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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You're an idiot
Do you think effects outside of winning a particular race are made up?
Do you think the way to build representation is to work at the grassroots level except for in elections?
Do you think everyone but you doesn't understand how elections work?
No, but I’m beginning to suspect that you don’t.
How do you seriously ignore everyone that's responded to you with facts about how the presidential election works? Do you cover your eyes and not read anything at all or something?
Seriously, how is it possible for you to be as dense and willfully ignorent as you are?
If you think I’m ignoring the facts, lay them out.
If the case is as straightforward and clear as you say it is then you’re a copy-paste away from converting someone away from voting third party.
Actually talk to me about this instead of calling me names.
Now there is the possibility that I’m not seeing a surfeit of replies because someone’s defederated from my instance, but I think in that case they wouldn’t see my comments and be able to reply to them.
Local elections is where most of the current people in power got started. Anyone voting for third party in the presidential race missed the boat.
We desperately need more real third-party participation in politics, but voting for third parties in presidential elections doesn’t make that happen—the US voting system isn’t a business that adapts its products to meet consumer demand.
PSL and De La Cruz are only on the ballot in 18 states for 220 Electoral College votes. They literally cannot win.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ballot_access_in_the_2024_United_States_presidential_election.
Taking votes away from Harris only helps Trump.
No third party has reached those thresholds in years.
2020:
2016:
2012:
2008:
2004:
2000:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1992_United_States_presidential_election
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1996_United_States_presidential_election
18.91% in '92, 8.4% in '96.
Before that, you have to go back to '68 where a racist 3rd party won 13.5% of the vote, and the South, also had no significance beyond that election.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1968_United_States_presidential_election.
This does not work in a FPTP system. Every vote you peel off the Democrats just enables the Republicans and sets reform back even farther. The only way telling people to vote 3rd party is helpful is if they were going to vote for the GOP. Peeling votes away from Democrats HURTS the chances of other parties to be viable in the future.
I mean unless you are intentionally being obtuse I feel like you know damn well what people mean when they say “A vote for X is a vote for Trump”. It’s not a coincidence that so many Republican allies and organizations are promoting and pumping up 3rd party candidates to run in various swing states and pull votes away from Harris, this isn’t a new tactic and historically has absolutely changed elections.
A vote not for Harris is one less vote for her too. Not voting for anyone and then waking up getting the person you didn’t want winning should not get a Pikachu face. That single vote won’t matter statistically, but it’s the mindset that if lots of people think the same way, and they do, then it will matter.
It’s okay to vote thinking, ugh, fine…I’ll vote Democrat even though I hate the choices. If everyone thinking that way votes, we’ll have a left wing sweep. That would be a refreshing change of pace…then we can put pressure on those reps who listen to people to make the hard changes that right now always get opposed because of party.
I learned about spoiler candidates in 8th grade civics.
Spoiler about spoilers: spoilers can spoil actively, or passively. It doesn’t really matter after the fact, the point is how their words and existence as a candidate influence the success chances for the 2 leading candidates.
Let’s say Trump has 47% support… his theoretical maximum.
That means “Not Trump” is at 53%.
The problem is “Not Trump” is divided among Harris, Stein, and West. Stein and West draw from the Harris camp, not the Trump camp.
So instead of 47% Trump, 53% Harris, you get 45% Harris, 5% Stein, 3% West, Trump wins.
Do that in a few key states like Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin and Trump gets a 2nd term, actively making things worse for all those people who voted for Stein and West.
But I know you'll ignore all of the above again just like you did before.
in order to make it easier to track all this, i've got a spoiler block with links to the posts you referenced and my responses to them. it's at the bottom of this post. there's four, two of them were replies made to people other than me and one was a top level comment. the fourth and biggest one is a conversation i'm in, responding to the other person and engaging with what they say in good faith.
so no, i'm not ignoring everyone who's responded to me, and i'm not ignoring you.
in order to keep this from descending into minutae, i've recognized a few broad responses to "i'm voting third party":
"You can't win and winning is all that matters."
"You can't have any effect."
"You're gonna spoil it."
the first is false, the second and third contradict each other and are also false.
If you think there's a broad type of argument against voting third party that i missed, let me know.
since i never got to actually break this one out: if the democrats want my vote, they can adopt the policies i want.
I think people who claim "a vote for x is a vote for trump" are just trying to shame me into voting for their candidate using manipulation and falsehood. they usually don't respond or give up that tack when i say "no, that's not how it works", so i don't know what they actually mean because i never get to really dive into it. feel free to dive into it.
you wrote about spoiler effects using popular vote, but we're talking about the electoral college, so that's pretty moot. seems like its hard to blame candidates losing on the spoiler effect rather than the electoral college being fundamentally undemocratic.
::: spoiler spoiler Local elections is where most of the current people in power got started. Anyone voting for third party in the presidential race missed the boat. was you replying to someone other than me so i never saw it.
We desperately need more real third-party participation in politics, but voting for third parties in presidential elections doesn’t make that happen—the US voting system isn’t a business that adapts its products to meet consumer demand. was a top level comment that i never saw or didn't think was interesting if i did.
Here's everything from "PSL and De La Cruz" all the way to the link about the '68 election. it's split up in several responses in that comment chain, but i think that's that whole section.
I did not ignore anything that user said. they ended up trying to claim that perot had no effect, which is a pretty bad place to paint oneself into.
This does not work in a FPTP system. Every vote you peel off the Democrats just enables the Republicans and sets reform back even farther. The only way telling people to vote 3rd party is helpful is if they were going to vote for the GOP. Peeling votes away from Democrats HURTS the chances of other parties to be viable in the future. was not a reply to me and i never saw it.
I think all the rest is a unique comment by you, but let me know if i missed something. :::