American shower thoughts
If only there was some kind of proven road map where countries who has been dominated by their ruling elite using the two party trick went on to form a kind of labour movement that forced a third choice on the ruling class…
glances at the current state of the UK Labour party
It’s been known to work for a bit, but its also been known to collapse right back into the old two-party dichotomy. I think the hysteria around third parties baked into every election since the Bush Era SCOTUS-powered election theft in Florida is overblown, particularly when so much of the electorate lives in one-party dominant states. But I’ve also noticed successful outsider parties - the German Greens, France’s En March, the UK Liberal Dems - seem to embrace Corporationism as quickly as any of their German Christian Democrat / French Socialist / UK Tory peers.
And then there’s always this specter of fascism floating on the edge of the political establishment. Your Alternative for Germany, your National Front, and your UKIP create this existential crisis for liberal voters, such that they’re persistently terrorized into voting the “safe” centrist candidates in while ostracizing any candidate actually running on the things they say they want.
The Ruling Elite have the effective roadmap to keep the proles in line. Continuously finance a paper tiger on the right-flank of the election cycle. Make immigration a boogeyman issue that mobilizes the reactionaries within the state to turn out in droves. Then dangle a weak liberal as a release valve - a Starmer or Biden or Macron or Olaf Schultz - that nobody particularly likes, but the liberal-leaning base are told is “electable” because they can win the support of the conservative national media.
People are bombarded with this false choice - weak liberal or strongman conservative - decade after decade, all the way around the edge of the Atlantic, until the institutions these weak liberals are supposed to support are falling apart and the strongman conservatives can easily take over.
Its a doomed system.
The labour party is certainly flawed but you have to remember all they’ve given the people of the UK, in the brief times they’ve been in power (relatively speaking).
I’m not claiming it will fix everything but I would argue that the UK and just about every country thats had a labour movement that got into power benefited from it. Well, the 99% did.
Unless you know when the revolution is coming, it might be better to make alternative arrangements. Short of running to the hills and joining a commune, we’re quite deliberately not given any other option than to vote for better oppression.
The labour party is certainly flawed but you have to remember all they’ve given the people of the UK
You’re going to have to fill me in, because it seems Keir took office and immediately declared that there is no money left in the banana stand.
They couldn’t even restore funding to the H2 connection from Manchester to London, and that’s shit that was already paid for.
True or not, it would take something very special for the new Labour government to have already of given things to the people of the UK, seeing as Parliaments only been back for 2 weeks, don’t you think?
I mean, I have moderate expectations at best. I hope they don’t make things worse but, at the same time, I also think they’ll fall well short of achieving time travel.
Were you expecting time travel? I think you might be disappointed, if so.
I also think they’ll fall well short of achieving time travel.
It’s crazy when something as simple as rejecting the Cass Report and ending the instructional abuse of Trans People is equated with SciFi tiers of impossibility.
I’m sure that made sense, followed on naturally from the conversation and didn’t just sound like unhinged ranting and deflections in your head, at least.
Oh no. JK Rowling has entered the chat.
We need to demand approval choice voting. Every time we hear anything about third parties in this country, we need to use it as a launch pad to tall about approval choice voting
You’d need to grow the third party / greens by having them become a viable party in local elections and state elections first. The greens have failed to do that. Which means they have no chance except to spoil the election.
768 votes wth is wrong with Americans bruh
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pakistan_Tehreek-e-Insaf
If you can create a successful grassroots political party in an environment where your party members and constituents are constantly attacked, murdered, bombed, jailed, tortured, votes faked, votes destroyed, and vote miscounts, you can definitely pull it off in the USA.
It took Pakistan only 20 years to cause a collapse of their corrupt 2 party system and challenge the military dictatorship. People never believed PTI would mount any sort of challenge, but they did by building a solid populist movement, despite facing all of the above.
The “you must vote the lesser evil” is a fallacy that both parties in the USA perpetuate in an attempt to convince you to believe 3rd party voting is a waste of time.
You can’t just sit back and complain about the rigged system like “but muh first past the poll voting” as if either Democrats or Republicans will change the system in any way to make it easier for their rivals.
This is exactly why I dislike the Democratic party in particular so much. They are a corporate monolith that pretends to care about your leftist demands by handing out pennies worth of change to get your vote, then the second they refuse to actually significantly change something you demand, they have the audacity to blame you, the voter, for not sucking up to their shitty policies when they inevitably lose the election.
Current case in point: "There is no genocide in Gaza, and we believe we can win without our constituents because our opponent is a mentally insane baby ".
Shittiest take on this community by far.
Shittiest take on this community by far.
It’s an myriad of reasons from what I can tell. Americans are conditioned to think along the status quo lines even if there is certain degree of freedom of thought. The American corporate media carves the political landscape to intentionally but subtly influence folks to pick either only Democrats or Republicans.
Another reason is that, I suppose rugged invidualism won out in the American society for better mobilisation. As you rightly pointed out, there just isn’t grassroots activism among American people (not counting civil and lgbt rights which are undoubtedly grassroots activism and successful ones at that). But this isn’t what it used to be. Before and in the early 20th century, there have been other third political parties still gaining respectable number of votes, the last one being the Socialist Party led by Eugene Debbs. He won a respectable 1 million votes as a presidential candidate while campaigning from prison during World War I.
Not sure what happened why political grassroots activism that could counter either Democratic and Republican parties died out, but my guess is that the proliferation of mass media in the 20th century may have had a hand to convince people to stick with two parties, as well as heavy emphasis on individualistic values.
Insane levels of cope from the party that’s suing states to remove the “unviable” third parties to protect their genocide candidate’s chances at beating someone who is literally incapable of forming basic sentences
Another .ml user spouting bullshit. Look at that.
genocide candidate
Ah, here you guys are.
Keep the snark going, I’m sure it’ll help when you’re scrambling to get people to vote when their lives are being made worse to ensure Israel’s endless wars keep going.
How many dead kids will it take for you to grow a spine?
Another .ml troll. Imagine that.
What are you doing about it?
IF ONLY THE US WAS AS GOOD AS THE ONLY TWO FREE NATIONS ON EARTH, RUSSIA AND CHINA
Joking just in case it isn’t obvious
Yawn
“Why would I vote for a primary party candidate who supports ranked choice voting when I can just throw my vote away on a third-party candidate that will never be elected? I’ve got principles!”
Voting for either side is just accepting the status quo.
Third party vote today is just laying ground work for a generational fight. There is no other way to get the attention from the politicians.
They rule on behalf of donors and two party system ensures they ways win, they just take turns.
There is no other way to get the attention from the politicians.
And if those politicians are so keen on ignoring you, why would they listen to this? Oh, you voted for Cornel West because you’re “unsatisfied,” literally who cares? The status quo wins again, goodbye. Say hello to the camps.
Say hello to the camps.
is the new DNC FUD we get for voting third party?
yes please put me into fema camp staffed by obama death panel, my DNC komissar 🤡
You didn’t answer the question.
If the DNC doesn’t listen anyway, why would a 3rd party vote “get attention from them”?
I stated my position on this issue all over this thread.
But for you here again dear:
This tactic will only work if peasants are able to upset the regime sufficiently. a constant 3-5 percent every election, they will have to take notice. double digits they will have to start planning around it.
This is a generational tactic, it will take several cycles to get the message across IF AND ONLY IF we can get 2-10% of voters of to go third choice every single election across all elections.
This is a guerilla, asymmetric tactic. No doubt about it.
But it very low cost from personal perspective but can be easily scaled if public sentiment turns.
Once, we got the regime asking questions we can start getting proper 3p candidates in places. Or people can start now on them… but everybody can start denying the regime legitimacy today.
And what happens in the mean time? Third parties almost always take votes from the Democrats. (That is to say, most of the people who vote third party would have voted Democrat if the third party was not on the ballot.) This gives a huge advantage to the Republican party on close elections. The result is further entrenching of the party that has the larger vested interest in not reforming the system. As a result, any generational movement has no chance of succeeding because the party that directly opposes their goal is always in power.
(To expand: since Democrats lose votes to third parties, they are the ones who would greatly benefit from any kind of ranked choice voting, so they tend to support such reforms. Since Republicans benefit more from FPTP, they tend to oppose such reforms.)
It’s all well and good to send a message, but that message will be received by the people who benefit most by ignoring that message.
The better method is to get people in power now who support election reform, get those reforms passed, then third party candidates become viable.
And what happens in the mean time?
The same thing that has been happening since at least the 80s. Quality of life will continue to slowly degrade, less natural child birth, more immigration, more work, less pay, higher taxes.
Your comment hinges on the idea that “if we just vote for democrats this one more time, they will finally reverted the course”
I don’t believe this position. I know most people still do. Hence why this is will be a generational change as more and more people become disenfranchised they will stop voting for either party. We are already partially here but the regime got away because nobody cares about low voter turn outs.
I am shilling fuck NOT VOTING, VOTE AGAINST THESE PARASITES.
If you are a dedicated Democrat, then vote Democrat. That’s how voting works, everybody gets a their vote and they can do with it as they please.
I don’t understand how “I am taking away votes from Democrats”
Why would I care? These people are not my friend, family or “team”
Together with Republicans, the Democrats are the regime the elites use to oppress working people. Why would I engage with a bad faith actor?
There will never be an acceptable time to vote third party according to liberals. Unless you’re fine with an infinite state of groveling towards people in power. If we can’t even push them left on genocide when it could cost the election, we can’t move them left on anything. The status quo is fine for people who have the resources to deal with it and people not effected by Police brutality and other negative effects.
The way to push them left is to actually push them left—protesting, calling your representatives, donating to campaigns you support, voting for candidates in local primaries where your vote is exponentially more influential, et cetera.
But voting in a presidential election doesn’t push anyone anywhere. For one thing, pushing is a continuous, incremental feedback process, while the outcome of a presidential election is a discrete binary one—there’s no map between the two. But more significantly, this buys into a narrative that the media has constructed over the past few generations, in which voting is a semiotic process with the people signaling their desires with their votes and politicians signaling their response with legislation. This leaves the media in full control of the political process by interpreting for each side what the other “means”: because the votes and bills in themselves are devoid of meaning beyond their real effects, the media is free to insert whatever meaning suits them.
I do these things already. I can’t change people’s minds on a mass scale. Genocide is a redline for me. Harris said she will earn support and she is fine with courting former Regan staff and Dick Cheny’s vote. It is on her. Liberals are hostile towards protesters. I’m okay with not being allies with those people. I’ll vote down ballot against GOP. If I can help get Greens to 5% I’ll take it. Plus my State is gone to Trump already. (FL)
I don’t know what the right time is, but it’s definitely not presidential elections.
That’s 100% the right time lol. They get ballot access and funding from these elections.
Exit polls have shown green voters wouldn’t have voted Dems anyway. I don’t get the hostility. There is no vote being lost, and Harris said she wants to earn support and is fine with courting people like Dick Cheney. It is a harder path for third parties but I still think they should run.
You know Democrats are cooked when they start attacking third party voters instead of Trump voters.
Especially now people really start paying attention to the third parties.
For what its worth I agree. The Democrats are killing themselves from within. Say what you want about Trump but they are smart enough to target the moderate crowd. Meanwhile Harris is busy dodging hard questions about her political stance. The liberal media likes to brag about how good the Democrats are doing but the reality is they have lost a lot of ground and Harris is too far left for most of the swing voters. People have not been happy with the way Biden is running things and it shows.
I also find it funny that Harris is adapting the Trump strategy. She is increasingly responding with insults and slander instead of being a cool collected alternative to Trump. Her association with Biden is also not doing her favors and many people just don’t know her well enough to support her.
I suppose Lemmy isn’t the place for political discussion. Lemmy as a whole is far left and it shows. This might be a shock but social media isn’t a good representation of the bigger political views. If you go on a platform dominated by the right you will end up with people calling you far left because you don’t believe in racism.
Democrats would rather get really mad at people who don’t want to support Genocide than just stop supporting Genocide.
If Democrats truly believe Trump is the next Hitler you’d think they would try to appeal to voters a little harder. Maybe the Democratic party is not as scared of Trump as their fearmongering suggests.
Note: Linkerbean is a republican pretending to be left leaning, here just to dissuade left-leaning folk from voting dem.
I said so to them a while back and their reply, since deleted, was “Cope.” https://lemmy.world/comment/12097015
Downvote and move on, but you’ll get only nonsense if you engage.
This comment got reported. And while trolling is not allowed. Attacking an individual is also not allowed. So I’m not sure if attacking them for being a troll is allowed.
If you think a post is trolling (ie: just trying to stir up anger rather than trying to make an argument for something), please report it. If you think a poster is serial trolling please point it out in the report.
I’m open to feedback.
I’ve edited it to make it more factual and perhaps less emotive by replacing the phrase “republican troll” with “republican pretending to be left leaning” and provided a link to where they replied “cope” when I pointed this out to them previously. I don’t know if you can see the reply, it won’t expand for me, but I promise you that’s what it said. I don’t know whether you count arguing in bad faith just to persuade your political opponents not to vote as trolling, but I certainly feel it’s not good behaviour and worth pointing out to folks who are taken in.
Thank you, I really appreciate the effort to tone things down.
I want people to have the freedom be passionate in their comments and posts, and I think the community rules do a good job of allow the freedom to argue passionately. The rules do aim to avoid attacks against people themselves and groups of people.
So, while toning things down is not the primary goal, when things get aggressive it’s harder for everyone to avoid ad hominem attacks.
If it’s easier to reason with third party voters than trump voters, it seems like the logical thing to do.
EDIT: also worth pointing out the difference between “attacking” trump voters as individuals, because they have proven themselves to truly be deplorable, and “attacking” third party voting as a decision.
There’s not much reasoning going on. Only dishonest claims about how Democrats actually stand for things they don’t stand for such as “Biden is actually the biggest ally of Palestinians”, and screaming insults.
Democrats have done far more to reason with Republicans this election cycle than they have with third party voters on the left who at least don’t want genocide but know that the duopoly is never going to budge on their undying support of Israel. Let alone other actually progressive policies.
No, no, THIS time protest-voting to allow fascism will work to usher in a real left-wing movement in this country, promise! /s
lemmy.world going hard against third parties over the past few days, what has spooked them?
They support a genocidal cop as their presidential candidate.
“I am concerned about the genocide in Palestine, so I am going to take actions that will clearly make things much worse for the people in Palestine because that is the ethical thing to do!”
It really shows that feeling morally superior is more importantly to them than actually getting results. Harris has some genocide, so let’s help Donald “Finish the Job” Trump win and have lots of genocide. My protest vote sure helped the Palestinians!
Genocide is bad, but apparently genocide isn’t bad enough to take a simple action that will prevent it getting worse.
Why are you assuming that person will vote for Trump?
Never said they would. But realistically you have to acknowledge that a third party candidate has no chance of winning this election. If your only concern is Palastine then not voting for Harris actively makes things worse for the people in Palastine, even if Harris is not doing enough to help them. Your options are bad, or worse.
If you’re trying to build support for third party candidates for future elections then don’t give me any bullshit about Palastine, because that will not help them in any way.
The genocide will continue as scheduled, Trump or Kamala…
“If you don’t vote for my guy, regime will fuck Palestinians even harder, do you want more blood on your hands?”
Pathetic argument, DNC can’t even muster proper position on the issue beyond, Trump might fuck them harder.
Welcome to today’s American folks 🤡
The primaries are over. The risk of Trump is too high and people spreading 3rd Party ideas right now many be trying to demotivate progressives from voting for Harris. I mean, I’m not a big fan of Harris, but I’ll still be voting for her over Trump.
It seems like Harris turning half Republican and supporting a genocide is what’s demotivating progressives from voting for her and people spreading 3rd party ideas is a symptom of that.
Oh look, yet another .ml troll
What did I say in my comment that isn’t true, and do you have an actually convincing argument for that besides calling me a troll?
🙄
Post at !meanwhileongrad@sh.itjust.works
How do you have a four year old account with only two comments?
Anyway, still better than Trump.
To answer your question, I joined Lemmy when it was a niche open source project then left because nothing was happening until the mass migration happened
Fyi, accounts that only make political comments, especially ones that have suspicious comment history come across as astroturf or hacked accounts.
The parties are already there or you couldn’t vote them, this example is stupid. Supporting parties with blood in their hands is endorsing evil.
Voting for a third party, like trying to walk through a third door, is an indication of intent. Going through the door would be getting them elected to office.
And yes, supporting a party would be endorsing whatever evil policies the party supports—but voting isn’t an act of endorsement. Nobody knows how you vote; it has no meaning as a personal statement. Its only meaning is in the differential effects of the policies of the two candidates your vote decides between, in the most likely scenario in which it is the deciding vote.
You absolutely should support and endorse a party you believe in, but don’t mistake voting in a presidential election for either of those things.
Voting is a direct act of endorsement
Its only meaning is in the differential effects of the policies of the two candidates your vote decides between
There aren’t only two candidates.
You absolutely should support and endorse a party you believe in, but don’t mistake voting in a presidential election for either of those things.
There’s no confusion, a party perpetrating war and genocide is evil and if you support them you are evil too.
Voting is a direct act of endorsement
endorse | verb [with object]
to declare one’s public approval or support of.Your vote is expressly not public—you’re prohibited from keeping or sharing any proof of your vote. In part this is to prevent people from using their votes as signals of anything outside the immediate issue.
There aren’t only two candidates.
In the event that your vote actually decides the election, it does so by giving the winner one more vote than the runner-up; at that point those are the only two candidates at issue. And that’s the only event in which your vote matters.
Spin it as much as you want. Anyone supporting, endorsing, or voting for a party with blood in his hand fueling a genocide is directly complicit in the crime
Go ahead and feel morally superior as your protest vote enables someone way worse to hurt way more people. All the women dying of ectopic pregnancies or sepsis from stillbirths they cannot abort are on you. The GOP will let Russia have Ukraine where they will rape and murder anyone who resists, and they will unconditionally increase funding for Israel’s genocidal land grab.
And you will think, “that’s not my fault, I voted for the not evil one.”
But that’s not true, because you could have voted for the person who is willing to negotiate on those things, but you chose to feel better about yourself instead of actually help anyone.
LOL and how do you suppose we make third parties viable? Thoughts and prayers?
I’m not gonna answer that question. I don’t have the perfect answer ready for you.
Instead I will tell you what happens when you vote third party in FPTP. Okay, you have a .nl TLD so I guess ssyou’re either in a much better electoral situation or just picked it because it’s cool, but I will use the example of the upcoming US presidential election.
Now, let’s say the race is really even and it’s over. Flipping just one of several key battleground states would’ve placed Harris in the lead, but unfortunately, Trump won. You look at the votes in your state: Trump won by under 600 votes. Nearly 100,000 people voted for a third party candidate that’s actually to the left of Harris. They would’ve preferred Harris, but because they voted third party, they elected Trump.
If this sounds familiar, that’s what happened in 2000. Al Gore could’ve won. Should’ve won. But 3rd party candidate Ralph Nader was further left of him and received a bunch of votes that needed to go to Gore. In Florida, he had nearly 100k votes, and the difference between Bush and Gore was literally triple digits. And it wasn’t even the only state where Gore lost because of the Spoiler Effect
It’s an inherent flaw of the FPTP system and yes, it sucks. It means a vote for a third party is a wasted vote.
I’m not gonna answer that question. I don’t have the perfect answer ready for you.
That’s okay, I don’t expect a “perfect” answer, but what you’re revealing about yourself by not putting forward an answer is that you don’t care about our wants, you’re just mad that we’re not doing what you want.
People tell me all the time voting is how to get what you want, so that’s what I’ve done and what I’ll continue to do.
the Spoiler Effect
Yes, I’m very familiar. Once again, I think this is just manipulating people into your desired outcome. I’m very happy to “spoil” my vote by advocating for someone I actually support, rather than throwing it away on someone I don’t. The fault lies with the system, not with me.
The fault lies with the system, not with me.
The fuckery inherent in the current system being not your fault does not absolve you from voting responsibly in context of the current system. If you are going to throw in a protest vote you are asserting your portion of responsibility for the practical end result of that vote.
It’s a good thing I vote responsibly then. An irresponsible vote would be one that perpetuates the current, broken system.
How does a strategic practical vote within the current system perpetuate it any more or less than a throwaway protest vote?
Are you asking me how protests work? Is that really something that requires explanation?
I’m asking you how, specifically, a protest vote and a strategic vote are any different in terms of perpetuating the shitty system currently in place.
Changing the voting system so that third parties are actually possible.
You need a cardinal voting system, otherwise you’ll fall prey to Durverger’s Law and Arrow’s Impossibility Theorem.
I favor STAR, it’s the best system designed to date.
The problem is that these systems are way more complex and have edge cases where someone unpopular gets elected. Making major changes to a system that has worked for 248 years seems like a recipe for disaster.
Edge cases like you describe are a key part of Ordinal voting systems, Cardinal voting systems are immune to that sort of thing.
Also, Cardinal voting systems can be super easy. Take Approval.
Simply take a list of names, and mark next to each candidate you approve of. If you feel like you need to have a moral conundrum over what you feel like approval means, then go ahead, but just mark the next to any or all of the names on the list that you like.
After that, the counting is simple as well. You add up the approval of each candidate, independent of what any other candidate gets, and then the winner is the one with the most approval.
It is literally impossible to elect an unpopular candidate via Approval, unless only unpopular candidates run.
STAR is slightly more complex, in that you rate each candidate on a scale of 0-5. Again, no one actually cares about your personal journey in rating someone a 4 or whatnot, just do it and move on.
Then when counting, you again add up the numbers, take the highest two, and see where they rate on each individual ballot. If one is rated higher than the other, they get the vote from that ballot.
and have edge cases where someone unpopular gets elected
As opposed to the current system, where someone unpopular always gets elected?
Making major changes to a system that has worked for 248 years
It hasn’t worked. It’s deeply flawed and we currently use the worst-possible process, rooted in ancient history.
Third parties are mathematically impossible until we ditch first past the post voting:
We need our vote to be a list, not a checkbox.
I dunno about this analogy. I think the doctor proved that with enough time, anything can become a door.
By the time you knock a hole in the wall with your own body, you’re gonna be a bloody pulp.
They’re referring to Doctor Who, a fictional “time lord” who used many theoretical lifetimes to bash a hole in an impenetrable wall, dying many times over (not a big issue for him), if I recall correctly.
That must have been the old Doctor Who, because I don’t remember seeing an episode like that.
But that’s a very Doctor Who style plot line lol
In fact it was “Heaven Sent” Peter Capaldi. Series 9, episode 11. 28 November 2015.
Ah, that would explain it. I checked out once Capaldi joined.
He really grew on me over time.
I’m rewatching it again, this time with my girlfriend because she hasn’t seen it yet. We’re currently 3/4 of the way through Matt Smith’s doctor.
So maybe this time he will grow on me.
