If they get enough votes, people will take them more seriously and politicians might take some of their policy positions.
Eh, the best way to be taken seriously is relevant experience. Flight simulator enthusiasts don’t immediately become fighter pilots, frycooks don’t immediately become Michelin star Chefs, nurses don’t immediately become neurosurgeons.
President is a high level job with high complexity and high skill requirements. When a candidate’s highest office held is “community organizer”, that’s not a serious candidate and their policy positions don’t carry any credibility.
I’m absolutely for progressive policy, I just didn’t think voting 3rd party in the presidential election helps, even in shifting sentiment. What will help is relentlessly voting for progressive down ballot and locally. Get those community organizers into real political offices where they can build real experience and forward real policy.
Politics is a long game, trying to skip the middle stages is shooting yourself in the foot.
Oh absolutely. But you only get so many options for each position, so it’s best to maximize the utility of each of those votes.
In my case, pretty much every office will go to the GOP by a 20%+ margin. We used to have a competitive House district, but they gerrymandered that away and now every House seat is uncompetitive. In fact, many seats have no competition at all (my State House rep seat hasn’t been contested since I moved here, and the State Senate seat has been contested once). So I leave those uncontested seats empty or write-in (if write-in is an option), and I vote for the best candidate for the job for the other seats. What ends up happening is that my ballot looks something like this:
- 50% - biggest third party
- 25% - Democrat - occasionally a decent candidate runs
The rest are uncontested (e.g. State House) or non-partisan seats (e.g. school board).
And yes, it’s a long game, hence why I refuse to vote for the lesser of two evils when that lesser evil has zero chance to win.
I wouldn normally agree with you, but I think there are several red states that could be a lot more competitive this year.
