It has been said a gazillion times over the last few months, but is it getting through to those who need to hear it?
And remember: a “protest” third party vote is a vote for Trump.
If neither Harris nor Trump gets 270 electoral votes…
[If] No one gets to 270 and the House of Representatives, voting on behalf of the 50 states, is entrusted to pick the next president. What could possibly go wrong with that constitutionally mandated solution?
– What if no candidate wins 270 electoral votes?
Edit: I feel like this fact is often overlooked.
A protest vote to a third party is actually a protest vote to whoever you prefer less. You’re essentially just removing yourself as a voter and making it more likely the person you like less is elected… we often say “third party is a vote for Trump” since most of lemmy is sane - but for a staunch conservative a vote for a third party is a vote for Harris.
I’d encourage everyone to vote regardless of your leaning - having low voter turnout allows more shitty shenanigans.
Yep, we also say that because there are a lot of astroturf accounts pushing Stein and De La Cruz on Lemmy that are hyper-critical of Harris but suspiciously never want to talk about what a shitbag Trump is.
That’s because Harris is Satan and Trump is my Daaaaddy
\s
I’m really encouraged by the fact that universalmonk and return2ozma’s posts get heavily downvoted when they push this slop in Lemmy
They don’t push them. They just push back against Democrats that invent lies about Stein. It seems most Democrats can’t handle truths about Harris praising and committing to funding war criminals like Netanyahu & Dick Cheney.
we can handle them just fine because the fact of the matter is trump would be way worse for Palestine. There’s a reason Netanyahu prefers Trump.
Stein would be better by your logic because she’d stop sending multibillion dollar thank you checks to Israel whenever they kill American journalists.
no, because stein is a stooge and has no chance at all of winning anyway. that’s the entire point of the article.
Why is she a stooge? You don’t like democracy or you scared Kamala supporting war criminals might mean Stein has more of an impact than you’d like to admit?
Give it up bud. The veil is lifted and no one is falling for it.
No I refuse to support people that are pro genocide. It’s that simple really. I wouldn’t be able to sleep at night knowing that I voted for that. I was going to vote for Kamala but I just can’t do it unless she changes her position before the election.
You men Shill Stein? What lies are being told about Shill Stein? In what way is Shill Stein being besmirched, and how can I add to it?
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Sounds a lot like MAGAspeak to me.
So being against genocide of Palestinians and Arabic people is now considered MAGAspeak to Democrats?
Trump admits he’s a shit bag, Harris pretends she’s not.
Hope whatever shareblue is calling itself these days finally stops getting funded when Harris loses.
Trump admits nothing, he just lies and lies and lies and lies and deflects and denies and projects and acuses. What planet are you on that you don’t know this? He’s one of the least humble or self aware men on the whole planet.
“Trump admits he’s a shitbag” is just another big fat lie.
YOU admit he’s blatantly a shit bag and then turn right stone and bOtH SideS the whole thing.
There’s literally nothing honest about Trump. He’s an honesty free zone with an ago the size of a continent, the self awareness of an amoeba and the loyalty of a cosmic ray.
K. The genocidal cop pretending to be a wine aunt still isn’t getting my vote.
Because you instead want the worse genocidal racist lying hating minority-bashing blasphemous insurrectionist country-betraying grifter “best king of israel” infantile senile nasty idiot to win. Got it. Two choices: the sane one and the constitution wrecker. You’ve made your choice. Stop pretending it’s because of Harris. It’s because you like his racist shit filled diapers.
Just fyi, you’re talking to a self-admitted troll. They’re not worth your time.
Nope, neither of them are getting my vote kiddo. Sorry. I know politics are scary this being your first election ever, but there are always more than two choices.
Yeah, also, Conservatives are more ‘fall in line’ voters, so there’s less vote splitting on the Right than on the Left. Libertarians do appeal to the people opposed to both eyes in the boardroom and eyes in the bedroom on both the Left and the Right, but for the most part, the GQP follows the ‘Vote for the Conservative in the Primary and the Republican in the General’ more than we follow its inverse (replace Conservative with Liberal and Republican with Democrat). And for Republicans afraid of a Trump presidency, come join us and vote for Harris. Then maybe go work on de-Trumping your party after they lose with you helping us. ;)
You… do know that the right gets like…. 4x the 3rd party vote compared to the left. Like what you say is 100% false.
Libertarians+constitution got like 1.2% compared to PSL+greens 0.31% last presidential election iirc.
But also, if the DNC wanted the 3rd party vote they could simply… court it… instead of pissing on it? To say they cost the vote when the DNC continually shot Bernie in the face in 2016, using funds meant to promote the DNC candidate to campaign against a Democrat candidate makes it FOR SURE THE 3RD PARTY VOTERS FAULT. NOTHING THE DNC COULD HAVE DONE DIFFERENTLY TO NOT LOSE. THEY WERE PERFECT FOR REFUSING TO ADOPT LEGALIZED WEED, SOCIAL PROGRAMS, MEDICARE FOR ALL, ETC. IN FACT, IT IS GOOD THEY ARE STILL REFUSING TO DO SO AND ALSO REFUSING TO JUST NOT GIVE BILLIONS TO SUPPORT AN ACTIVE GENOCIDE. THAT’LL SHOW THIRD PARTY VOTERS THE TRUE MEANING OF DEMOCRACY!
This was very funny. Thank you!
I like that it’s the Democrats fault for whenever these issues failed, and not the Republicans who universally vote against them. Remove every Republican and I bet we start seeing these issues getting passed.
Talking about simply adopting the policy to the DNCs platform, which they won’t. Not about it actually passing, which they still should be able to do but is out of the question when they don’t even want it.
At least it’s the newly elected House that starts its session in January, right?
anakin.jpg
Yes, but unfortunately they vote by state not individually
This government really is held together with hopes and dreams, isn’t it?
It always was. Sometimes that’s stronger than other times.
Ah my favourite AJJ quote: “Hope is for presidents and dreams are for people who are sleeping”
Wait… you can actually have someone NOT get 270 votes?
Oh… duh… 3rd parties taking some. You think it’d just be whoever has the most electoral college votes then… Alas, needlessly complicating things.
Yeah. It has been that way since the founding of the country. The winner not only must have the most votes, they must get half of the available EVs, rounding up. This was learned early on in the history of the US, when four Democratic-Republicans ran for President, and nobody got the required number of votes. This happened in 1824, barely half a century after the US was founded. It resulted in Andrew Jackson (Trump’s role model, BTW), getting 99 EVs, John Q. Adams winning 84 EVs, William H. Crawford (who had a stroke) winning 41 EVs, and Henry Clay winning 37 EVs. Per the 12th Amendment of the US constitution, nobody had a straight majority here, so the top three vote getters (disqualifying Henry Clay) advanced to the House of Representatives. Clay’s supporters in Congress threw their weight behind John Q. Adams, giving him a straight majority over the top candidate, Andrew Jackson, and Adams gave Clay a spot in his cabinet. Capping this shitstorm off was Andrew “Sore Loser” Jackson throwing a fit, calling it a ‘corrupt bargain’, in a very Trumpian temper tantrum.
IMO, what happened in 1828 (and again in 1837 with the VP) is an important history lesson for voters thinking of voting Third Party. Unless you can somehow convince 50% + 1 people to pick your Third Party candidate in 270 EV worth of states, your best bet is to get that candidate to run for a local election and become a vocal proponent for fixing the US electoral system. Because you’d hate to have 269 EV go for Harris, 81 go to a mix of Left-Wing Third Party candidates, and 188 go to Trump, then have the election thrown to the House, where the Trumpian states give Trump the win despite the Left-wing candidates winning in a landslide were those EVs have gone to a single person. And even that’s an unrealistic scenario. Only two people who have not had an R or D behind their name have gotten EVs in my lifetime, and both of them were from faithless electors, NOT from winning an EV. You’re not going to win the Presidency with 1% of the vote. But you WILL throw your state over to the bad guy if your 1% share makes the difference between Harris winning and Trump winning.
There are a lot of reasons why you shoulnd’t vote for third party for US Presidential Elections. The EC is just one of them.
Doesn’t have to be a 3rd party. With the way proportional voting works in NE and ME, it is possible, however unlikely, that there will be a 269-269 tie vote.
They could tie at 269.
Lol, yeah. The article I linked is from earlier this year and about Biden/Trump/Kennedy, but the gist of it still applies.
Whew the tankies and astroturfers are out in force in these comments. I think we got the gamut going here:
- “I don’t vote for genocide”
- “A vote for 3rd party isn’t a vote for Trump”
- “If we don’t vote 3rd party nothing will change”
- “Jill Stein isn’t a Russian asset”
- “Who cares if Trump wins; they’re both bad / nothing worse will happen l both sides”
- “I literally don’t understand how Trump can win if I vote 3rd party because I don’t understand the difference between voting for and against a candidate”
- “Liberals / Democrats / Harris voters are the real fascists”
Solid work astroturfers! Glad to see you’re still trotting out these arguments despite plenty of Lemmy users discrediting each and every one. Really shows grit and dedication.
Also, calling it now that at least one of them replies with something about how they’re true / haven’t been discredited.
I wouldn’t be surprised if they’re actually Trump supporters, just trying to get the swing voters to be all pessimistic and get them not to vote or vote 3rd party.
Trump supporters aren’t smart enough to understand how the Fediverse works.
Not all Trump supporters are American and not all Trump supporters are unable to log into a website.
It was obvious exaggeration.
Indeed, but refusing to accept that right wingers masquerade as leftists hands them carte blanche to convince leftists to exclude themselves from choosing the president, forcing the Overton window to the right yet again with loony right wing president and lawmakers.
It makes it easy to tag them for future reference or block them at least.
“Who cares if Trump wins; they’re both bad / nothing worse will happen l both sides”
Trump’s RIGHT NOW basically talking about forming up goon squads and kicking out immigrants on the basis of some law passed in the 1700s and people are still pretending like this dude isn’t basically a Hitler.
“I don’t vote for genocide”
Yeah…about that…a vote that helps Trump is one that not only exacerbates the ongoing genocide in the middle east, but starts up a new one right here. He’s talking seriously about military tribunal and gas chamber type shit in “Operation Aurora”.
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Even if your single issue is genocide Trump is on the worse side.
… And the one that’s best to vote for is Harris.
Third parties are crucial and we can’t vote for them (intelligently) until we change away from first past the post:
“Instead, protest voting is in fact likely to harm the democratic process, potentially leading to the election of the candidate the majority of voters overall, and protest voters specifically, most dislike.”
^ THIS!
In a Presidential election, whoever gets the most votes wins.
If “Not Trump” is split between 5 candidates, and Trump gets the most votes, he wins.
Here’s a scenario:
Trump - 40%
Harris - 35%
Kennedy - 15%
Oliver - 5%
Stein - 3%
West - 2%Trump wins. Even though 60% of the voting public don’t want him. The “Not Trump” vote failed to coalesce under one candidate enough to block him from winning.
This is what I keep saying. It’s like my scenario with the Class President. A Nerd and a Jock are running. 51 kids are nerds and don’t want the Jock. 49 kids are jocks and don’t want the Nerd. Pretty clear that the Nerd wins, because more people don’t want the Jock than the Nerd, right? Wrong. If the Jock can peel just THREE votes off from the nerd coalition, the Jocks win it and D&D night is cancelled.
Now re-read that and replace nerds with Liberals, jocks with Conservatives, and ‘D&D night is cancelled’ with ‘Project 2025 is shoved down our throats.’ Then…vote with your fucking head and not your fucking heart!
It’s like this, but Jocks’ votes are worth more than Nerds’.
Definitely. I tried to keep the scenario simple to make it easy to understand, but there is truth in the statement that the jocks have some fingers on the scale of Democracy. I suspect there’s more nerds than jocks. We just have to make sure they all turn out to vote because the cheerleader that is the jock’s politician is pulling out ALL the dirty tricks.
On the other side of the Atlantic there’s usually two rounds, unless someone gets >50% of the vote in the first round.
The second round takes the top two candidates and then people choose between them.
Well I mean I don’t know of all European countries but this is fairly common afaik.
It doesn’t work that way in US Presidential elections.
Yeah. I know.
The US doesn’t have a direct presidential election. You have the electoral college, ie an indirect election.
Correct, but even state by state, if you have multiple people running and nobody hits 50%, Presidential elections are not subject to a run-off election like we saw in the Georgia Senate race.
In this scenario, why are we assuming that the 25% that are voting third party would prefer Harris over Trump?
Because we’re able to discuss hypothetical things without being literal to prove a point.
That would be fine, if that’s what was happening, but it’s not. The commentor that i responded to, as well as the article that we are all responding to, use this “hypothetical” situation where third party voters all prefer Harris over Trump to justify a chastisement of those third party votes. There is no basis for this assumption presented in the article or within the comments in this thread.
E: added the word “be” to the 1st sentence.
Well, if hypothetically, I was forced to vote, and thn for only one of these 2 parties only… well, I’m not a rich white guy, I’m not racist, misogynistic, don’t believe sharpies change weather… and, I don’t want to find out just how close he would be to starting the next Nazi party. That narrows my options down a bit.
I mean… thanks for the input, but you’re just one person. I too would choose Harris over Trump if i was forced to choose between the two. But your and my personal choices to not a general consensus make. I wouldn’t argue that the majority of 3rd party voters would do likewise without some proof.
… none of this addresses that third party voters may find it more important to vote against BOTH parties than to vote against their least favorite of the two, either… but i’ve raised that point elsewhere.
If you just don’t understand the concept of hypotheticals, you may be on the spectrum, fyi
Don’t use being on the spectrum as an insult. It is unbecoming.
I don’t think hypothetical means what you think it means. Either that or you are misunderstanding or misrepresenting what the article is arguing.
The article is implies that 3rd party voters are all Harris > Trump voters if it came down to a choice between the two. That is not a hypothetical, that is an unsubstantianted assumption.
It’s not an insult, I’m being serious. The hypothetical is the vote totals given in the comment you responded to. In that hypothetical scenario, voting for your perfect candidate gets your least favorite candidate elected. You seem unable to consider it as a standalone scenario that may or may not be similar to real life voter tallies. That’s a common indicator of neurodivergence.
Whether they would prefer Harris or not is irrelevant, they don’t want Trump. There is only 1 candidate who can beat the Republican candidate and it’s not an Independent/Libertarian/Green candidate.
I don’t understand your response. I asked why we are assuming these voters prefer Harris over Trump and you responded by saying that their preference for Harris is irrelevant, because they don’t want Trump.
This doesn’t make any sense.
“don’t want Trump” in this context MUST equate to a preference for Harris over Trump. And my whole question is “why are we assuming these voters hold that preference?”
I’ll try to make it simple then:
They aren’t pro-Harris, they’re anti-Trump.
Problem: “Not Trump” is not a candidate, so splitting the not Trump vote allows Trump to win.
If people really, REALLY, REALLY do not want Trump, there’s only one answer and that’s to support the Democratic candidate who happens to be Harris.
Why Harris? Because she has more support than any other “Not Trump” candidate.
I do not think this makes it simpler. It just makes the same assumption over again. That assumption being that third party voters are largely anti-Trump (or pro-Harris; take your pick, it doesn’t matter). My question remains. I’ll rephrase it:
Why are we assuming that if all third party voters were to instead vote for one of the two main candidates that Harris would take more of those votes than Trump?
Because that, in essence is what the article assumes.
Because if they were interested in voting for Trump, they’d be voting for Trump. When the choice is Trump vs. Not Trump, Not Trump wins. Even in 2016 that was true.
What the other person is saying is that you are splitting voters in three categories: pro-Trump, pro-Harris, anti-Trump. But that third group obviosuly doesn’t like either of the two main candidates, not just Trump. And if forced to vote for one of them, there’s no reason to assume all will pick Harris.
A poll in which “First choice is someone other than Trump” beats “Trump” would indicate that “Trump” has less than 50% of the vote. The same can be said of Harris.
A poll in which “Anybody but Trump” beats “Trump” would indicate that third party voters do indeed favor Harris over Trump.
Do we have any polling of the second type? I am not able to find any. This type of polling would be exactly what i’ve been asking for in this thread.
No you don’t. You just really ought to vote.
I hope you vote for Harris because Fuck Trump and I think she’ll be a good president, but you don’t HAVE TO vote for one of them. But really, please vote.
It didn’t say “have to” as in you are legally obligated to. It says why “it’s best to” and explains why 3rd parties act as spoilers in the first past the post system and how voting for a 3rd party can lead to the exact opposite person winning than who you want
Isn’t that precisely what the article said?
I get where you’re coming from here, but … let’s be clear.
Come January, one of two people will be taking the Oath of Office.
- Kamala Harris.
- Donald Trump.
The article explains why it’s best for you to vote for the person you dislike the least (if you can’t say ‘like the most’) out of those two.
None of the other candidates for President have any realistic shot at POTUS.
In fact, many of them are mathematically eliminated from a shot at POTUS by virtue of them not being able to secure 270 EVs because they are not on the ballot in enough states. Most of them can’t even get 100EV, let alone 270.
Apart from RFK Jr, Chase Oliver, and Jill Stein, none of them appear as a pickable option in enough states to have a shot at winning 270 EVs and will require Write-In Campaigns.
RFK Jr., Chase Oliver, and Jill Stein COMBINED represent less than 10% (largest vote share I have seen in the past month is Outward Intelligence, which had Kennedy at 3%, West at 1%, Oliver at 1%, and Stein at 1%, taken between 22 and 26 Sept of 1735 Likely Voters, while most other polls show Third Parties between 2% and 5%). Harris is between 45% and 50% in many of these polls, which means…well, Harris has MUCH more of a shot of winning than any of the Third Party candidates, let alone any one of them.
The fix for this is to get your Greens and Socialists and Liberals and Progressives running for local offices, and pushing and pushing hard for RCV. I can’t vote for your favourite candidate now because I don’t want Republicans in office, but if RCV passes this November, I’ll be far more open to it. In fact, I’ll take a risk on a Green or Progressive or Libertarian alternative to my Senator or Representative because I can vote that person 1, and make sure the Dem is ranked over the GQPer, so my vote becomes a Dem long before a Republican can win. Then work on getting the EC torn down. And I think you should to. I won’t tell you you MUST. But I won’t shy away from saying that if you want a progressive future, letting Harris lose now is a stupid way to try (and fail) to achieve that.
There’s a third scenario where a protest vote makes sense. In solid states, a vote for a third party could push that party to meet the threshold for getting over $100 million in federal funds for the next campaign. They just need to get 5% of the popular vote to be eligible. Now I’m not saying that this would necessarily lead to some utopia of qualified candidates, but it would help disrupt the higher echelons of politics from both sides that keep the system in place. And before some dumbass comes in and accuses me of “both sides-ing” this, when was the last time congressional term limits was seriously considered for legislation despite having broad support from both sides of the electorate? The top rungs of congress that have been in office since before most of us were born won’t allow it.
A third party gets campaign funds, and then what?
First past the post voting, or at the very least the US version of it, strongly favors two dominating parties. CGP Grey - Minority Rule…
A third party doing anything but fuck things up, is a delusional fantasy. Change starts with election reform. For instance https://www.nationalpopularvote.com/
If anyone actually wants the option to vote for 3rd parties, then a landslide victory for Harris is the best option in this election.
The Republicans are already torn. They stand together with the MAGA insanity hoping to get enough votes by including the crazyness. If the election clearly shows that it’s a losing strategy, they will have to regroup and the GOP will be split. Then when Democrats are clearly outnumbering the opposition, it will also be more tempting for radical left wing to branch out without risking the opposition winning.
When “both sides” are then fractioned into smaller groups, it will finally be possible to get a majority to vote for getting rid of the 1st past the post problem, and make it possible for 3rd parties to get any influence.
But the first step is to make sure the Republicans lose really hard. Voting 3rd party won’t do it in this election.
First past the post voting mathematically ensures a two party system. Voting third party is useless unless we have election reform. Vote with your mind, not your heart, and vote thinking beyond just the next 4 years.
So glad to see the ratios tipping toward voting! In large communities where it matters, it’s good to know that the bad actors are being downvoted into irrelevance.
What a dreadful article. If you’re not in a swing state, and you’re in the minority, and you have been for the last 70 years, why do you think anything is going to change this time? Your vote never made a difference before and it almost certainly won’t this time, either. Vote for whoever you want to vote for.
It’s just embarrassing to write an article like this and forget about the electoral college.
If you’re in a state that is solidly red or blue, then similar logic applies to downballot races.
It’s just embarrassing to write an article like this and forget about the electoral college.
You say that as if you don’t realise that the electoral college is exactly why it can’t possibly achieve anything to vote third party other than risk your least favourite candidate winning.
You act all high and mighty and snide and then completely miss the point. I’m not impressed.
What, you think it’s snide to point out that a poorly written political article was poorly written? Jesus. All they had to do was mention that everything is extra complicated because of the electoral college. It would have added three or four sentences, and it would have made their article relevant and true.
Or maybe you had a problem with my wording. Do you think I should have been more delicate, to avoid hurting the author’s feelings? (I don’t think they’re going to read my comments, but even if they did, the odds are good that they would care about my view about as much as you do.)
It’s more what you were high and mighty about - you claimed that the article was missing the fact that there’s an electoral college, whilst yourself missing the entire point of the whole article which is wholly based on the fact of the electoral college.
So if you hadn’t missed the entire point of the article, or if the entire point of the article wasn’t based on the failings of the electoral college system, your criticism of it might have had merit.
So just as you missed the point of the article, you missed the point of my post, which wasn’t about your impoliteness, but rather your hypocrisy.
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I’ll endorse any candidate that is against killing children.
There aren’t any on the ballot.
Look at how you get downvoted by people that want to kill children. Unit 8200 has entered the chat.
Obvious troll is obvious. Go away.
Sorry genocide is inconvenient to you. Do you think they should wipe out all of the Palestinians and anyone against genocide to rewrite history the way you want it?
welcome to the "fed’ iverse
This article is the most logically corrupt piece of statist drivel i have read today. “No, no, don’t vote for who you feel best represent your values. Instead, pretend like everyone else who shares those values is going to team up and vote for the same one of the two people they dislike.” Because, in essence, the “logic” used in this article only works if you assume that all of the third party voters are pulling from one candidate.
It doesn’t matter how many candidates third parties pull from.
If no candidate gets 270 votes, the election is decided by the House. That’s at the electoral college level, but see jordan lund’s breakdown above and how a majority “not Trump” votes will be split among candidates but Trump still wins the state because the “not Trump” voters couldn’t get their shit together and coalesce around a single candidate.
And if the election goes to the House, Assuming Republicans maintain control, take one guess who they’re going to elect?
And why is everyone assuming that all of the third party voters would be Harris voters if they were forced to choose between the two main candidates? This is where the logic goes south. It assumes that the third party voters are some homogenous bloc of disenfranchised “not Trump” voters.
Aren’t they though?
No.
Got any evidence of all these right-leaning 3rd party supporters?
Thats not how this works. The one making the claim provides some evidence. The article makes an unsubstantianted claim that the 3rd party voters are all Harris > Trump. I asked for some sort of proof of this. And you have responded by asking me for proof refuting their claim. Burden of proof is not on me. I am just asking you, or anyone else to back up these claims, because the authors did not
Lol okay then I’ll assume you’re pulling this whole argument from your ass. Rofl. “Burden of proof” lol what a copout.
The electoral system in the US is broken. In this system there’s a 100% chance that Trump or Kamala will win. That’s not even a question, it’s undeniable fact. So, in this electoral system, if you actually want to have a say in which of these two wins, then vote for that one. Otherwise you’re likely to get the other one. Helping some other candidate get 10% does absolutely nothing to help your values.
As long as first past the post and electoral colleges are a thing in the US, that’s just the reality of the situation.
I disagree. Third party votes do quite a bit to move political platforms. No one wants to leave 10% of the vote on the table when that’s all it takes to seize victory. So they move their platforms to encompass what the 10% are voting for.
if you actually want to have a say in which of these two wins,
That’s just it. I, and many others do not value having a say in which of these two gets elected as highly as we value promoting 3rd parties, speaking our hearts with our votes, and edging towards a better political situation for the next generation.
But yes, the electoral system is broken. And ending first past the post will be the single biggest savior of US politics.
That’s just it. I, and many others do not value having a say in which of these two gets elected as highly as we value promoting 3rd parties, speaking our hearts with our votes, and edging towards a better political situation for the next generation.
And if one of these 2 hasn’t made it clear that they want to erode the integrity (if not right eliminate) all future elections that would be a valid argument. If the Republicans actually had a reasonable law abiding candidate then there would be no problem with people voting 3rd party.
I mean, i’d like to believe that you make that case in good faith. But you have to realize that third party voters are admonished by the status quo voters every single presidential election. Every one. So, while this may be the first time you personally have argued that a third partier should vote for your candidate, third partiers have heard it over and over again. You know all those other elections that didn’t have a Trump in them? Yeah, we heard it then too. So, i’m sorry but the whole “this is the most important election in history” schtick just doesn’t warrant any consideration when you’re hearing it for the umpteenth time.
Trump has repeatedly stated he would be a dictator on day 1 and refuses to walk it back when asked about it. He encouraged and supported what happened on January 6th.
There has never been a candidate that was openly and fundamentally against democracy like this.
Trump should be caught up in too many legal battles from all the crimes he’s committed to have any time to campaign or be relevant in the election. The fact that he’s not is already a massive failure of our political system.
It’s a massive failure of the legal system, and the legal system is in failure because it has been corrupted by Republican politics.
When was the last time there was a presidential candidate who literally said they’d be a dictator, who says there won’t be any elections in the future, who fails to recognise the previous time he lost, who incited a civil uprising, who says he might murder his political opponents?
“this is the most important election in history” schtick just doesn’t warrant any consideration
Holy fuck. When I was younger I used to wonder how the Nazis ever managed to gain power. I don’t anymore.
If Trump wins and doesn’t succeed in abolishing voting, the democratic party would be pushed further right, having fielded one of the more leftwing democrats in my lifetime and lost against one of the most clearly bad choices for president of my lifetime. Your precious theoretical better political situation isn’t going to come remotely close to reality in that scenario.
Better than throwing your vote in the garbage!
That vote has the power to make a difference. But not if you throw it away on someone with no chance of winning.
Complete drivel. Why do liberals think repeatedly telling us the same condescending nonsense without engaging with any of our actual arguments is convincing? There isn’t a third party voter alive who hasn’t heard these arguments.
So while each individual unhappy voter wants to keep their hands clean and not vote, they would each like the other 9,999 unhappy voters to step up and swing the outcome in favor of their preferred candidate.
What third party voter is asking other people to vote for a major party? This is such a blatant strawman that I find it hard to believe that this author has ever had a single conversation with a third party voter.
I’ve had many conversations with “third party voters” here on lemmy. Haven’t found any, at all, not one, who can talk about the faults of the republicans in anything like the length and passion that they can talk about the faults of the democrats, and the national polling says that real third party voters are very rare, so a little bit of Bayes’ theorem says that the “third party voters” talking so loudly and long about why I shouldn’t vote for Harris are far, far, far more likely to be republicans pretending to be left wing or neutral, hoping desperately that they can convince enough potential democratic voters to stay home to swing the election for their favourite - stupid evil country-betraying Trump.
There’s more discourse about the Democrats because there’s less disagreement about Republicans being bad. I wrote up a post about Trump’s foreign policy doublespeak a while back where I called out anyone who might support Trump from an isolationist standpoint. It didn’t get much engagement, but that’s not my fault. Most of my comments are responding to things other people say and there are more Harris supporters than Trump supporters.
I might remind you that Lemmy was developed by communists, so an alternative explanation is that communists are more likely to both vote third party and use Lemmy.
The idea that we’re secret conservatives is so absurd that I doubt you actually believe it, and are just using the accusation as a talking point to discredit the other side. Conservatives are awful at impersonating communists, they don’t read or understand leftist theory and typically can only make it a few hours at most before breaking character and shouting slurs. You’re vastly overestimating their intelligence and creativity. To say that Bayes’ theorem supports your accusation is patently absurd.
At some point, claiming that communists are just conservatives in disguise means claiming that conservatives read more leftist political theory than liberals do. As entertaining as it may be to imagine a bunch of good ol’ boys getting together and starting a book club where they discuss, like, the finer points of Simone de Beauvoir, I think if you’re doing Bayesian analysis you should probably assign that a pretty low probability. They don’t even read their own theory, much less ours.
Except you don’t need to read a lot of theory to endlessly repeat Conservative talking points whilst advocating voter behaviour likely to lead the world’s most powerful military to be controlled by fascists. You must have come across “communists” who just spout putin’s talking points?
Like I said, and you seem to have missed it, not everyone supporting Trump is American, and not everyone supporting Trump is stupid.
Trump himself is really very stupid but he’s worked with some less stupid people who know what lines will track well with different voter bases, and lemmy.ml has swallowed the third party guilt-free-complicity line really enthusiastically, but not as wholesale as it swallowed the push America right to push it left line.
So no, sorry, just as it’s really hard to tell sarcasm about Trump from support, and just as it’s really hard to tell satire about Trump from actual things trump said, it’s almost impossible to tell sincere leftists who were duped into parrotting rightwing talking points about the election from trump supporters busy doing the duping.
If it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck, I find it hard to believe that it’s a swan. After all, if you’re pissing in the petrol tank, don’t ask me to spend a long time listening to why it’s good for the engine.
Oh, so now it’s that you’re surrounded by secret agents from foreign countries, and that’s the only reason people disagree with you. I’m assuming that there’s no possible evidence that would falsify this conspiracy theory, right?
Superb straw man there.
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Some people are spouting these right wing talking points about voting because they’re left wing and have been duped.
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Some people are spouting these right wing talking points about voting because they’re right wing and doing the duping.
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Some people who are spouting these right wing talking points about voting are Americans.
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Some people who are spouting these right wing talking points about voting are not Americans.
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Some people who are spouting these right wing talking points about voting are not very clever.
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Some people who are spouting these right wing talking points about voting are clever.
You claim that half of these couldn’t possibly exist, because for some reason you think that only Americans approve of Trump, you believe that only Americans want to influence the American election and you characterise all Trump supporters as dumb rednecks or something more offensive, then I point out the even ones exist and you claim I’m a conspiracy theorist. Wow.
You claim that half of these couldn’t possibly exist
Nowhere did I claim this. Kind of funny that you strawman me right after accusing me of strawmanning you.
A conspiracy theory is not something that is impossible to be true, it’s just implausible. It could be that the checkout clerk at my local grocery is an undercover FBI agent, why couldn’t it? It’s just that there’s no evidence for it and it would be pretty unreasonable to assert that, especially if there was no possible way to falsify it.
I could just as easily claim that you’re working for US intelligence, I’d have just as much basis. But I’m not a paranoid conspiracy theorist, so I don’t. By Occam’s razor and the principle of charity, I assume that you simply believe other things than me. That concept of people having different beliefs and values seems to be something that liberals simply cannot grasp - as if there’s one obviously correct position and everyone else is either stupid or being deceived by bad actors. It’s quite silly.
I don’t espouse any “right wing” positions, and I don’t generally see other people on here doing the same. My criticism of liberals is from a leftist perspective, grounded in leftist values and theory, and drawing from leftist intellectual traditions. It’s just that liberals want to lump anyone who disagrees with them on anything for any reason as right wing in order to discredit and dismiss them.
Kind of funny that you strawman me right after accusing me of strawmanning you.
Er…
Like I said, and you seem to have missed it, not everyone supporting Trump is American, and not everyone supporting Trump is stupid.
Oh, so now it’s that you’re surrounded by secret agents from foreign countries, and that’s the only reason people disagree with you. I’m assuming that there’s no possible evidence that would falsify this conspiracy theory, right?
This you?
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