What will it take for staunch Democrats to vote third party?
What will it take for staunch Democrats to vote third party?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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’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.
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.
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)?
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.
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?
- You are not going to vote your way out of this
- There is no just or reasonable way to govern a transcontinental slave empire
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.