Letters to the Editor: Your 'protest vote' for Jill Stein is really a vote for Donald Trump

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Letters to the Editor: Your 'protest vote' for Jill Stein is really a vote for Donald Trump
latimes.com
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Change won't come overnight (at least without revolution). Like evolution, it requires constant pressure on the system. Changes that are too radical kill the organism.

A long as people think we can jump from Geoge H.W. Bush to Bernie Sanders in one election it's going to continue to fail.

Votw Harris this time. Vote for the person slightly more liberal than her next time, etc. It's a process.

That's one of my issues though, Harris is less liberal than Obama. It went in the opposite direction.

I advocated that Biden step down and allow a primary. Instead they ran with the VP because the DNC is not interested in actually bringing a more liberal or leftist candidate.

Meanwhile Trump has made Bush look good in comparison, so even if he stops running, an equal or worse candidate will simply take his place, and then we'll be faced with a similar problem.

It would take 20 years to make a grassroots movement work, but if we never start it's never gonna happen.

I'm 60. I would argue that 20 years is not a long time. Keep pushing.

Presumably because the US electorate isn't actually leftist or progressive in general and losing swing states wouldn't be balanced by extra votes in safe blue states.

But with the Democratic party, the conversation is ALWAYS "Vote us this time..." or "This election is too important!" They've been saying that for 50 years. Nah, friend. Now is the time for me to vote third party. Tired of waiting.

How is throwing your vote into a hole going to help exactly?

I'm voting for someone I believe in and who matches my values. If the duopoly has a problem with that, then they can work harder to welcome me rather than mock me for not voting for them.

So it "helps" because I'm voting for who I want to. As the system should be.

As it should be but not how it is.

But it can be that way if people stop being so scared to stray from the Duopoly.

Yeah we will just pretend the supreme Court back to being not packed with ultra conservative assholes. You know, something a socialist would give a flying fuck about

You can't get to a progressive candidate this way. A more progressive candidate is going to pull votes more from the left than the right. If you project the results at the point where the progressive candidate starts to matter they just tank the Democrat.If they take 80% of Democratic voters they just lose every state.

This user is 100% full of shit. They know what they are doing full well.

We could also achieve universal peace if everyone just threw down their weapons, and no one would go hungry if everyone would stop being greedy. Unfortunately, people aren't rational, and there's cultural/social constructs that keep these things from happening.

If we want to change them for the better, we unfortunately have to operate within the constraints we're faced with. We can change those constraints with hard work, but can't just act as if those constraints don't exist. It's the same way folks pretend that being "color blind" re: racial issues will solve things. Would be great, but sadly plenty of folks are incapable of not being racist, and historical harms mean that we can't just pretend that perception is the only problem.

This is technically true, but it's quite tough.

If extradimentional aliens from outside the multiverse came in and reprogrammed everyone who was a Dem (and only Dems) so that they suddenly switched and voted for West, we likely would have West as our next president.

The difficulty in the current system is that it basically enforces two parties. Makes people afraid to leave. Reform like RCV would make this easier, and allow for events to snowball (a 3rd party might have a good showing in an earlier RCV round as people are less afraid of having their vote wasted, and then the next election more people are willing to vote for that person, until it's enough to cause an actual win).

It's unlikely that Dems keep the Senate. But with I-WV and I-AZ retiring, if Dems take the presidency and both houses, we might have enough finally to drop the filibuster and push through real reforms... (we did in 2020 but Manchin wouldn't have gone along with it, making it 49:51 with reform losing.)

So your solution is to try harder within the current system, like many others have done for the last 50 years, but this time it will be different! If the problem is with the system, work on changing the system while achieving the best you can until the system has changed. Who you vote for in this election won't have any impact on the system. This will require a different approach. Vote for who you like, but don't fool yourself that this will make anyone with power change their stance or plan. Your actions are part of the system working as intended.

They're hoping to get you to either not vote or vote for Stein. Not one honest bone in this motherfucker's body.

Yeah, I don't know if he a hopeless idealist/useful idiot or a shill, paid or otherwise, but I think it's important to point out the futility of the stance now and then.