I haven’t done the math. Assuming full support, is there a 3rd party candidate on the ballot in enough states to actually win?
The last time a 3rd party candidate had an actual shot (and it was a looooong shot at best) was in 1992 when Ross Perot ran. He split the R vote badly enough that it handed the election to Clinton.
So long as we’re using first past the post a 3rd party candidate has a vanishingly small chance of doing anything other than helping elect the opposition.
I cringe every time I see this come up.
Because it isn’t what you actually mean, and the horrible logic of it makes it easy for the Lemmy Lefties to dunk on.
Of course a 3rd party vote isn’t a vote for Trump any more than it is a vote for Kamala.
What it actually is is a discarded opportunity to vote against Trump. Which is also dispicable, but actually accurate.
Everyone knows that’s what you mean by this, but the Lemmy Lefties will play dumb and latch onto that logical fallacy every time.
Not everyone lives in a swing state where votes actually matter.
Thank goodness not enough people in “safe” states think that way.
No one is buying the bullshit you have for sale.
I must have missed that footnote in their rhetoric.
Come on, guy.
I’m not your guy, buddy!
Check my history. Vote third party if you don’t live in a swing state is literally what I have been saying.
Ex https://lemmy.ml/post/21262971, https://lemmy.ml/comment/14519387
Good. Tell your Lemmy Lefty buddies to do the same.
By definition, most people do not live in swing states.
Disclaimers and footnotes are irrelevant.
At least MAGA is honest. Yuck.
Honest lmao
Yeah – they’re proud of their hatred and open about wanting Trump to dismantle the system.
Lemmy Lefties just posture and virtue signal. It’s disgusting.
Do you know what will definitely NOT help get rid of the electoral college? People wasting their votes on 3rd party spoilers
Do you know what would MORE LIKELY move people to demand the elimination of the electoral college? Harris getting 10 million+ more votes, and Trump either winning the electoral college or attempting a coup based on lies because a swing state was close.
The more votes Harris gets, the clearer the will of the people, the harder it is to pretend there was voter fraud.
“You have to vote for a candidate that refuses to represent you so that people who don’t care about the will of the people will think that you support that candidate.” is a new one.
What a bold and bizarre claim to think there is any winning margin that would repel suspicions.
If Harris wants liberal votes, why is she courting Republicans?
The Dems are running on Trump’s 2020 platform. Build the wall. Lock up immigrants. Both parties are far-right shitholes, and it’s time people started realizing that.
The Dems in 2028 will be calling for mass deportations.
^ This right here. Exactly my point. They are going to keep telling you Kamala and Trump are the same so you spoil your chance to prevent Trump from taking office again.
They are not subtle, and they do not care about the fallout of a Trump reelection. They are privileged enough that it won’t affect them or their loved ones. It’s despicable.
It’s the trolley problem again. This time, you have 3 tracks and 2 switches. The trolley is headed towards 5 people, one switch sends it to 1 person, and the other switch would send it to 0 people, but it’s broken. Voting third party is pulling the broken switch, knowing the 5 people will die but you’ve shifted the responsibility from yourself to whoever was supposed to fix the switch.
I like your analogy. Let me expand.
This same situation happens every day. For years now, 1 person has died every day. Nobody pulls the broken lever, but if people started pulling it, it would start working. For the first couple days or weeks, 5 people would die each time, but eventually we would be able to get the train on a safe track.
The whole post is an example of a propaganda technique where you keep repeating one thing over and over until it becomes a default thing where people don’t even question the logic.
The ones capable of refuting it feel tired because of the sheer number of posts while the vulnerable ones get affected.
Today both sides “feel” that the use of this propaganda is fair game cuz the other side is already doing it.
It’s pretty simple actually, I’m not voting for him.
“The only thing necessary for evil to triumph in the world is that good men do nothing.” But hey, I’m sure those good men felt the same way you do.
That quote is such a funny thing. My mom once quoted it to me as a reason to support the Iraq War. I didn’t even know how to respond to that because it was so completely backwards. The way I saw it, the invasion of Iraq was evil triumphing because good people did nothing to stop it.
That’s how I feel about you saying it to me now. Evil is triumphing in Gaza precisely because people aren’t willing to take a stand on it.
Ahhh yes, the oh so helpful stand of not voting for a party that could win.
Like, you do understand that Harris likely means fewer dead Palestinians than trump, yes? This isn’t complicated.
Harris is vice president. There’s a genocide ongoing under her and Biden’s approval. End of the story. She has also repeatedly expressed her lack of will to change the current situation.
I don’t believe in the ideology of lesser evilism. The refusal to hold politicians to any sort of standard whatsoever is a part of why we’re in this situation in the first place.
all they have to do is point out that they don’t live in a swing state and that’s it, there’s nothing else to say, they just made a strong case and you have no rebuttal
lol
There’s tons to say.
Well, not tons, but a solid-ass rebuttal.
Those states do matter. They only “don’t matter” because everybody in them has historically done and is predicted to do a certain thing. If enough people learn of that prediction, become unmotivated, and don’t do that thing anymore, then those states become swing states which could swing the other way. It’s not guaranteed to always be the way it’s been.
“Blue state” and “red state” aren’t unchanging aspects of the geography, they’re the actions of individuals as seen from an aerial view.
Strongholds fall, and the commanders who act like theirs never could have a way of not writing history.
Strongholds fall, and the commanders who act like theirs never could have a way of not writing history.
And yet, this logic doesn’t apply to unseating the existing parties, for some reason. If Illinois could eventually turn red, then it follows that it could eventually turn green. In either case, it’s just a matter of “enough people” changing their behavior.
I voted Stein in Georgia. My vote never belonged to Harris, so me not voting for her has taken nothing away.
Maybe stop assuming people will vote for candidates, and start earning those votes.
Liberals explaining how “harm reduction” means voting but never demanding anything while calling anyone who criticizes them a “Russian bot”:
Liberals during election time: VOTE BLUE NO MATTER WHO
Liberals during the rest of the 4 years:Third party voters during election time: RHEEEEEEE! I refuse to vote because of [CURRENT ISSUE THEY HEARD ABOUT FROM A FRIEND IN PHYS ED]
Third part voters the rest of the four years:
Wait… What issue?
It’s all the fault of the Democrats. If they had run Bernie he would have been voted in and we wouldn’t be here.
The fact that Bernie endorses Harris is meaningless, because he’s not a real Socialist.
Things I’ve heard today on Lemm.ee
To be fair, Bernie would have won in 2016, and I do blame Clinton for Trump winning in the first place.
Didn’t stop me from voting for Harris though in an actually important election. Just glad it’s not Hillary i’m having to hold my nose over.
The concept that voting for a third-party candidate is somehow “helping” one of the major party candidates is based on the assumption that the third-party candidate’s voters would have otherwise voted for one of the major party candidates.
I mean, voting third party in America is functionally not voting. I’ll absolutely shit on people for not voting.
It’s worse than not voting. Because of the Spoiler Effect, voting 3rd party actually helps your least favorite major candidate.
In vacuum I agree. In the US electoral system voting for a third party is almost the same not voting at all, so it really doesn’t matter if you vote for third party or you vote for nobody. My issue is that in the context of America voting third party makes no sense, especially this election. By voting third party you don’t care who gets elected and it makes no sense to me because who goes “I don’t really care if fascists come into power and start oppressing women and foreigners”. Who the fuck is indifferent to fascism? Apparently third party voters.
Tiiiired of the same loser rhetoric of voting for the lesser evil of two consistently deteriorating parties.
Dummies, where will it end? Put these corporate cock suckers on notice. Do not legitimize their rule with your lips.
End the duopoliticial tyranny. Used to be whig party vs democratic party. Used to.
It will end when a democrat gets rid of first past the post. Here’s why:
If anything, lefties shouldn’t be a single issue voter at all. They should be picking someone who might move toward that direction and have the chance to win, not abstaining.
As the famous word goes: Evil triumph when good men do nothing. You can’t abstain or do protest vote and expect anything to change under Trump, that single issue you hold so important will get worst, or even impossible.
Jay Shapiro explains this well in a video:
TL:DW?
In this video, I challenge the dismissive label of ‘single-issue voting’. I break down how a focus on an issue like genocide reveals deeper political and moral stakes, rejecting the idea that elections are merely a choice between the ‘lesser of two evils,’ and offering my reasoning—and hope—for refusing to play the game.
Well this “single issue” of land stealing, white supremacist subjugation of a people on their native land, ethnic cleansing and genocide, has only gotten worse with every election.
If we look at AIPAC they arent powerful because they influence who wins. They are powerful because they onfluence who looses.
That is why being pro genocide remains a staple of both parties policies. The only way to change that, is to punish the side that claims to not be pro genocide generally, so it has to become against genocide specifically.
And we had one year of trying to do that before the election, where people here and in othernplace vigorously defended being pro genocide, as challenging that before the election would be bad for the election.
We saw with Biden stepping down that challenging the dementia candidate was actually beneficial for the Democrats election chances, despite the same denial and backlash over pointing out Bidens failing mental capacities.
Now i am sure that these sentiments of immediately attacking people who wanted the Democrats to become a non genocide party when it was still possible to achieve that for the election, were stirred by AIPAC and other establishment actors, who would rather have Trump win than end genocide or get to meaningful progressive politics like proper healthcare and workers rights.
Can’t believe I missed you when I blocked all your little friends.
Why do people feel the need to publicly announce blocks?
Block me as well. Do not forget the blocking user ceremonial reply to my comment!
I’m not even convinced it’s even real leftists posting this stuff. It often seems like astroturfing. Not only would fake leftists possibly sway undecided voters, but they also tarnish any positivity the left deserves. Win-win for the right.
I’d like to think you’re right.
But I have heard borderline stuff like this in real life from people whom I know are solid progressives. (Admittedly, these are folks on my soccer team who are almost 2 decades younger than me. I can’t imagine what ending their teens during a pandemic was like so I kind of expect their politics to be wildly different.)
“Borderline” is entirely different. Voting for Harris while being salty about it is a perfectly reasonable thing real progressives should do, and it’s exactly the opposite of what these astroturf third-party propagandists are calling for even if the (alleged) sentiment is adjacent. That “border” is a knife edge and the difference between a genuine progressive and a[n effectively] pro-Trump useful idiot comes down to which side of it they fall off.
But Palestine hurr Durr
You dumb fucks know how many more Palestine’s there’s gonna be if he gets in? You can kiss Ukraine goodbye, and probably hong kong too. This is nothing.
2016-2020 was the beta test. If this goes into production we’re all fucked.
I’ve had people telling me that I have “blood on [my] hands” because I’m voting for Harris. It’s insane. These people have no fucking concept.
If Harris wins, it will be by razor-thin margin. If she loses, trump wins. If trump wins, the genocide will get cranked up to 11. So voting 3rd party means even MORE “blood on my hands” than a Harris vote.
At least with Harris, there’s a CHANCE she can be reasoned with and stop the bloodshed.
These “Harris = genocide” people are liars, just trying to get trump elected - to sabotage this country.
