At least some, like Ralph Nader, regretted it. Now we have those actively seeking to spoil the vote.
The tragic thing about Nader was his activism basically proved to General Motors and later large American corporations in general that political engagement and and public opinion was vital. The corpos learned to fight grass roots activism with astro-turf until they were just as skilled as Nader’s acolytes, only with orders of magnitude more resources.
Every time I see an Oil company do a commercial about their commitment to the environment I think of Ralph.
Similarly, Woodward and Bernstein showed the corporations how dangerous an independent press was.
Back in Watergate Era, there were plenty of locally owned newspapers and TV stations. Today, thanks to ronald reagan’s assault on the Fairness Doctrine, we have six major media companies controlling what we hear.
What does third parties have to do with lifelong Dem voters wanting the Dem candidate to side with the Dem voting base on basic parts of the party platform like:
-
No fracking
-
Better healthcare
-
Climate change is real and producing less fossil fuels is a good thing
What you’re doing is insisting if you’re not 100% loyal to the candidate with a D by their name you really have an R.
That’s the same fucking shit Republicans went thru and it ended up with trump.
Why the fuck do you want to follow down the path of “never criticize the party, and always vote for them”.
Please explain to the class why this time it will work out good for the party that takes that path.
It’s not that it will work out good (though in a sense, it has for the R in that they got what they actually wanted), it’s that if the Rs have ~50% ish support, no matter what they do, because of them going that route, the only way to beat them is to get everyone that isn’t them in a coalition together.
Right and that makes sense…
Unfortunately that’s not what Kamala is doing.
I’ll say it till my face turns blue:
Taking a stand against fracking is all it would take to guarantee trump can’t win, but Kamala is pro-fracking, refuses to give the party voters what they want, and refuses to even explain why being pro-feacking is seen as a good choice by her and her campaign.
That isn’t the only issue she’s to the right of the party on either.
It’s like her, her campaign, and the DNC aren’t focused on beating trump, they want to beat Trump while giving the voters the bare minimum it would take, because the more they give voters, the less they get in donations.
So then telling voters “all that matters is beating trump” it’s obviously bullshit because they’re not doing everything possible to beat trump.
It ain’t complicated.
Like you said:
the only way to beat them is to get everyone that isn’t them in a coalition together.
That’s the opposite of what OP spends their time on, but considering a month ago they were intentionally spreading misinformation about when early voting started, I’m surprised the mods still let them post here.
Every single “meme” OP posts is about how Dem voters should fight with Dem voters rather than band together.
The problem is that the broader Democratic electorate is a much bigger tent, with overall much more moderate politics, than online leftists are typically willing to admit. We’re still only eight years past an election where Hillary Clinton took the Rust Belt for granted, and we all paid the price for that when traditionally solid union votes swung to Trump because he was boosting fossil fuel extraction while Clinton implicitly threatened the livelihoods of families dependent on coal and fracking jobs.
Healthcare you have a point on, but also keep in mind that the last time Dems had the votes for sort of sweeping reform was 2008, and what we got out of that was the ACA, which for all its faults was still a big step up over the status quo. Obama was going for a big bipartisan win, in spite of McConnell’s announcing that he was killing bipartisanship in the GOP caucus, and that was a mistake, but perhaps an understandable one given that up to that point that’s how Congress had always worked.
There have been windows of time since in which Dems have held the Presidency and both houses of Congress, but never with enough margin to defeat a Senate filibuster, and with DINOs like Manchin and Sinema standing in the way of filibuster reform. I do not doubt that progressives in Congress would move an M4A or public option bill through the legislature if, in 2025, the House flips back and the Senate stays Democratic in spite of the unfavorable cycle, but withholding your vote doesn’t get you any closer to that happening.
The problem is that the broader Democratic electorate is a much bigger tent, with overall much more moderate politics, than online leftists are typically willing to admit
Polls show progressive policy isn’t just popular with Dems, but all voters…
That’s life mate, I’m sorry it doesn’t agree with your opinions, but it’s the truth.
That’s why Obama’s 08 campaign did so fucking well, despite not really being that progressive in any other developed country.
The neoliberal experiment has only benefited the wealthy, stop defending them, they got lawyers and lobbyists for them, pick people over corps and we can get something done.
Except Biden repeatedly gave in to pressure from his voter base on a lot of actions, we also got a lot of changes to DNC policy care of Sanders voter base. It’s not ‘‘do or die’’ it’s vote for an administration that will actually respond to pressure and voter’s policy goals, or vote for a dictator backed by industralists who all want an ethnostate of uneducated second class citizens.
Except Biden repeatedly gave in to pressure from his voter base on a lot of actions, we also got a lot of changes to DNC policy care of Sanders voter base.
And Biden got elected despite his age…
2020 was an example of the candidate moving their campaign left and winning the election.
What’s your alternative, Trump? Because a 3rd party candidate will never win the general election without a massive overhaul of our election system which will never happen as long as the Rs have a majority in any branch of the government.
I think this is a dumb take. Third parties are only used like this in the US because our voting system is incredibly broken and there is little interest in fixing it. If you don’t explicitly highlight the caveats:
- The spoiler effect is a fixable problem, even on the state by state basis.
- Third parties are, conceptually, a great idea
then what you’re doing is attempting to uphold and protect the broken system from being improved.
It is a fixable problem, but it is not a fixed problem. Bringing them up during presidential elections and only during presidential elections doesn’t fix the problem and just leads to it.
Which is why the correct way to bring it up is to mention the spoiler effect.
The problem is when you talk to some republicans they want a 1 party system. They want to ban democrats. If you talk to some democrats they believe we should ban third parties. These are both antidemocracy views that normalize each other.
So what you’re arguing for here (to be very clear) is that it is better to embrace a softer form of anti-democracy messaging than to explain that we should avoid voting third party when spoiler effects are a concern.
You improve a broken system by fixing the broken system, not by pretending you’re not using it.
Vote, agitate or even run as a candidate that will pass ranked choice voting, locally or larger. Support the interstate electoral vote compact. Do whatever you can to directly fix the system.
Until then, you mitigate harm within the broken system.
Nobody is arguing that. The problem is presenting third parties as bad without giving any sort of context on how and where harm needs to be mitigated.
For instance: Alaska has ranked choice voting. Why on earth would you waste resources telling people to oppose third parties if you know some of the people you’re talking to live in alaska? It makes no sense. The problem here, as it has always been, is the voting system cannot handle 3rd parties and we should back away from them where spoiler effects are a concern
