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I cant in good conscious support a party that is pro-genocide. Never mind Harris's horrible history of women's and trans rights.
I plan to vote for the good guy (shocker I know)... chase oliver is my top pick for the moment. Green party's Stein might get my vote if i change my mind.
I just cant imagine anyone supporting the level of evil the democrats and republicans have demonstrated, not to mention incompetence.
@freemo @CoachMark @WrenArcher @kamalaharrisforpresidentnews
In a majoritarian, first-past-the-post voting system, you’re not at all voting FOR a 3rd party candidate. Use your thinker. If you want to change things, change the voting system itself.
There are 40 countries that ellect with FPTP and I dont know of one of them that claims a two-party system. So that is a bit of a myth that is easily enough debunked.
The 2 majority parties have also been replaced by a new major party 8 times in the history of the USA. We even within the USA we know we arent locked in to two parties.
@freemo @CoachMark @WrenArcher @kamalaharrisforpresidentnews when was the last time a POTUS was voted in who wasn’t one of the 2 at-the-time-current majority parties?
The 8 times I was talking about was specifically the presidential election. Moreover not only did a third party win, but in every case except for one the third party became the new majority party and the majority party that lost went out of existance. So 8 times.
The fact that it hasnt happened recently should tell you that it has nothing to do with FPTP (since we had that for our whole history and had 8 transitions) but rather something more recent to blame.
@godofbiscuits @freemo @CoachMark @WrenArcher @kamalaharrisforpresidentnews
Hello. In ALL American elections, "third party" "protest" votes are empty. They do nothing substantive.
Had we a parliamentary system, they could be used with good effect to build other parties.
That is not our system.
And, a reminder: ALL ELECTIONS for the next 50 years are going to be about unseating Fascists & electing w/#ProDemocracy candidates.
> Hello. In ALL American elections, "third party" "protest" votes are empty. They do nothing substantive.
A common, but very much inaccurate myth. They arent protest votes, they are votes for the best choice, nothing more, nothing less.
Second, there is no rational argument to claim a vote for someone who happens to win, when your vote does not decide/swing the result, somehow has more value than a vote for someone who looses. Since in both cases your vote didnt change the result, there is no argument either vote has more value than the other.
That said there **is** an argument for value for a third party vote, and that value exists regardless of who wins (as I explained earlier in the thread). So there is a very clear argument for a third party vote.
@godofbiscuits @CoachMark @WrenArcher @kamalaharrisforpresidentnews
@freemo @beccanalia @CoachMark @WrenArcher @kamalaharrisforpresidentnews
You’re just ignoring structural reality of the election system. And you should know better. Without proportional representation, extreme minority votes are erased. By definition of majoritarian counting.
So what part of all that do you feel developed in recent times but was absent in the past (when parties were switching more often)?
Seems to me I ddint ignore that all, those inequalities for minors were **worse** int he past, suggesting we would have had a 2 party system back then too, yet we didnt.
@beccanalia @CoachMark @WrenArcher @kamalaharrisforpresidentnews
@freemo @godofbiscuits @CoachMark @WrenArcher @kamalaharrisforpresidentnews
There is absolutely no value to a third party vote when US democracy hangs on the line and the margins of winning are so very narrow.
For, indeed, Biden won some states in 2020 by mere thousands of votes. Every vote counts.
As you're living in the Netherlands, you have no skin in the game re who wins the WH and re the perpetuation of US democracy.
Have you read PROJECT 2025? It's a promise.
@beccanalia @godofbiscuits @CoachMark @WrenArcher @kamalaharrisforpresidentnews > There is absolutely no value to a third party vote when US democracy hangs on the line and the margins of winning are so very narrow.
And yet, unless that vote comes down to a single vote, the choice of vote I make will have absolutely no change in the winner. So while a vote for a major party wont have any net positive good, a vote for a third party would, regardless of if they win (for the reasons I previously explained).
> For, indeed, Biden won some states in 2020 by mere thousands of votes. Every vote counts.
And yet even if i was one of those "mere thousands" of votes that Biden won his margin by... even then no matter who I voted for would not have changed if Biden won, thus produced no net good.
> As you're living in the Netherlands, you have no skin in the game re who wins the WH and re the perpetuation of US democracy.
No as I explained I live in the USA and the Netherlands, until recently also Israel. Right now I spend more time in the USA than the netherlands as this is where my company is.
> Have you read PROJECT 2025? It's a promise.
Yea, I am aware of the project, I know it was done without any input from Trump (supposidly) and Trump has denied any connection with it. That said I I would expect him to do things as bad or worse. Which is why its a good thing I am 1) voting against him and 2) ensuring my vote focuses on tearing down the 2 party system in the hope that once we accomplish that we will never see another person like Biden or Trump again.
@godofbiscuits @CoachMark @WrenArcher @kamalaharrisforpresidentnews
@freemo @godofbiscuits @CoachMark @WrenArcher @kamalaharrisforpresidentnews
Wrong. Your vote IN ADDITION to millions of other votes MATTER.
That's what the process IS, the accumulation of votes that create a block of support in whatever is your home county / city from which you receive your ballot.
All votes matter. They matter so very much that the Now XoFascists (formerly the Republican Party) has spent the last EIGHT YEARS passing voter suppression laws.
Your vote matters!
a/
@freemo @godofbiscuits @CoachMark @WrenArcher @kamalaharrisforpresidentnews
PRACTICALLY., the perpetuation of democracy means that then we may ALL have a little more time to elect Progs to power in our cities and states --well, and Congress, of course.
We will have the chance to elevate Progressive candidates to power and keep them there to build needed majorities of those voices.
And so we build in each successive election, denying Fascists power & building strong #ProDemocracy majorities.
> Wrong. Your vote IN ADDITION to millions of other votes MATTER.
IU never said your vote doesnt **matter**... i said your vote wont cause any different outcome to occur if you vote priumary party, but CAN have a positive impact if you vote third party... What "matters" is a philosophical thing, I care about action and effects. The effect of my action of voting red or blue is that it effects no change of any kind, whatever decision I make the outcome is the same. In contrast the effect of my action of voting third party is a positive effect (as I descrived in my lead in) regardless of who wins the actual election or if i effect it.
@godofbiscuits @CoachMark @WrenArcher @kamalaharrisforpresidentnews
@freemo @godofbiscuits @CoachMark @WrenArcher @kamalaharrisforpresidentnews
This is a good conversation.
Alas, I need to sleep.
Until later, Folks.
> so each was on its way already to becoming a majority party and entrenching itself. Gotcha. And WHEN was the last one?
No actually not at all. In every case where a new party came in and took over a majority party it had <1% support int he previous election. These new parties that come in and replace existing majority parties in 7 out of 8 of the cases all happened over the course of a single election. In the one outlier it was over the court of 2 elections.
> And WHEN was the last one?
Quite some while back, Its about a generation back, something like 80 years ago. Which again is to my point, the fact that it has happened 8 times already and has not happened **recently** means the underlying cause is something recent and not FPTP which we had through that entire time.
> My only point was that THIS election, a 3rd party vote is nothing but a not-D and not-R vote, because there is no 3rd party groundswell.
As stated in virtually all cases of a switch of parties there was no building "ground swell" in all cases the switch of party was abrupt and over the course of just a single election.
Moreover as stated earlier, its a pointless argument because there is no rational argument that a vote for a candidate that wins, particularly when your vote does not swing the outcome, has any more value than a vote for a canddidate that looses, again, when your vote wouldnt have caused the swing. Since votes never really come down to a single vote, your vote will never swing the outcome, so there is little incentive for you to pick a canddidate you dont like as much simply because you think they would win.
@freemo @CoachMark @WrenArcher @kamalaharrisforpresidentnews
First off, 80 years is more like FOUR generations.
Second, the last non Democratic, non Republican President was Millard Fillmore, who was elected not 80 years ago, but *173* years ago in 1850, and he was a member of the Whig Party, which collapsed shortly after Fillmore was out of office at the end of his only term, after which the Republican party, which rose from the ashes of the Whigs, the Free Soil party and similarly-driven Democrats, took its place.
So, you were saying?
@godofbiscuits @CoachMark @WrenArcher @kamalaharrisforpresidentnews > First off, 80 years is more like FOUR generations.
True usually when people talk about generations they talk about the time to average child bearing age, not the length of time of a lifetime. What I meant here was a single persons lifespan.
> Second, the last non Democratic, non Republican President was Millard Fillmore
To be clear here I didnt actually answer your question, because I misread it as being applicable to my claim.
I claimed the majority party changed 8 times and the last time was 80 years. That is **not** the same as saying a non-majority party won all those 8 times. Some of those 8 cases represent presidential wins, some of them simply represented a new majority party pushing out an old, but not corresponding with a presidential win during that year (and by some future point when the new party does win has now been established as a majority party so wouldnt count by your criteria).
Specifically in the case of 80 years ago, we are talking about a third-party becoming one of the two majority parties, but not becoming the winning party,. 80 years ago was also the one time out of 8 that I had mentioned that the thuird party did not retain majority status after wards. In all other cases, 7 of them, the new majority party remained a majority party and I beleive in all cases eventually had a presidential candidate in office.
@freemo @godofbiscuits @CoachMark @WrenArcher @kamalaharrisforpresidentnews you’ve lost me. What happened in 1944? There were Dixiecrats in 1948, George Wallace’s party in 1968, and Perot’s Reform party in 1992. I vaguely recall a movement around 1980 but blank on the Candidate - Anderson maybe? But all of these are examples of one-and-done movements, I’m lost regarding the idea of a third party becoming significant.
@CoachMark @kamalaharrisforpresidentnews @WrenArcher @godofbiscuits @freemo Well oops. I should not have commented on this thread. I joined @kamalaharrisforpresidentnews for a community of Harris supporters, not to get into an off-topic discussion on the historical viability of third parties. Anyone know a good way to filter the feed when it’s a firehose? I have only so much time and energy!
@JCzachurski John, the main 3rd-party provocateur has been booted from the Harris group — the convo should be more on-topic now. Hit me up if you encounter any more problems. And meanwhile, Harris-Walz FTW!
@freemo @CoachMark @WrenArcher @kamalaharrisforpresidentnews so each was on its way already to becoming a majority party and entrenching itself. Gotcha. And WHEN was the last one?
My only point was that THIS election, a 3rd party vote is nothing but a not-D and not-R vote, because there is no 3rd party groundswell.
Maybe you’ll luck out and get a political quake with a 3rd party rushing to the fore again, which most likely would be the MAGA party, as separate from the GOP. Would you like that?