and utter failure to properly manage the Covid-19 pandemic that led to the preventable deaths of millions?
The threat of fascism literally looming over our heads and being told none of that matters because Kamala is no different from Trump in my specific hand-picked list of issues, that’s what I take issue with.
If someone is not willing to do the bare minimum to keep him out of power because they don’t see a reason to vote for Kamala, I have a long list of less-kind words I’d love to say if I didn’t believe in trying to maintain civility online.
Then why even have this argument?
Because if instead of spending time and effort trying to convince voters to lower their morals…
We’d be better off uniting to hold Kamala to a higher standard, because then we’d stop trump, and get more of what we want.
I’m not sure what’s confusing about this.
Goodness you are a speed reader, replying within 2 minutes and acknowledging the very first sentence I wrote.
I am literally holding Kamala to a higher standard. Everything I wrote is the standard that anyone with half a braincell and respect for their fellow man should understand. Anyone who does not is not worth being pandered to.
This is just not true voting third party or not voting means you are voting third party or not voting. This reasoning is senseless so if I vote Lu Cruz I’m helping Trump, Harris, Stein, etc… all win no I’m not. No reason to vote for a candidate who will run fascistic policies which Trump and Harris both will. Electoralism is a dead end in broken system built to maintain the status quo.
Abstentionism isn’t praxis. It’s a losing strategy given the current state of politics; even a cursory examination reveals this to be true.
If your politics incorporates electoralism you have already failed.
Empty words, backed up by nothing.
you’re only kidding yourself. the election doesn’t give you points for process. it only gives you outcomes. and as things are right now in the US, there are two. you either contribute to outcome 1 or outcome 2. there is no other kind of action.
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call me when you do that. hurry though, unless you do it in less than a month we’re back at outcome 1 vs outcome 2 and literally nothing else.
Or you can advocate and prop up neither outcome “1” or “2” and work towards “3” while keeping in mind both history and the unity of actions and goals.
work fast. if you can’t do it in less than a month, you’re contributing to one of the two.
Absolutely change the system. It’s been a problem for a long time. However the current system is what we have for this election, so unless you know a magic way to use a different voting system for this election and not FPTP then there really are only two choices. If they both suck to you, then pick the one that has potential for change from public pressure, and by all means vote in more progressive choices if possible for the lower representation because that’s where the real change can happen.
It would be great if the anti-FPTP rallying would last past the election. People seem to get so overwhelmed by the voting propaganda that once they cast their vote they want to forget about it for four years, and that’s why we keep having these same discussions every time when it’s too late to fix the problem.
This is all true, except in a bubble where you use first past the post voting.
You’re talking about sane elections. Americans live in a edge case:
Posters like this always assume that their candidate is the other option if the person doesn’t abstain or vote 3rd party.
Abstaining or voting 3rd party to “make Dems listen” doesn’t work. If anyone thinks they can play Mexican Standoff, you can’t because the Dems have an out: the center voter. Every time they lose, they go to the center to find voters.
And remember they need all 3 of presidency, house of representatives, and senate to pass pretty much anything. If they don’t have all 3 they will go to the center to find voters. Some people call this rachet effect, but really they’re looking for voters. Want them to stop ‘racheting’? Then give them consistent and overwhelming victories.
I live in a red state, and the Democratic Party cannot even get enough warm bodies to ruin for every office here. The Libertarians do better with their candidates than the Democrats.
The obviously the tactical strategy is to vote libertarian
So vote for them regardless and then they will listen?
This is an incorrect framing of the situation. You aren’t being asked for a Yes/No vote on Democrats. You are being asked if you prefer Democrats or Republicans. Or for this election, if you prefer Democracy or Fascism. If you vote “no preference”, that does not communicate “I prefer the Democrats, but want them to move further left”, either logically or politically.
There are lots of ways to communicate desired policy changes: letter-writing, primaries (including campaigning/funding for candidates), protests, marches, press, social-media, etc. Voting against your interest is not one of them.
Dems need all 3 (presidency, house of reps, Senate) to do pretty much anything. They’ve had that for [drumroll please] 4 out of the last 24 years. Or 6 of the last 32 years. Or 6 of the last 44 fucking years.
They’ve had that for [drumroll please] 4 out of the last 24 years
It was significantly shorter than that when you consider Senate control to be 60, which is what’s needed to bypass the fillibuster.
Supermajority was 4 months, out of the last 44 years. But whenever I mention that people think I’m fixated on that for some reason.
*Oh downvoted already. Some people really don’t like hearing this.
You shouldn’t cry about fake internet points
I’m not crying, I’m laughing how certain people downvote because they don’t like hearing facts.
The more elections the far right loses, the more the overton window shifts to the left.
Democrats move further right to get votes from the center but when they win it’ll go left trust me bro
They go to the center when they lose. If they don’t lose, they don’t need to go to the center to find voters. You can see my other comment, they’ve only had all 3 houses for 4 out of the last 24 years.
It’s the left’s fault for not feeling motivated to vote for a center-right party, they’ll become even more right if we don’t vote for them. Progressive candidates are dumb and unpopular.
So stay home/throw away your vote, I’m sure they’ll realize their mistake and go to the left any decade now to chase those reliable voters.
they don’t have to, let the whole thing collapse. Fascism never lasts long
I honestly don’t know what point you’re trying to get at. In any case, if the left wants to be effective, they have to vote for Dems. Because, again, when they lose they go to the center to find voters.
seems like if the left wants to be effective at this point it has to go far beyond voting
And remember they need all 3 of presidency, house of representatives, and senate to pass pretty much anything
The odds of Democrats keeping the Senate seem dismal. So it sounds like we’re giving the party license to do nothing for another two years
I like how you twist that to “party license”. If the
peoplevoters vote that way, that is the will of thepeoplevoters. Don’t like it? Vote. For Dems. (Though the GOP bear some responsibility being obstructionist pos.)If the
peoplevoters vote that way, that is the will of thepeoplevoters.Sorry 50M Californians, but 40k West Virginians decided to go a different way. Guess this means no civil rights for another two years.
So give up? Yea, it fucking sucks and is unfair as hell but voting is too easy to claim a lack motivation. It’s not a sustained effort, it’s something happens incredibly rarely and you can definitely handle. You can even mail that shit in in most places.
If you vote then it will be hard for the democrats to win and start shifting your countries policies to leftward(even if it’s an inch at a time). If you don’t vote then it will be impossible to do it.
So give up?
If your full effort begins and ends with election season, you’ve already given up.
Who said that? Oh right, nobody. Fuck, bro, get it together.
This is aimed at those people that think not voting or voting 3rd party is effective to “make Dems listen”. It is not. Voters have a say.
I’ve thought about that recently.
In Germany, the 2 historically biggest parties were SPD (used to be liberal-democrat) and CDU (conservative) and they often were the ones tugging it out while the smaller parties were filling in as coalition partners for one or the other.
Over time, the SPD splintered into several semi-big offshoot parties (Linke, for example) while the CDU stayed as a whole. As a result, CDU is now commonly a favorite for getting most votes in an election.
Is that consistent with politics across the globe? And if, why do liberal or center parties tend to split up more than conservatives?
Counterexample: The European Parliament. IMHO, it looks like 4 right-wing groups, 2 left-wing ones and 2 centrist ones. While the exact positioning could be argued over, the right wing is quite certainly more fragmented than the left is.
I commonly hear the left is a loose coalition of factions (which can split apart), while the right fall in line. I think there are fewer factions on the right, or the factions are not as far apart, so coming together is easier. They also unite in absolute hatred of the left, so will fall in line to slay that beast.
Not an American, but yikes does this have “Vote with us… Or else!” vibes.
That’s not to say I support Trump, but I personally don’t think this is the way to convince fence-sitters at all.
It’s exactly the kind of thing that feels good to say, but doesn’t convince anyone at all. Which is why Republicans keep winning despite ideas that should be extremely unpopular. They tie themselves to emotions about masculinity and patriotism and paint the other side as a source of disgust and fear. While Democrats look at people who support or don’t seem eager to stop Trump and say angry things at them, which just makes them not want to help Demcorats.
The “I’m voting, are you?” argument featuring nutty alt-right Maga crazies is far better because it says “hey, you can help stop this nutjob.”
And it’s crazy how normal Americans think this two party system is. It’s like no matter how bad you think your guy is, you have to vote for them because the other side is worse. They always talk about the Labour Party and the Tories as if they think they’re carbon copies of the Democrats and the Republicans and project all their issues into them. They don’t seem to realise there’s like five or six other parties that get a considerable number of votes and have representation in Parliament.
It is normal in FPTP voting systems. If you are going to vote in a national election in a FPTP system. Especially one with our electoral college system. But aren’t looking to explicitly throw your vote away. And you aren’t okay with open fascists winning. When things are this close. Yeah there really is no conscionable choice. Unless you happen to live in a state so safe your vote truly could never matter. Like california. Which even that would be unwise. And is especially at a place for anyone from there to tell people elsewhere how to vote. Since they don’t have the same privilege.
you are 100% correct, and I’m glad to see you speaking up here as well.
these kind of posts are disgusting pablum and should be discouraged.
Low afford manipulation. Any adult person within shred of constitution can see through it.
hahaha, sorry were those typos on purpose or did you do some lazy speech to text there?
It’s very funny.
With any*
But I am keeping as it is rather cheeky
nice, it’s a perfect statement.
i am a
But it’s literally how it works in the USA with voting. It shouldn’t, but it DOES.
I mean, yeah? Have you looked around? The or else is getting pretty bad.
Also I want to keep adding it’s not just Trump, he’s just a pawn. This is Republicans, not Trump. If row did anything hopefully it opened up some eyes to realize they have been on message for a long damn time. Dems should take note.
How else would you propose that the Overton Window shift to the left?
The American neoliberal experiment started in 1992 when Bill Clinton was president…
The prior (edit: Dem, obviously) president was Jimmy Fuckin Carter…
How do you think the Overton Window has moved since Carter?
We can’t afford to keep going with a strategy that clearly hasn’t worked for 30+ years…
I’m pretty damn sure that Bush came both before and after Clinton
I thought it was obvious we’re just talking about Dems…
But I can edit that in explicitly
Entirely agree. The people responsible for trump getting votes are the people voting for Trump.
Tactical voting is bullshit of the highest order and the undeniable sign of a fucked up political and voting system, not some sort of political astuteness.
If your voting system can’t allow people to express their true choice, you should throw it away. Yes, that means the majority of voting systems around the world are bad and need to be changed. Getting people to recognise that this is even an issue in the first place is a huge battle.
Only one party has implemented ranked choice while the other has fought against it. That would be a great first start.
That’s not quite the case. Ranked choice voting is resisted by whichever party has a comfortable majority in any given state where it is on the ballot. That’s why it failed when it was on the ballot in Massachusetts during the previous presidential election, because it is a reliably blue state and ranked choice voting would only serve to disrupt that status quo.
I still voted in favor of it, but that’s how it went down.
The really bad part is when you see how they react when people point out Kamala moving to the left would guarantee trump loses…
Moderates have been doing this since Bill Clinton 30+ years ago.
They always claim nothing else matters but beating Republicans, and use any excuse to move the party right. When voters complain the politician doesn’t match the party, we get the above.
They’d rather trump win then progressives, so they point a gun at everyone’s head and say it’s our fault if they have to pull the trigger.
Hell, in 08 with Obama they did pull the trigger. PUMA movement had them voting R instead of Obama. It’s just despite controlling the party, they are a statistically insignificant amount of voters.
A few months ago all these people called us trump supporters for making the (still true) statement that Kamala has a better chance than Biden, and they were all saying Kamala would be a terrible candidate and only Biden can win.
They’ll say anything in the moment with no regards to what just came out of their mouths.
Mmm I’m sorry to tell you that you are wrong
🤡
The “or else” is you will be remembered as the Trump supporter that you are. That’s not a threat.
I’m not speaking from a place of facts, but I think the sentiment is if you don’t purposefully vote for someone within the two-party system that isn’t Trump, your vote will mathematically be a negative towards votes against Trump.
Not voting/third-party vote = one less vote against Trump/more possible votes for Trump
Yes, I understand the sentiment. But the tone is off. Sounding like fascists or Marxist Leninist should be the last thing anyone should be aiming for.
