One thing that people fail to understand when voting third party is the overall makeup of the two big parties. Republicans are very homogenous. One need look no further than a picture of all republican senators and compare it to a picture of all current democrat senators. Both pictures will have a majority of white men, but one of those pictures will have a much larger number of minorities (women, people of color, etc…).
The democrat party is really an amalgam of lots of different types of people with different cultures and different desires unified by an interest in more progressive policy. But it’s much harder to keep every sub-group of people happy. If even one of those sub-groups grows weary or defects to the other side, democrats lose.
I was happy for a while to start to see some cracks in the republican party, but I underestimated their ability to stick together despite having utter contempt for their populist leader. So many republicans detested the idea of a Trump presidency right up until he won. All of a sudden, they rabidly and staunchly defended his every action. There have only been a very few number of principled Republicans that have stood their ground against Trump, and one by one they’re either losing elections or declining to run again. It’s sad really.
I agree with the spirit of what you are saying, but if you live in a swing state there is definitely an argument to be made about pragmatic damage control. I don’t judge either way, if you don’t feel like someone has earned your vote it isn’t your fault that they haven’t earned your vote.
I also agree that voting for the slightly less shitty candidate isn’t going to fix anything in the longterm, but sometimes the best choice for the well being of people is damage control. Damage control isn’t a strategy, but sometimes it is the best tactic within a broader strategy. That being said, fuck all that noise when people get upset at you for voting third party. You aren’t the person that created a rigged system that doesn’t provide meaningful choices for you to choose from. Someone can disagree with you on how best to fix that, but getting angry at you for choosing a different approach is just people taking out their anger on you for the system being rigged and broken.
The ‘their guy sucks too’ defense doesn’t inspire much confidence.
Better to at least support whichever candidate is less likely to destroy the country while we wait for a better one to come and save it.
That would be the third party candidates.
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One thing that people fail to understand when voting third party is the overall makeup of the two big parties. Republicans are very homogenous. One need look no further than a picture of all republican senators and compare it to a picture of all current democrat senators. Both pictures will have a majority of white men, but one of those pictures will have a much larger number of minorities (women, people of color, etc…).
The democrat party is really an amalgam of lots of different types of people with different cultures and different desires unified by an interest in more progressive policy. But it’s much harder to keep every sub-group of people happy. If even one of those sub-groups grows weary or defects to the other side, democrats lose.
I was happy for a while to start to see some cracks in the republican party, but I underestimated their ability to stick together despite having utter contempt for their populist leader. So many republicans detested the idea of a Trump presidency right up until he won. All of a sudden, they rabidly and staunchly defended his every action. There have only been a very few number of principled Republicans that have stood their ground against Trump, and one by one they’re either losing elections or declining to run again. It’s sad really.
Ah, the “just wait til next time to vote for the person you want” argument that we see repeated every two years ad nauseam. That’ll surely fix things.
I agree with the spirit of what you are saying, but if you live in a swing state there is definitely an argument to be made about pragmatic damage control. I don’t judge either way, if you don’t feel like someone has earned your vote it isn’t your fault that they haven’t earned your vote.
I also agree that voting for the slightly less shitty candidate isn’t going to fix anything in the longterm, but sometimes the best choice for the well being of people is damage control. Damage control isn’t a strategy, but sometimes it is the best tactic within a broader strategy. That being said, fuck all that noise when people get upset at you for voting third party. You aren’t the person that created a rigged system that doesn’t provide meaningful choices for you to choose from. Someone can disagree with you on how best to fix that, but getting angry at you for choosing a different approach is just people taking out their anger on you for the system being rigged and broken.