You have got to be kidding.

https://time.com/6337474/javier-milei-argentina-president-cloned-dogs-advice/

What the actual fuck.

Alternate headline: Trump Neville Chamberlain suggests giving Vladimir Putin Adolf Hitler whatever he wants

Let’s break this down. Seems like you’re saying that unless my candidate wins or places second, my vote doesn’t matter.

YES. That's exactly what I'm saying. In a FPTP election system, that's literally how it works.

I'm not a fan of it. I'd love for a vote that goes to a third party to actually count in some way. But in the current system we all live under, that's not what happens. Instead, at best you get a Ross Perot - someone who pulls votes from both parties. He became a media darling for a while because of it. But you know what? All his voters may as well have stayed home, because he got neither first nor second place. We had Bill Clinton, we had Bush the Elder as a one-termer, and both Perot and his independent party faded into obscurity.

That won't change until we get rid of FPTP elections. That's a prerequisite for third-party votes mattering.

Until then, you have literally thrown every vote you've ever cast for a third-party candidate away. It didn't matter. And it even helped the candidate you were most ideologically opposed to.

If you dispute that, you dispute math.

There is no possible meaning of that phrase that isn't immensely stomach-churning.

Has anyone done a systematic study on ballot bullshit like this to determine if it is ever in the other direction, or is it always, without exception, done to harm Democrats?

Should be more, but that's still quite the spread.

I want to ask you something. Don't answer immediately, stop to really think about the answer and what it means.

How many politicians have you voted for that either won or got second place? In our FPTP system, those are the only outcomes that matter. Winning means you got into an elected position. Second place means you may still have a political future.

If you've been voting mostly third-party your entire adult life, there is a very good chance you have literally never had any effect on any election whatsoever. You and every single other voter who voted for your preferred candidates could have stayed home on election day and not only would the winner have remained the same, the person who came in second would have stayed the same.

I'm willing to bet that if you stop and add up every single time your preferred candidate won or got second place, and every single time that person was running as either a Democrat or a Republican, you'll find that it's the same number.

Ah. So you mean violence. Got it.

if they wouldn't vote for Democrats...

...then - again - they get Trump for president. Like it or not, split the left and that's what you get.

Every time I see him, I like him more. When the crowd starts going nuts, it's obvious he's genuinely touched by it.

The guy is just amazingly genuine and nice.

4%

That's... That's pretty low.

I mean, who's surprised by this? Dubya was always a dumbass, and essentially the beta version of Trump.

I thought that would be obvious. Again, this is a self-selecting group of lefty folks. If someone works in one of Russia's troll farms, and their job today is to try to divide the left, then they're gonna go to where the left hangs out.

If someone like that shows up shouting, "Trump 2024! MAGA!" then they're not going to make any headway. Like I said, Republicans here tend to get downvoted into oblivion.

So instead, they show up and go, "I'm a lefty, too. Very left. In fact, I'm so leftilicious that I hate Harris. Don't vote for Harris, she's just like the Republicans! Instead, vote for [INSERT CANDIDATE WITH NO CHANCE OF WINNING]! Because believe me, [INSERT CANDIDATE WITH NO CHANCE OF WINNING] is much, much better! Be ideologically pure! And whatever you do, don't worry about Donald Trump becoming president, because I'm sure that with enough of us voting for them, [INSERT CANDIDATE WITH NO CHANCE OF WINNING] will totes win!"

You need to account for sampling bias. This is a forum that strongly attracts a self-selecting group comprised almost entirely of those on the left. Very few Republicans actually find their way here, and the few that do are typically downvoted into oblivion.

At the same time, there's a flood of supposedly leftist accounts, most new, trying desperately to get Trump elected, at the same time as news comes out that... well, that Russia is doing an awful lot of that shit.

So people here are suspicious.

It's true, they do. But not always. It depends on how many there are in any given post, spam-upvoting each other. And... it depends on how successful their divisive arguments are. As far as they're concerned, it doesn't matter if 99% of the time they fail to get traction. They're going for that 1%, that one susceptible person who can be convinced to throw their vote away on a third-party candidate in a FPTP election where that vote has a 0% chance of electing that third-party candidate.

Personally, I don't think you're one of the Russian trolls. I think you're one of their victims.

That is a bizarre assertion that has nothing to do with what I'm saying.

You get Trump if you manage to convince enough people on the left to vote for third parties.

I don't think you know what "petulant" means. Asking you to be precise instead of dancing around an issue isn't petulance.

I'm not being "adamant" about it, just realistic. Until we do away with FPTP voting, I will continue to encourage voters to pick the candidate that is furthest to the left and also has a good chance to win, because that's the pragmatic solution and the only route to viable third-party candidates.

She's going to show up, he won't, and it'll be an opportunity to take tough questions without having to share time and a stage with a gasbag idiot.

That's the fucking POINT. We don't have a great democracy. We want one, but we're currently fucked by the undemocratic electoral college, a system specifically designed to winnow our choices down to two.

So your options are a member of a rather pedestrian centrist party, or a deranged and demented monster.

If you're not American, as implied by your comment, then you may be used to functional democratic systems. Well, we're currently stuck with what we've got. So as an outsider looking in, who do you want in charge of the world's largest military? Harris or Trump? Pick one.

Then you get Trump.

He says he's going to vote for Trump. I have a suspicion that quite a number of politicians who gobble his mushroom publicly in order to court the loony vote will privately vote for Harris.

Profiles in courage they are not.

Ah, so just divide the Democrats up to destroy their power. Typical.

I know I'm not going to convince you, so this is for everyone else reading this thread. Because of our shitty electoral college and FPTP system, calls for third parties on the left translate into more political power for the right. Here's how it works...

Let's say you have two main political parties, the Snuggling Puppies party and the Kicking Puppies party. The Snugglers usually win, because the Kickers are violent weirdos.

Then the Kickers get the bright idea of helping out fringe parties that also love puppies, like one called the Worshipping Puppies party, which takes their love of puppies to the extreme. They secretly fund and promote these other parties, and it's very effective. In the next election, it's so effective that the Kickers win.

Wait, what? How? It's simple. With the people who love puppies dividing their votes between multiple candidates who love puppies, the Kickers get a plurality.

Let's keep it simple and say the Kickers clandestinely supported three parties that are ideologically opposed to them, meaning people who love puppies divided their votes up four ways. Each of the puppy-loving parties gets 19.5% of the vote, for a pro-puppy total of 78%! But the Kickers didn't divide up their vote, so with a 22% plurality, the winner is... The party that everyone else hates!

It's a classic divide and conquer strategy. It only works when astroturfers manage to convince people on the left puppy lovers to divide themselves up, rather than consolidate to fight back against the right people who hate puppies.

What actions would you propose? Be specific.

Cute story.

True story. If you dispute it, you dispute math. It's literally how FPTP voting works.

Your goal is a permanent Republican majority. Might as well start openly rooting for Trump.

Agreed, but there are a lot of low-information voters out there who have probably never heard of it because they don't follow political news closely.

Define "direct action." I asked for specificity. Don't dance around what you mean, say it clearly.

Given the much greater size of the population that plans to vote Democrat, not likely.

Let's take this out of the realm of politics for a sec, and bring up a topic nearly everyone can agree on: Chocolate. A full 90% of Americans like chocolate and prefer it to other candy categories. (Seriously, look it up. Americans fucking love chocolate.) Now imagine if you went to a candy discussion forum, and found that there was a flood of similarly-phrased and comments from a bunch of new accounts, all extolling the virtues of gummy bears and denigrating chocolate as a candy choice.

Would you find that believable? Or would you suspect some gummy bear aficionado had set up bots to spam the forum?

The person you're arguing with has admitted that they want to destroy the Democratic party elsewhere in this thread, with the bizarrely naive belief that somehow this wouldn't result in permanent Republican control.

Eh. I disagree, but I can take my lumps.

I don't hate you. I think you're incredibly naive, and I think you've likely inadvertently consumed Russian propaganda specifically designed to split the left in the United States, but that doesn't make me hate you.

It just makes me sad.

I have a couple kids, as I mentioned, both LGBTQ+. People like you, I don't think you intend my kids harm. But your vote will potentially boost Donald Trump. And your rhetoric online, if successful, would further boost Donald Trump. And Trump is a direct threat to my kids.

So no, I don't hate you. But I'm scared of what you and people like you could do to my kids in the name of ideological purity.

Me and most of the people in my social circle.

That's a statistically insignificant blip unless your social circle is, for example, Delaware.

Look at the campaigns of socialist Claudia De la Cruz and the crowds of people showing up at her demonstrations. You think all those people are getting paid?

No, of course not. I was referring specifically to online, where a single person can operate thousands of bots spamming nonsense. You can't do something like that at a physical event.

That said, her rallies attract hundreds of people at best. Harris' rallies attract tens of thousands of people, with thousands more standing outside. And De la Cruz is polling in the low single digits. She's barely a statistical blip. Yet online forums are absolutely flooded with support for her and for Jill Stein.

That's true. But...

We know there is an extensive campaign by the Russian government to divide the left and attempt to get Trump re-elected. And given the nature of our current electoral system, there are only a few reasons why someone would try to get people not to vote for Harris:

• They are an honest Trump supporter. Fine. I disagree vehemently, of course, but such is life.
• They are a true-believing third-party supporter. Very rare, given the low numbers for fringe candidates from third parties. Of course, these people are incredibly naive, because they don't understand how third parties in a FPTP election system empower their own ideological opposition, but at least they're honest, too.
• They are a Trump supporter, but not honest, and for whatever reason, they consider it morally and ethically acceptable to misrepresent themselves and try to get folks on the left playing a game of "let's you and him fight."
• They are a paid actor. I think this is the majority of the supposed leftists posting vehemently and continuously against Harris, while ignoring the grotesque abomination and clear threat to the country that is Trump.

I mean that. I think the majority of people playing that particular game are paid to. Doesn't mean they all are, of course, but it's impossible to ignore the massive uptick in content from them right now, especially from shiny new accounts and from accounts that have been mostly inactive until now. There just aren't that many third-party true believers or Republicans who want to spend all day, every day, pretending to be abrasive leftists.

I'm going to blow your mind:

https://www.prri.org/press-release/new-prri-report-reveals-nearly-one-in-five-americans-and-one-in-four-republicans-still-believe-in-qanon-conspiracy-theories/

It's certainly not half the country, but a shockingly, disturbingly large portion of the Republican electorate fell for "QAnon" junk being spread largely by Russian sources posing as conservatives. The left is far less susceptible to outright propaganda tactics like that, but Russia is pushing for division extremely hard.

And voter fraud, don't forget that one! I heard over 40 billion illegal immigrants voted in California elections this year!

There's also the hypocrisy. He's into porn with trans women.

I just googled "Karl Rove dancing." I have regrets.

Dude, the evidence is overwhelming. You're just embarrassing yourself now.

No action?

On behalf of my gay daughter who will be able to marry who she wants to because of Democrats, I just want to say [REDACTED SO I WON'T GET BANNED]. And on behalf of my son, who is trans, [THESE WORDS WOULD ALSO GET ME BANNED].

Come to think of it, I have Democrats to thank for a return to sane pandemic policies, and Democrats to thank for the Inflation Reduction Act, the most impactful environmental legislation in thirty years. So you can take your "no action" and [NOPE, NOT GONNA SAY IT].

I'm under no illusion that Democrats are perfect, but they've been as effective as possible, given the situation with literal Russian assets on the other side of the aisle, trying as hard as possible to destroy America.

I know it's troubling, but try to remember that polling is pretty much fucked right now. The pollsters are having a horrible time trying to get statistically valid samplings, and it's quite possible that the poll in question is very much off the mark.