There's is so much that Sen Mark Kelly would bring if he got the nod for VP on the #Harris ticket.
But Minnesota consistently will #VoteBlue and replacing Gov Tim Walz with another Dem is more likely to happen than giving the nod to Kelly.
It's a risky move to pull a Dem senator from Arizona, despite a Dem governor in place to appoint another Dem for two years.
Would love to see Mark Kelly but my bet is on Walz or Beshear. This article says it's between Walz and Shapiro but the PA gov is problematic in my opinion.
This article from Reuters published 45min ago as of this toot.
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/kamala-harris-announce-vice-president-pick-before-battleground-states-tour-2024-08-05/
@WrenArcher @kamalaharrisforpresidentnews
I'm hoping for Walz - but I'll vote for Harris even if she picked a pet rock for VP
The alternative is disastrous for the US and the World. It's so obvious - yet so many people have been conned/fooled, or are just happy voting GOP because they share the same ugly traits as their grifting leader.
🇳🇱
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The 2 majority parties have also been replaced by a new major party 8 times in the history of the USA.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.
@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?
@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
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.
@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.