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?
Ranked choice voting or similar.
This is the realistic answer. First past the post voting inherently results in two dominant parties.
I’m vastly more in favor of Approval Voting, truth be told. Most anything’s better than what we have now, but ranked voting systems of any sort tend to have issues similar to FPTP, whereas Approval or Score voting don’t. Approval Voting is also dead simple, since the only change is that you can vote for as many candidates as you want.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Now we get genocide and a president who raped kids. He gets off Scot free for his crimes now
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.
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.
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.
My question isn’t about morality.
That’s self-defeating nonsense.
It was actually self-defeating to run on a platform that got an (enthusiastically received) endorsement from Dick Cheney.
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.
Cheney is one of the poster names of neoconservativism, not classical conservatism
I don’t think Republicans of today care to know the difference. But good to point out!
Eh, compared to what mainstream Republicanism is like now, he might as well be Ike.
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.
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.
You’re ignoring the “prayer of winning” part. Until then, I’m voting against the bigger asshole.
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.
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.
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.
This is like survivor bias.
I’m not sure what you mean. We’re looking at the wreckage.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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You could run a modern campaign with nothing but social media memes and volunteers.
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.
How about we start with a third party that’s actually serious about being a third party rather than just showing up every 4 years to syphon votes? Like, you know, a party that actually runs at the local level and participates in Democracy. One of the big differences between our “third parties” and minority political parties in Europe, for instance, is that theirs actually participate in government. They work at smaller levels of government rather than just expecting to somehow get a prime minister. They build coalitions. They foster voter confidence by actually doing something.
The closest thing we have to that is literally just Bernie Sanders on his own. One guy does a better job at being something resembling a third party than any existing third party in the United States. That’s impressive for Bernie and absolutely pathetic for “third parties”.
Second? Once those third parties build up some actual participation in government and develop coalitions, use that growing power to give themselves a mathematical chance of actually winning.
Third? Don’t run a candidate until the first two are done. Because anything short of that is literally just enabling the Republicans to push both parties further and further to the right.
Do that and actually run on a platform I’d like to see more than Democratic neoliberalism and I’ll put them in the first slot in my runoff or ranked choice or whatever vote. Until then? Not a chance in the world. I don’t care how many times the DNC shoots themselves in the foot. Until the math is there and a party shows they’re actually willing to participate in all levels of government I’m not interested in propping up one of two egotists and their “party”.
I’d vote for Bernie in a ranked choice election in a second, though. I don’t care if he’s literally 100 years old.
The last successful third party was the Tea Party, which was formed by people fed up with the GOP.
We need a Guillotine Party.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
100,000 people hauled away by the cops when they haven’t done anything or committed what we would now consider a crime.
So, 100,000 people arrested or otherwise taken from their homes under a new or previously unimplemented legal pretext? I think we need to add a narrow timeframe over which these detentions would occur, like a single week. Is this number separate or inclusive of people who get deported on some immigration basis?
Mass deportations of currently legal immigrants,
1.1 million people were officially “returned” to Mexico in one year of Operation Wetback. So, let’s say Trump suddenly revokes the legal status of and deports at least that many people, times some factor to account for population increase, in the first year of his term.
serious charges for people who participated in a protest but nothing else, is the obvious possibility.
A lot of people have been arrested at peaceful protests under Biden, so it seems like we’re already at a grim baseline condition. Not sure what the bet is here.
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.
Maybe there are some bills or amendment text floating around you can point to that if passed and successfully enforced would meet this expectation? That includes beating first amendment challenges, right?
Are you guaranteeing all of these scenarios or just any of them? Or should each one be a separate bet?
Is there a betting community on Lemmy where we could post our bet?
So, 100,000 people arrested or otherwise taken from their homes under a new or previously unimplemented legal pretext?
Yes.
I think we need to add a narrow timeframe over which these detentions would occur, like a single week.
Why? 100,000 people over the course of a few months isn’t enough of a problem for you?
Is this number separate or inclusive of people who get deported on some immigration basis?
Separate. I’m excluding people who already don’t have a legal right to stay in the US. I think the number of people who are technically already vulnerable to deportation, who will be deported, will be much greater than 100,000. As you pointed out, that’s already going on. It’s hard to measure in a number how much additional cruelty Trump will add to that by doing a “better” job at rooting out and deporting those people, so I’m not including that. The 100,000 is only people who would have been able to stay in the US, or out of prison or extralegal punishment, who now will not.
A lot of people have been arrested at peaceful protests under Biden, so it seems like we’re already at a grim baseline condition. Not sure what the bet is here.
I phrased it as “serious charges” on purpose. Lots of people get arrested at protests and then released, either without charges or with some kind of misdemeanor. Biden didn’t invent that, and usually it’s being done by local cops who often don’t even like Biden, and definitely don’t care what he thinks about what they should be doing to the protestors.
I said “serious charges.” We can quantify it as a year or more in prison, or something similar or worse that’s extralegal. That happens on a very occasional basis here, to a handful of people like the cop city protestors, or to that handful of climate protestors in the UK. I expect that under Trump, the scale of serious charges and prison time or worse for these protestors or some other type of “enemy” will dramatically increase. That’s why I quoted the 100,000 people number as a total for all of this extralegal action, deportation and imprisonment and all.
Just to give you a sense of “or worse,” what he did last time was issue an order for the National Guard to start shooting them. They didn’t, last time, and I expect that they probably still won’t in a lot of cases. I think he may create new federal law enforcement agencies which will obey that type of order.
It sounds, to me, like you’re saying that Biden is causing BLM protestors to get arrested and held for a couple of days in the local jail, and that’s already happening so what’s the difference if Trump is creating a new federal law enforcement agency to give them felonies or just shoot them. If I’m hearing you right about that, then I think that indicates a lack of understanding of the grave differences between a Biden presidency and a Trump presidency. That’s what I’m trying to impress on you.
Maybe there are some bills or amendment text floating around you can point to that if passed and successfully enforced would meet this expectation? That includes beating first amendment challenges, right?
I think a lot of this will be extralegal. We can quantify it by saying that if people start getting criminal charges because of what they said on social media, or what they allow to be posted on their social media site, because it was anti-Republican in some sense, the bet is passed. I don’t know exactly what the legal structure if any will be surrounding it, so I don’t want to involve that into the equation. Whether or not the physical people start going to the physical courtrooms or prisons is the relevant factor. Trust me, if it starts happening, we won’t need to quibble. You’ll know it when you see it.
Are you guaranteeing all of these scenarios or just any of them? Or should each one be a separate bet?
Is there a betting community on Lemmy where we could post our bet?
It’s two scenarios. One is 100,000 people getting deportation or prison time for things that are currently absolutely clearly legal, such as being Hispanic or attending a protest. The other is people receiving charges for expressing, or amplifying or not, a political viewpoint. We can limit that second one to social media, as a way of making it more concrete. We can make those two things as two separate bets, I guess.
How much were you thinking? I don’t really want to bet, to be honest. I’m happy to give you some amount of money if it doesn’t happen. I’ll be so happy that I won’t give a fuck. If I win, we can set it up that you have to give that amount of money to some kind of charity or operation that’s trying to resist. I don’t want the money. It’s not a fun thing for me to talk about.
Why? 100,000 people over the course of a few months isn’t enough of a problem for you?
I did a quick search and the most recent statistic I found was that at least 7.36 million people were arrested for all offenses in the US in 2022. That is about half of the peak annual rate in the nineties. The sad reality is that 100,000 more arrests spread out over a year just isn’t that much. If you are clarifying the scenario as “100,000 people getting deportation or prison time for things that are currently absolutely clearly legal, such as being Hispanic or attending a protest”, then that is specific enough for me to agree to a six month window.
I agree on the terms for the second scenario, that there’s new legislation or policy under Trump that leads to social media users or operators getting criminally charged merely for social media posts that are critical of the Republican party.
I’ll bet $50 against each scenario. I’m fine with not paying each other. The loser can pay that much to the organization of the winner’s choice. If I am successful I will probably choose a smaller group that provides legal assistance to immigrants and asylum seekers or maybe a strike fund. I don’t know. The point is I won’t expect you to give money to something bad.
I may not be 100% staunch Dem, but maybe having an election where a 3rd party gets more coverage than just the occasional passing commercial or billboard or other absolutely ineffective advertising methods would make me more likely to switch. Until then, lesser of 2 evils and all that.
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.
If you think the Democrat’s offer the best of all platforms, then then of course you should keep voting for them. However, this question isn’t really for you in that case.
You asked for a staunch democrat 🤷♂️
Okay, that’s fair. If staunch necessarily means believing in the platform then I used the wrong word.
this is an interesting discussion that’s gone on for long enough and been substantive enough that i’ll leave it be, but as an FYI this was a better fit for the Politics section and had it been caught sooner i would have told you to repost it there.
I will never vote for a party that doesn’t stand an actual chance of winning seats. So until there is proportional representation or ranked choice, i will not be voting 3rd parties.
So you will always vote a straight Democratic ticket as long as there are Senate and House candidates with a good chance of winning? What if they have no chance of winning the White House? I think that that would be apparent if the people who ran Hillary, Biden, and Harris’s campaigns are still involved and the strategy is still to court Republicans. Can the Democrats perform poorly enough that you would decide that you might as well vote third party (or abstain)?
What 3rd party exists that is left leaning and is running for non president positions? Green Party doesn’t count, they’re compromised
Not sure what you mean. There were about four or so third parties on my ballot. There are also of course options to write-in a candidate or abstain.
And I think they were all just for the president. A write in candidate without a concerted effort is useless
Yes those were for president, but there were at least half a dozen across other races. I asked you “Can the Democrats perform poorly enough that you would decide that you might as well vote third party (or abstain)?” If you’re trying to imply an answer, I’m not following.
They would have to start doing worse than they are now, we could have taken this election, but people didn’t show up. I think Kamala would have done fine, and certainly continued our democracies recovery. She wasn’t my first choice. I wish people would have at least voted against trump if not for Kamala. He is absolutely vile. He is one of the few people whose death I will toast. He has done so much harm to this country and its institutions, he has harmed its people, through his policy, his frauds, and his rapes. He is the most undeserving of all of us
we could have taken this election, but people didn’t show up.
Why do you blame millions of regular Americans instead of the extremely well funded campaign and the party behind it that failed to motivate these people to vote? How is it not the campaign that raised a billion dollars that’s responsible for this tremendous loss?
No i wouldn’t abstain from voting for sure. The only way I’d vote 3rd party under the current system is if they were polling above 40%. Which is absolutely absurd in this system. That would mean either the dems or gop were decimated, but at that point the 3rd party would be the new major party.
- You are not going to vote your way out of this
- There is no just or reasonable way to govern a transcontinental slave empire
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.
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.
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.
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?
what would it take for you to vote third party?
^ that was your question, and telling me my reasoning behind the answer I gave isn’t relevant to what it would take me to vote third party is farcical and asinine, and that’s being generous
So then no amount of failure or lack of corrective action on behalf of the Democratic party would get you to cast a vote for a third party presidential candidate?
Edit: I mean if you didn’t have RCV.
With fptp, other better leverage points exist than dividing progressive voting share at the top. That’s our opportunity (as I see it) to state that we would like to keep the progress we’ve made, however small it might be. Downballot races all the way down to town boards are how we can push the legislation and policies we wish to see signed into law to achieve further progress. Success there also allows for more leftist/progressive people to be the pool for presidential candidates.
Lemmy, 1 week ago: “A THIRD PARTY VOTE IS A REPUBLICAN VOTE!”
Lemmy, today: “WE SHOULD ALL BE VOTING THIRD PARTY!”
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.
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.
The responses I’ve been getting so far don’t seem very warm to third party voting at all.
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.
I would consider voting for a 3rd party that abandons twitter and back ups their claims with credible sources.
The link in the body text of the OP is not for an x.com page. If you don’t want to follow the link in the header, it is just for a tweet by @jon_bois asking the same question that I am asking, referencing the revelation that Biden kept running despite his team knowing that Trump was going to win with something like 400 electoral votes.
If you want another choice, start working for it today, otherwise you’ll just be voting for the same lesser-evil ghouls in the next election. Run for office even if you don’t know what you’re doing. Be honest about it: “I may not have political experience, but what I do have is some principles that I will never compromise on.” Loudly argue against those with bad or overly flexible principles. Get together with your neighbors and build things that help people and strengthen your communities. The democrats are never going to be what you want them to be. We can’t afford the time it would take to maybe reform them.
The democrats are never going to be what you want them to be.
Presumably we want them to be winners, right? How is that going to happen if the same idiots keep running their campaigns and doing completely self-defeating things like talking down to crucial constituencies and wheeling out Dick Cheney from his crypt? It’s looking like they can’t be winners, at least not at the presidential level. So, how poorly will the Democrats have to perform that you decide that you might as well vote for a third party candidate? Would it not be enough to notice a lack of corrective action ahead of 2028 to make you reconsider your loyalty?
I’m not sure if you’re misunderstanding me, or I you. I’ve got no loyalty to the dems at all. I want a party that represents a reasonable approximation of my values to win. Dems have never really come close enough (republicans aren’t even in the same universe as my values). Don’t think I’m unwilling to compromise on anything though-- I kept my ballot blank til the last minute this election waiting in vain hope for a total reversal on Harris’ support for genocide. That is simply a bridge to far, no matter the context.
I think I misunderstood you. For my part, I do not put much hope these days in elections. It’s just that for decades now I’ve been told voting third party meant throwing your vote away. This time you were wasting your vote (and a serious moral principle) to cast it for Harris. It’s all just kind of astonishing to me, which is why I made the post.
Gotcha, and no problem. I’ve been voting for 3rd parties every election since I turned 18 in 1996, and only once has I voted for a dem (to my regret). I am more or less of the opinion that voting ain’t worth much (especially in most states), but that it doesn’t hurt anything either. Anyone who thought they were voting “to save democracy” in an election where fucking genocide wasn’t up for debate needs to reassess their relationship to reality.
Well, genocide shouldn’t be up for debate. 🙃
For sure!
