Rust Belt Voters Are Sick of Both Parties
Rust Belt Voters Are Sick of Both Parties
Polling shows Americans are ready to support independent populists running on economic platforms. But what they don’t want is anything associated with the Democratic Party’s brand.
You're viewing part of a thread.
Like I said, I get being fed up with compromise. I'm fed up too. But plurality voting sucks, so let's do some math:
Hammer Party has 45% of the votes. Pepsi Party has 50%. 5% go to some other, minor parties.
Now suppose a Cool Water party appears, clearly better than Warm Pepsi. They start drawing voters, some from the Pepsi, some maybe from non-voters, but the Hammer Party adherents don't relent. They make it to 10%, with the Pepsi Party now standing at, say, 45%. Hammer are down to 43% thanks to higher turnout. Other parties down to 2%.
Next election, more Pepsi compromise voters are encouraged to vote Water. Water is up to 25%! Hammer is at 38% now – we're making progress! Except that the Pepsi party now has a maximum of 37%, if there are no non-voters. Hammer party now has the most votes. That's called the spoiler effect.
Obviously, the Pepsi fraction might see that shift coming and try to avoid it. For that, they'd either have to pull some of the Hammer voters, or accede to the Water voters in hopes of retaining them. Do you think they'll compromise with Water? And do you think the Water voters are willing to trust that compromise?
Unless you somehow manage to rapidly turn a party up to 50% or win a significant amount of voters from both camps, odds are you're going to make things worse. Hopefully, they'll get better after that, unless Hammer Party manages to rig the system in their favour or even get rid of it. Is that a risk worth taking?
For a different example, suppose Water and Pepsi teamed up. Let's take the initial 5% other voters, manage to push Hammer down to 31% and put the Pepsi party at a solid 64%.
For the next election, hammer and other voters remain the same, but the Water party has split off and immediately pulled a solid 25% of voters. Pepsi is still at 39%, still wins. Not ideal, but better than Hammer, right?
The following election sees even more Water voters, maybe higher turnout too. Hammer down to 30%, other voters 2%. Water and Pepsi are a close race, but turn out 33% to 35% in favour of Water.
That's what I mean with compromise: strategically creating a statistical base on which change can be built without risking shooting your own foot.
Of course, the best option would be an actually fair voting system, like Ranked Choice (which is probably easiest to explain), but with how things are now, it'd take a lot of prep work and publicity work to get enough people on board so it doesn't go sideways.
Your entire explanation is predicated on the belief that the Warm Pepsi party doesn't prefer watching everyone get their faces smashed in by hammers to working with the Cool Water party in any capacity.
This is not the case.
No, it's predicated on the belief that Warm Pepsi is still preferable to Hammers and that attempting to supplant either of them with Cool Water in one fell swoop isn't realistic. Under those premises, Cool Water may act as a spoiler party to undermine Warm Pepsi.
Nobody wins by voting third party in a plurality system, unless that third party can overtake one of the two first parties.
So as far as warm pepsi is concerned, cool water is a greater enemy than hammers.
Which is what we're seeing now.
And as far as Cool Water is concerned?
As far as cool water is concerned, people are being forced to drink warm pepsi under threat of being murdered with hammers.
That's not what I was asking. Would Cool Water prefer Warm Pepsi or Hammers to have the plurality?
Because the whole point of my explanation of the Spoiler Effect is this: If the Cool Water party wins over more Warm Pepsi voters than Hammer voters (which it probably would), it may end up splitting the Pepsi vote to the point that the Hammers win.
Unless you can be sure that Cool Water would take the plurality, you'd risk smashing your own face to spite Pepsi.
By all means, do the work to make Cool Water popular and gain support, but don't ignore the reality of strategic voting. It's fucked up, it's ideologically unpalatable, but it's pragmatic.
That’s not what I was asking. Would Cool Water prefer Warm Pepsi or Hammers to have the plurality?
This is just "drink your warm pepsi or you get the hammer" phrased as a question.
Because the whole point of my explanation
The only point of your condescending centrist-splaining is to gloat that your shitty wing of the party is taking advantage of a situation in which the only alternative to their constant betrayal is worse than they are.
I'm not a centrist, nor a neoliberal, nor whatever else you may associate with the Democrats. I don't even live in the US, and where I do live, I vote left. But that only works because we have a representative democracy, where my vote counts even if it's not a plurality vote.
So please spare me your moral grandstanding and deflection and consider what I'm actually talking about instead.
So you have no clue what it's like to be in a country where one party is fascist and the only other viable party takes advantage of that to not represent you.
The article is saying that people in the rust belt are sick of both the warm Pepsi and the hammer, so now would be a great time to come in swinging with cool water because at this point people would actually vote them in over both.
Aye, if you can rally enough voters behind a united, third option, that would be the way to break out. I'm cautioning that you need to be sure you can knock out the hammers, otherwise you risk the Spoiler Effect fucking things up. If you take the shot and miss, you might just hit your own foot instead.
Don't ignore the ugly realities of strategic voting just because they don't fit your dream. If you're confident you can break the cycle, by all means, go for it.
Oh, don't get me wrong. I've absolutely given up on any hope of things getting better. We're talking pie in the sky hypotheticals here. It's just nice to see other people want pie, too.
You're just being a reminder that we shouldn't want those things and give up.
You're just being a reminder that we shouldn't want those things and give up.
No, I'm being a reminder that you should be strategic in how you go about it. Don't just dream – work towards it. Gather support, particularly in smaller, local elections, where the consequences for spoiling aren't quite as bad. Talk to people. Get people on board. Once you have enough backing, try to swing bigger elections around.
You don't get to tell me what you remind me of, or how I take it. Just got you meant it.
So yeah, when you come in saying how stuff isn't going to work when there's a glimmer of hope, it's disheartening, and that's the effect you had on me.
For someone who wants to think strategically, maybe work on your presentation if you ever hope to be inspirational.