Don’t Fall for the Third-Party Trick

jordanlund@lemmy.worldmod to politics @lemmy.world – 496 points –
Don’t Fall for the Third-Party Trick
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"Progressives should not make the same mistake that Ernst Thälmann made in 1932. The leader of the German Communist Party, Thälmann saw mainstream liberals as his enemies, and so the center and left never joined forces against the Nazis. Thälmann famously said that 'some Nazi trees must not be allowed to overshadow a forest' of social democrats, whom he sneeringly called 'social fascists.'

After Adolf Hitler gained power in 1933, Thälmann was arrested. He was shot on Hitler’s orders in Buchenwald concentration camp in 1944."

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I feel like we need something like the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact that is aiming to eliminate the electoral college, but for Ranked Choice.

Passing this federally is too hard. We need do to this state by state.

Until I can vote for a third party with RCV, then I might as well be saying that I have zero preference about the GOP and DNC options on the table.

Alaska does it (assuming they won't repeal it in nov). Oregon is going to try and do it, if it hopefully passes. If we get two states proving it works and isn't a problem, that momentum can snowball.

Please help support the RCV effort in Oregon if you can. https://www.oregonrcv.org/

I heard this a couple of days ago, and the more I'm looking into it, the more I find the green party a joke at best.

Alaska has a number of things. A population of conservationists amoung the general population who are likely disaffected. An environment that is being exploited harder than most states. Now ranked choice voting. Most people would see them as the environmentalist party. How much good could they do towards that cause if they got into that state legislature? What if they could take the congress seat or a senator? If they took the electoral votes it would be harder since the ranked choice only seems to be for the states choice, but they could prove they could win at some level. How many candidates are they running in Alaska? One, jill stein. How much effort are they putting in there for her? I can't tell. The main criticism of them does not exist there, but they aren't even trying. They can accomplish many of there goals there more easily than anywhere else. It's the perfect storm for them. Pathetic.

I wish it were different, but the Green Party sucks in the two countries I’ve lived in. I want to vote for environmentalists, but they seem to be Russian shills in the US, and they’ve had literal stasi members in Germany, where they were so opposed to nuclear, that the country still uses mostly coal.

Rightwing Dems that get to the primary off corporate donors in the primary will never let RCC take over

The only reason they win in generals is the only other option is Republicans.

To fix anything on the federal level we need the Dem party onboard and all on the same page, then heavy majorities, then fix the system

I’d argue that you don’t need it in every state. You just need it in enough states to make a 3rd party candidate viable.

Look up the Moral Majority. They wrested control of the GOP from Nelson Rockefeller et al by showing up at every local Republican function with enough votes to make sure they got heard. They started out putting their sheriffs and county clerks on the ballots.

Problem is that RCV will only have a chance in deep blue states, and all it would accomplish is reducing the blue representation in congress.

To put it bluntly, all it would accomplish is more in fighting and contributing to the reputation that Dems are ineffective. Except, it would be the "blue aligned coalition" instead of "Dems"

The only real path to making this change is to give Dems a super majority so they can amend the constitution.

And, well, the minority of Red voters have a majority of power thanks to the electoral college, so a super majority is absolutely impossible for the foreseeable future.

Edit - it'd also cause disruptions in States that don't adopt RCV, as "progressives" protest vote 3rd party and sandbag the Dems