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What will it take for staunch Democrats to vote third party? (x.com)
submitted 1 month ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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cross-posted from: https://lemmy.crimedad.work/post/151111

With the dust is settling from their defeat on Tuesday, it's becoming clearer that there was some incredible malpractice going on in the Democratic party. As shown in the tweet I linked, Biden delayed dropping out even though his team knew it was going to be a complete blowout for Trump. Then, we have Harris's campaign spending over a billion dollars and still losing all of the swing states she needed to win.

For all the Democrats who would never vote Republican and would have never voted third party, are you now considering voting third party in future elections? If not, what would it take?

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 month ago (3 children)

I’ll move if they distance themselves from the platform I believe in, or if there’s a third party candidate that happens to be enticing enough.

The platform I support, in ranked order:

  • Pro environment
  • Personal freedoms / social liberty
  • Statecraft over War
  • Higher taxes on the rich, comparatively, but not to the point of stifling innovation
  • Education, Internet and Healthcare as fundamental rights
  • Capitalism, with competition
  • Global Trade
  • Pro Union
  • Space exploration
  • Security (only at the level needed to maintain personal freedom)
  • YIMBYism
  • Reducing National debt
  • Federalism

As I see it, the Dems are still pretty aligned with that, perhaps just not in the same prioritized order, and that’s fair, because they have others they’ll lose first before they lose me.

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 month ago (2 children)

This doesn't quite apply to me, since I live somewhere with RCV and gladly use it. But:

A third party that doesn't waste my time by only running top-line candidates while ignoring every other aspect of the necessary political gains to achieve their goals. Especially when the planks of their platform are overwhelmingly in the hands of the house and senate and not in the purview of the one position for which they decided to lackadaisically run. A third party presidential win with no support in the legislature would doom any real progress that third parties could hope to achieve - giving us a figurehead with no means to enact their agenda would only dissuade voters from seeing future candidates as viable and locking us back into the same dichotomy.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago (3 children)

The viability and practicality of third party presidential candidates isn't relevant to the question. If the Democratic party doesn't change and keeps losing, what good does it do for Democratic progressives to keep compromising for it when third party candidates with better platforms are available?

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 month ago (1 children)

All the people who were doing that are now pushing RCV or other election reforms that would make it realistic for third parties to be able to get all the way to winning. The third-party people who are running in FPTP elections are, almost universally, either attention-seekers or deliberate spoiler candidates. Bernie Sanders, when he was running, joined up with the Democrats instead of running as a spoiler candidate, because he's making an earnest attempt at making things better.

It doesn't really matter now because we've slipped one rung down the civilizational Maslow pyramid now, and are in for a fight to preserve the right in any capacity to elect who we want in power. But, whenever we make it back out to the other side of that, it'd be nice to remember to reconfigure the system so third parties can actually win, first, and then run third party candidates after that, not the other way around.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 month ago

Firmly agreed. Too many people I know forget that social progress is measured in inches and social regression is measured in yards (cm's and m's for our other friends). I'll gladly vote "no backsliding" on the top line, knowing that I can keep pressuring for progress in the interim.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Sanders got fucked in 2016 and the Democrats who get nominated aren’t great and yes it’s partially the Democrats’ fault they got so few votes in 2024. I strongly disagree that it’s chiefly their fault, but that horse is out of the barn now, and also the barn is on fire now and connected to the house with the children inside.

There will be some incredible shit going down in the next few years. It’ll be a challenge to have any sort of elections in 2028 that have anything non-Republican in any position to win anything. I don’t think it will happen.

If you want to have a conversation about how we get left-wing values to win in future elections, start with how we fight to preserve basic freedoms like elections that don’t have Trump’s election integrity squad in charge of them, and free speech online, and the military not being used against American protestors.

I hope I’m wrong but I think some real shit is going to go down real soon. I don’t think we should assume elections are going to be normal and then plan from that assumption.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 month ago (1 children)

If left-wing values can't win in 2028 it will be because the Democratic candidate runs as a knock-off Republican again, which isn't going to win either.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

Give it a rest. I can argue back my point of view to you, and we can go back and forth a little, and it's pointless.

I can guarantee you that people in large numbers will get their doors kicked in by the police and hauled away, and laws will get passed that make it a crime to be anti-Republican. How wide a scale and how bad that all will get isn't certain, but I think it will be pretty bad.

Your days of pointing at the Democrats as the problem need to stop, and their days of pointing at the Bernie Sanders crowd and the Palestine protestors as the problem need to stop, because even if we (edit: ~~don't~~) do put all that bullshit aside and start fighting together against the real enemy for real, we might not win. I really don't care who's right anymore. Before the election, I did. That stuff is over.

The more people who are still convinced that their own side needs to be made into the enemy in any respect, the harder that fight will get, and it'll already be hard, and bad.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I can guarantee you that people in large numbers will get their doors kicked in by the police and hauled away, and laws will get passed that make it a crime to be anti-Republican. How wide a scale and how bad that all will get isn’t certain, but I think it will be pretty bad.

If you can better define and quantify your expectations, I might be willing to take the other side of that bet.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 month ago (5 children)

Sure. 100,000 people hauled away by the cops when they haven’t done anything or committed what we would now consider a crime. Mass deportations of currently legal immigrants, or serious charges for people who participated in a protest but nothing else, is the obvious possibility.

That and laws or federally enforced law-facsimiles of some kind that mean you get punished just for a certain viewpoint that would be fine now. It could be a crime for a social media company or a private citizen to debunk election fraud claims from 2020, or something similar to that.

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[–] [email protected] 52 points 1 month ago (2 children)

Ranked choice voting or similar.

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 month ago (3 children)

Lemmy, 1 week ago: "A THIRD PARTY VOTE IS A REPUBLICAN VOTE!"

Lemmy, today: "WE SHOULD ALL BE VOTING THIRD PARTY!"

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 month ago (1 children)

A week ago, a third party vote for president was a vote for Trump.

The presidential election is over. Now is the time to rejigger the political gameboard.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 month ago

I will be back to comment on this thread in 4 years, when unimaginative US libs are saying the same exact thing to try to goad others into a Democrat vote.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 month ago

It's not the Democratic Party is going to learn anything from this. Might as well set that bitch on fire and try to get something else going.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 month ago

The responses I've been getting so far don't seem very warm to third party voting at all.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (3 children)

A truly progressive third party that also actually has a prayer of winning. They would need a groundswell of individual small donors making up much of their campaign funding because mainstream ain't gonna fund them, so good luck with that.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago (1 children)

You could run a modern campaign with nothing but social media memes and volunteers.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 month ago

Bernie Sanders did that, and it did great. It wasn't enough to win, partly because the Democrats fucked him.

At this point, you'll have to contend with massive social-media operations which are working against and shaping the narratives that most of the country use as a substitute for news, to understand what's happening in the world. I think the time to be able to do it has passed, for a little while, without on-the-ground anti-electoral organizing on a massive scale.

See who you can find in your area. It's about to get real, I think.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago (1 children)

So, the green party. Good thing a bunch of far right idiots didn't spend the last 8 years implying a licensed medical doctor at the head of the party was a Russian spy.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

I wrote her off many years ago for reasons I don't remember, but know had nothing to do with that. Also, COVID proved being a licensed MD isn't a reliable yardstick.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 month ago (2 children)

Despite a billion dollars in funding, the Democrats campaign didn't have a prayer either. And I have a hard time calling their platform progressive at all. Anyone who liked it more than that of the Greens or the PSL would have just voted Republican.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

You're ignoring the "prayer of winning" part. Until then, I'm voting against the bigger asshole.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Yes, but as it turned out, Harris didn't have a prayer either. If you weren't voting for Trump (I assume you consider him to be the bigger asshole) it didn't matter if you voted for Harris or any other candidate. So unless the Democrats make big changes to their platform and the people running their campaigns... well, it's insanity to expect a different result. There's got to be a point where progressive Democrats decide that they might as well vote with some dignity for third party candidates.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

Until I have good reason to believe that my vote stands a good chance of actually mattering should I do such a thing, no. There's no way of knowing the result beforehand, so I'd rather play it safer and spend it on trying to prevent the worst possible outcome. Might not always work, but then again it might.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 month ago

In a FPTP race with a large electorate, it's a pretty safe bet that your individual vote will not matter to the outcome. That's not even considering the effect of the Electoral College.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 month ago (1 children)

This is like survivor bias.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I'm not sure what you mean. We're looking at the wreckage.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 month ago (1 children)

We're looking at the wreckage.

If you knew what survivorship bias was, and the example usually given for where it came from, you might see the irony in what you just said.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 month ago (1 children)

It's the opposite though? By phrasing it this way it implies the data comes from downed fighters/bombers, aka the exact data you want to avoid that.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 month ago

Yup. In the context of the election, survivorship bias would be Democratic strategists looking at the Trump campaign and saying "we gotta get more racist". Considering at their position on immigration, that's apparently what they did.

[–] [email protected] 32 points 1 month ago (1 children)

If not, what would it take?

A viable third party candidate. Before anyone says it, Jill Stein is not it. Alternately, a voting method that allows voting third party without just enabling a GOP sweep (again).

It'd be great if this resulted in some major revision of the Democratic party from within, but I'm not holding my breath. I will, however, continue voting for the "less bad viable option" if the "more bad option" is on par with Trump.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 month ago (3 children)

That's fair, but if the Democrats are also running candidates that aren't viable or not running viable campaigns, then you're just compromising your principles for nothing.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 month ago (2 children)

A decent human being doesn't vote for the most principled candidate, they instead vote for the candidate who would hurt the fewest number of people by winning while (importantly) actually having a chance of winning.

Moral absolutism isn't moral, it results in people getting hurt, because whoever adheres to it decided for themsevles that their principles are more important than fellow human beings. The sooner you realize this, the better.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago

My question isn't about morality.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I will never vote for genocide, turns out there's at least 15 million like me. You enjoy being responsible for this genocide and any expansion of it Trump does, as you voted for it.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Now we get genocide and a president who raped kids. He gets off Scot free for his crimes now

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 month ago (1 children)

He was always going to get away with the pointless charges, no president will ever be allowed near a jail, they know too much.

To your first point thats not worse than genocide. Genocide is genocide. It's like infinity, you can't add to infinity meaningfully.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I tend to think more genocide is worse than less genocide. Nice to see you don’t care about the rapes. Real ally to women and children.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

No, genocide is genocide. Once you do it, you're no longer human. Doesn't matter more or less. As to your second point, read the username. Trump isn't the first pedo in office, he's not even the most famous. You're in the wrong country if you hate pedophiles in power, we haven't had a year where that's not the case.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 month ago (10 children)

Cool, but I was talking about stopping this one. Don’t you want to stop them? Sounds like you don’t

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[–] [email protected] 21 points 1 month ago (2 children)

It's about who has a chance of winning. If you're trying to argue that any candidate other than Harris had a chance of beating Trump in this recent election, you're kidding yourself.

I've said this before and I'll continue saying it: Trying to inject a 3rd party candidate into the presidential race is foolish. A much better tactic would be trying to push for 3rd party candidates in smaller races for local / state government, or congress. Doing that is a lot easier, and can make small incremental changes that add up over time. There simply isn't a realistic way for a third party candidate to compete in the presidential race until the voting system is changed.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 month ago

If you’re trying to argue that any candidate other than Harris had a chance of beating Trump in this recent election, you’re kidding yourself.

I'm not trying to argue that. I'm saying that it's becoming apparent that the Democratic party is in such bad shape that they had no chance to beat Trump either. If they fail to make significant changes, to their personnel and their platform, they are going to keep failing in subsequent elections. If they're going to lose anyway, then there's got to be a point where progressive Democrats start voting with some dignity for third party candidates.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 month ago

Sanders and Stein would have won.

Harris never had a chance of winning. Running a far right cop for the party that is opposed to far right cops is the dumbest possible fucking move.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 month ago (1 children)

That's self-defeating nonsense.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 month ago (1 children)

It was actually self-defeating to run on a platform that got an (enthusiastically received) endorsement from Dick Cheney.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 month ago (3 children)

Pasting my own comment, as I really think there was a reason for this.

"I’ve been seeing a trend for the last few years and I think it explains the shift that people have been pointing out in the Democratic party. The way in which many Democrats felt railroaded into Hillary in 2016, I think the same is happening to the Republican party, albeit more unknowingly. There is a not insignificant amount of Republicans who have been disenfranchised from voting red because that’s just what you do. It all comes down to the Republican party being split by the MAGA cult, with those Republican voters wanting to return back to the status quo of red vs. blue. Of course what they don’t realize is that the culture war that the conservatives have been imposing is what created this whole situation in the first place.

Anyway, this is where Dick Cheney comes in. Yes, a representative of that culture war that brought us here, but not a MAGA cultist. An endorsement from one of the most recognized Republicans is an attempt to move back towards the classical conservatism, away from the clamoring fervor that the Trump presidency put the country in.

That is to say, if the Green Party is meant to siphon votes from Democrats, The Classical Republican Dick Cheney is meant to appeal to the votes from Moderate Republicans and maybe convince some Republican voters who would have voted red “because that’s what you do”, to instead vote for Kamala.

This isn’t to say his endorsement of her isn’t damning and that the leaders of the Democratic haven’t been shifting away from the left. Just positing that like many of us, there’s a portion of Republicans out there who are just as tired."

I wrote this pre-election results. Can probably tell. But basically Tl;Dr Cheney is a classical conservative and his endorsement was an attempt to return to the status quo pre-MAGA, as a way to hopefully return to the Republican vs. Democrat split, instead of this 4 way split between leftist, liberal, conservative, and MAGA voters.

Obviously, that didn't sit that well with the Democrats and the leftists. I get where the campaign was coming from, I don't agree and it was a bad move, but I understand it.

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