Trying to build viable third parties by voting for them in presidential elections is like trying to build a third door in your house by repeatedly walking into the wall where you want the door to be.

AbouBenAdhem@lemmy.world to Showerthoughts@lemmy.world – 934 points –
397

You are viewing a single comment

There will never be an acceptable time to vote third party according to liberals. Unless you're fine with an infinite state of groveling towards people in power. If we can't even push them left on genocide when it could cost the election, we can't move them left on anything. The status quo is fine for people who have the resources to deal with it and people not effected by Police brutality and other negative effects.

The way to push them left is to actually push them left—protesting, calling your representatives, donating to campaigns you support, voting for candidates in local primaries where your vote is exponentially more influential, et cetera.

But voting in a presidential election doesn’t push anyone anywhere. For one thing, pushing is a continuous, incremental feedback process, while the outcome of a presidential election is a discrete binary one—there’s no map between the two. But more significantly, this buys into a narrative that the media has constructed over the past few generations, in which voting is a semiotic process with the people signaling their desires with their votes and politicians signaling their response with legislation. This leaves the media in full control of the political process by interpreting for each side what the other “means”: because the votes and bills in themselves are devoid of meaning beyond their real effects, the media is free to insert whatever meaning suits them.

I do these things already. I can't change people's minds on a mass scale. Genocide is a redline for me. Harris said she will earn support and she is fine with courting former Regan staff and Dick Cheny's vote. It is on her. Liberals are hostile towards protesters. I'm okay with not being allies with those people. I'll vote down ballot against GOP. If I can help get Greens to 5% I'll take it. Plus my State is gone to Trump already. (FL)

I don't know what the right time is, but it's definitely not presidential elections.

That's 100% the right time lol. They get ballot access and funding from these elections.

Exit polls have shown green voters wouldn't have voted Dems anyway. I don't get the hostility. There is no vote being lost, and Harris said she wants to earn support and is fine with courting people like Dick Cheney. It is a harder path for third parties but I still think they should run.