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The 2 party system is horseshit, but this is your recurring reminder that the greens are not worth your vote.
Any party serious about affecting change does so at the local level first. The fact that the greens consistently try to get attention with symbolic candidacies at the national level while being fuck all out of touch with school boards and local politics paints them as diva opportunists at best and bad faith progressive spoilers at worst.
This is coming from someone who agrees with most of West’s platform at face value
Eh, the reform party nearly got it. It can be easier to get local elections after achieving national legitimacy.
They made no inroads after Hilary vs Trump. They aren’t going to see any better opportunity for national legitimacy, and it wasn’t enough to make a significant difference. If they want to succeed, they have to start local.
The Reform party had national legitimacy in the 90s, but not much because they didn’t win the presidential elections. Then they dissolved.
Tell that to the Tea Party, the last significant change in voting dynamics we’ve had as a nation, that won almost entirely at the local level and got fucking destroyed on the national stage.
The Tea Party is what eventually led to the populist surge that backed Trump.
The Tea party movement (which was within the Republican party) was born out of the Reform party and their national fame.
Running for president as a 3rd party is like proposing marriage to random strangers instead of, y’know, dating people. We all know you’re doing it for attention because it’s not going to work.
Which is… never. At least for presidential elections. I can’t speak for the marriage proposals.
The Republican party didn’t appear out of nowhere in 1860 to win a presidential race. They were formed in 1854 and supplanted the Whig party entirely before the 1860 election. It was a majority party throughout the north before it won a presidential race — it wasn’t a “third party.”
Likewise, Democrats replaced the Democratic-Republican party in much the same way that republicans replaced the Whig party, and had been a major party from its very beginnings. Literally in their first election there were only two parties running!
There are only three other parties that have won the presidency: Federalists (there from the inception of the party system), Democratic-Republicans (ditto), and Whigs (major party years before first electoral win). There’s been no “third party” that has ever won the US presidency. All three have the same story as democrats as starting off in an election with just two parties.
I’m a green party supporter (not in the US) and couldn’t agree more. I support the greens as much as I can to help spread environmental awareness, but if the election looks like it will be close, I vote for the party most likely to defeat the conservatives.
IMO still better to vote 3rd party than to waste your vote with the blues and reds.
We need to start showing them that we are not shee, just keep voting for them with no changes; Reagan/BushSr/Clinton/BushJr/Obama/Trump/Biden all they did was for the wealthy class not for the working class, do not get me wrong they do throw in crumbs here and there…
Trump admin: passes $1.5 trillion tax cut where 60% of savings go to the top 20% and slashes the corporate tax rate by 40%
Biden admin: passes $1 trillion infrastructure bill, $400 billion in climate funding, $1.9 trillion in COVID aid that temporarily boosted unemployment aid and child tax credit, and first major gun safety legislation in decades, seen here
Demand change. Demand more from the politicians that work for you. Take Biden and all elected officials to account for expiring temporary relief for the lower class. But on many important issues for the lower class there are big differences between red and blue.
You don’t get it, we don’t care for the crumbs.
They don’t matter to us, only to you who still vote team blue no matter what.
The real problems will only be addressed when we all band together against the wealthy class, so we need to stop playing their games.
We need ranked choice voting first. Funny how it’s something both Democrats and Republicans can unite over why it’s bad, confusing, whatever…
Eh I think it’s more complicated than that. Neither national party is calling for it definitely. And DC Dems are suing to block it in the city. But if you look at where RCV is implemented it’s basically very Democratic cities and independent-streak states like Maine and Alaska. Both of which do have a lot of pressure from viable independent/dem-soc alternatives. It’s also completely banned in Florida, Idaho, Montana, South Dakota, and Tennessee. So I would tip the scales slightly towards Democrats here, but I agree it primarily challenges those in power so if you’ve been elected under the current system you’re usually not crazy about it regardless of party. (To be clear I totally support RCV or really anything other that FPtP voting)
Some democrats don’t like RCV (see the DC thread from the other day), but many do. NYC has RCV, and I assure you it didn’t get there without democrats supporting it. So does Maine.
RCV wouldn’t work well for presidential elections as they are anyway, because it’s a two-stage election. What would RCV mean in an individual state? Pretend a 3rd party is in contention in that state but has no chance nationally. Candidates A and B are the major parties, and C is our third party. If the results are C=40, A=35, B=25, and B’s support transfers to C, and C’s support would transfer to C, does that mean B should be eliminated so C can win the state, or should C be eliminated (because they won’t win any other states) and B should win the state? There’s no obvious answer and it just invites more of a clusterfuck.
RCV is great for popular vote elections, which is what everything else is (mostly… there’s… I think it’s Mississippi governor?) and what the presidential election should be.
Popular vote first, RCV second.
You know who was involved with the Green Party back in the early 2000s? Kyrsten Sinema.
I mean, you don’t even need to go that far back. 2016 green presidential candidate Jill Stein literally rubbed elbows with Putin and Mike Flynn in 2015
