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Back in the day, Abraham Lincoln did not vow to end slavery if elected.
Frederick Douglas worked for Lincoln, because Lincoln was the best candidate.
Really, how do we get viable third parties? How do we change the voting system to not have " spoiler candidates "? The binary is rotting us.
how do we get viable third parties?
By having a third party that's willing to put in the work and do things the right way.
So, instead of having a do-nothing candidate like Jill Stein who shows up right before every election, then disappears again after only obtaining a half of a single percent of the total votes, we'd have to have a third party that started focusing on winning local/state elections. That would allow them to start having more than ZERO members in the houses of Congress, which is currently the case. And once they have members in Congress, from various districts around the country, then they'd have a real chance at running a presidential candidate who can win.
Make no mistake. Anyone that currently votes for a 3rd party candidate for president is an utter fool. And there are A LOT of them on Lemmy. A 3rd party cannot win. They are nowhere near winning. Because they haven't put in the work to create a coalition to actually start having a presence in our government.
What you need is a Bernie Sanders funding his own political party, then recruit the AOC and likes. Then they constantly for 20 years present on themselves and refuse to compromise with Democrats and call them on their bullshit whatsoever.
But idk why they didn't do it sad for you
You go out and work in the primaries.
Look at AOC. The guy she ousted was a mainstay of the NY Democratic Party for decades.
If you wait until the general election you get no input.
Not by going directly for a moonshot at the presidency. You spend years getting people involved in local politics, then work your way up. State and local governments have power, even if it's "boring".
That or a coup or other violent, abrupt, wildcards.
If you don't like trump and you didn't vote, then you're to blame.
My country has compulsory voting so nobody has an excuse
I have no intention of voting for anyone less than a progressive. The moderates will only slow America's falling off a cliff, they have no intention on stopping or reversing course.
Friendly reminder that the goal behind posting memes like this is to instill a sense of cynicism and discourage political participation from people who hold progressive values. A key indicator here is the use of the nefarious-but-nebulous "they" which is commonly used in antisemitic-coded "globalist" or "cabal" conspiracy theories.
Democracy in America is unequal and unfair but the "deep state" the way conspiracy theorist portray it is simply not real.
You overcooked this one dawg. Just an easy dunk on the incompetence of the DNC.
Accusing OP of posting crypto-antisemitism for using the word “they” in the title of a post that has an extremely clear, literally labeled target (the DNC, if you look at the second panel) feels extremely disingenuous.
It also has nothing to do with discouraging political participation, but rather encouraging more active political participation in processes outside of simply voting intermittently. When both choices offered are dogshit, or no choice is presented in the first place, the point isn't to say "all hope is lost give up" but rather "this is broken in a way that voting will not fix."
When the DNC is actively doing things such as obfuscating the very clear decline of the sitting president in order to bypass the primary process and install Harris, or ratfucking someone like Bernie via super delegates, media control, and so on in '16, this was not done by some "nefarious-but-nebulous they". It's very explicitly the DNC. Harris was one of the least popular candidates in '20, one of the first to drop from the race, and her term as vice president did very little to ingratiate her to those she ostensibly represents.
Whatever it is that needs to happen in order for people to get the sort of representation and principled opposition to fascism that most of them actually want, the DNC itself is obviously highly resistant or outright incapable of providing it. Voting alone will not fix this.
(edited '16 to '20 for the Harris primary drop out, realized I'd gotten dates mixed up and double checked afterwards to confirm)
This is orchestrated. The DNC knows that these Republicans dressed as democrats can't win, because even democratic voters hate them.
Silly to think our votes will ever count again
If the fascists truly believed your votes don't/won't count in the future, they wouldn't be working so hard to take away voting rights.
I think we're dangerously close to a point where voting won't matter, but we're not there yet. Look at the Wisconsin Supreme Court race a few weeks ago. Elon Musk got involved and personally spent more than $25 million to try to buy the race. He was directly paying off voters to vote for the Republican. There was nearly $100 million spent on the race, an overwhelming majority of which was spent by/for the Republican.
Yet the Democrat won with like 10 percentage points more of the vote. She blew the Musk funded fascist out of the water. It wasn't even close.
If voting really didn't matter at all, do you really think that would have been the outcome?
If voting really didn't matter at all, would they be actively trying to strip voting rights away from women right now?
Don't fall for the fascist propaganda. Voting still matters. It's not the only thing that matters. We should all be way more engaged in politics than merely voting. But voting still matters, too.
This debate is so silly because the real cause has to do with economic conditions and not the small policy differences between Kamala and Bernie or whoever the left wanted.
TIL genocide is a small policy difference for libs.
Did you really just learn this?
I’m saying from the perspective of American voters. And for them, yes, genocide in a faraway place is a small issue. If they’re even aware it’s happening at all.
But also, I don’t think the policy differences here are that impactful. I don’t see the US stopping the genocide without going to war, which I don’t see any appetite for from anyone.
As an American who voted third party instead of Kamala because of these kinds of policy's, (I don't mean to offend you) but I don't think you know what you're talking about.
That's a privileged ass take right there. You think the difference between kamala's policy's and universal healthcare and state paid high education are small?
I’m speaking from the perspective of American voters. But it’s actually the opposite. The privileged can research and think about bigger reforms like universal healthcare. But I think most voters just wanted prices to go down.
Okay but the point is they should've been able to run a wet paper bag against Trump and win.
🔴
Dems chose someone worse than a wet paper bag.
I dunno. Pretty sure a wet paper bag would have been better than a felon rapist traitor who's shitting on our Constitution and tanking our economy.
We have two corporate parties, the status quo and the controlled opposition. They occasionally switch labels but until we get the corporate out, we will never have a real choice.