I realize that, but putting on a show every 4 years through a presidential vote isn’t helping. I’m saying that individual voters should form some sense of a coalition internally. Pick your party or parties and work all year for them. Donate to your party. Support your party, especially at lower levels where change can happen faster. Then vote for the coalition candidate that can possibly get over 50%.
I voted for John Anderson in 1980. Like all third-party voters, I felt pretty smug about it. I strongly disputed the idea that I was throwing my vote away.
I was wrong, and I will NEVER do that again. Anderson didn’t do too badly, but he was never going to win. I bear at least some responsibility for putting Reagan in office, which arguably led to Trump. Smug 1980 me was an idiot. I didn’t live in a swing state and the outcome wasn’t close, so I take some comfort in that. But that doesn’t let me off the hook.
Anybody who voted third-party last month voted for Trump, whether they admit it or not.
Briefly put, my thinking is that the Democrats abandoned their base many years ago. They stopped actively protecting workers and the poor and vulnerable. Few of these potential voters are even paying attention anymore and no one believes they actually want to help them.
Now the Democrats keep talking about how the country is in crisis and we need an immediate change. Young and poor people don’t vote, blue collar types have defected to the Republicans. They want to win by chasing after the middle so the cycle continues. Unfortunately you can’t just fix years of neglect so quickly. They have to earn back those voters. It’s going to be messy no matter what. Democrats want a quick fix that does not exist.
It’s not that both parties are the same, it’s that both are inadequate. Income inequality is not getting better, the housing crisis is terrifying and we still have people dying because they can’t afford insulin. I don’t want to see “kids in cages” but fixing that is not good enough. If you think it is then check your privilege.
Even before Covid too many people in this country have been living on the ragged edge of survival. People like Sanders and Warren (both of whom I have voted for in primaries) are Democrats who have finally started addressing this at least.
You can disagree with me but I have actually thought about this before I decided on my vote. I am not being irrational or selfish or childish, no matter how many times you call me names.
You want to persuade me I am wrong argue facts. But I don’t buy any of the standard arguments.
The fact is that there was an existential threat to the nation, rule of law, and literally the lives of hundreds of thousands of Americans. And the other choice was a guy who probably agrees with you more often than not.
So your choice was to do nothing whatsoever to help stop those threats, or to do something that would both stop those threats, and get you much of what you want.
It really seems selfish to prioritize the endorphin rush you got from standing by your principles while an extra hundred thousand elderly people choke to death alone, some children grow up without their parents because we kidnapped them, and we become a fascist state.
On top of that, the GOP wants to make it harder for non Republicans to vote. So every election given away to the GOP by third party voters only makes what they hope for less and less likely.
The Dems are the ones pushing for ranked choice voting. By voting third party, you’re helping insure that there will be no third parties, because it helps give the country to Republicans who want it to be harder for you to vote, and use third parties as spoilers against Dems. Shit, they even want to fix the census so that parts of the country with many non-citizens are going to have even less electoral power.
This is why I generally avoid these threads and discussions.
People start calling me names, accusing me of being smug, irrational and whatever and refuse to actually respond to the points I made.
I didn’t mean to call you a name or insult you.
You asked for facts to persuade you you’re wrong. I put up some facts. You said (essentially) your principles are why you didn’t vote. Your principles are entirely in your mind. Outside of your mind there is a world where real human beings are suffering, and permanent damage is being done.
Personally, I’d bend my principles to save a hundred thousand people, or keep the nation from falling to Trump’s temper tantrums.
[Edited to clarify]
Does anyone know why Mass voters opposed RCV? It seems like something that would have wide popular appeal.
That is not at all what I said. You seem to have not understood anything I wrote.
You did not post facts, you posted opinions and unsupported statements
.
So you didn’t vote based on your principles? You said you thought about it before you decided your vote. What did you think about? That you want the Dems to become the exact party you want before you vote for them?
What statements do you take issue with?
doesn’t bother me if people say I helped Trump.
Huh? Their goal was winning the election. They won the election. Facts, TMBG_Fan.
Your reasoning is faulty along many lines. You list a lot of problems with the current system, but you don’t explain how your actions help to solve those problems. Your post is a series of non sequiturs.
I agree there are a ton of problems with our nation, and that Democrats don’t come anywhere close to being a solution to most of them. And then what? A third party vote exacerbates problems, it doesn’t solve them.
This crap again.
OK. Here we go. Again.
When you know that one candidate is a piece of shit moron that cares about nothing but himself and how he can rape the country, And the other one is a decent capable candidate that cares about the country. And for some crazy reason the piece of shit may win, you vote third party giving the country to the piece of shit.
You could have helped stop it Bijou, but instead, you stuck your head in the sand. I cannot give third party voters a pass when they knew what would likely happen. You voted for DJT Bijou.
I was talking specifically about enacting ranked choice voting. Context, Ursula_Le_Guin_Fan.
That only excludes just about everyone who ever ran for elected office. I’m not looking for a buddy, just the least worst who has half a chance.
My point is that Democrats keep chasing the centerist vote which makes them move even further away from addressing the concerns of the struggling and poverty stricken which alienates those potential voters even more which creates a cycle that moves them further away from the ideals they supposedly once stood for.
I will vote for progressive candidates. Sometimes that is a Democrat. If there is not a suitable Democrat I will vote third party, usually Green. Voting your values does matter and for as much as people mock voters for “sending a message” I think that can be totally appropriate. That message for me is I support progressive candidates and policies.
I hear “strategic voters” say that no one will vote for progressives. The only way I can prove them wrong is to vote for progressives. You may not like it but it’s not an irrational, petulant response.
You can’t tell me my one vote doesn’t matter in this context and yet is indispensable for electing Democrats. Especially since I live in a safe “Blue” state.
I was surprised. They got a lot of big name endorsements. Warren, Markey, Deval Patrick even Bill Weld. I think they needed to do a better job getting the word out on the endorsements. Also I think a lot of people didn’t really understand it. Covid made it hard to get people out on the street doing outreach and education.
My very progressive city voted overwhelmingly in favor of it but not all cities are equally progressive.
Nope. Not going to do that.
You know full well it was a wasted vote when you cast it and in this case a wasted vote only helped Trump.
I get you didn’t like either of the main candidates. Join the club. That is pretty much almost all politics these days.
So, you could pick between an incompetent president or a competent president or throw away your vote.
In NC the Green Party got 0.2% of the vote so good job with that. ALL third parties totaled got 1.2% of the vote. These days that can be the difference (although the Libertarian party got 0.9% and that almost certainly hurts republicans more).
If you want to say we should have some form of Instant Runoff voting I am 100% there with you.
Until then we are stuck with this cruddy system and have to work with it.
Don’t you remember back when there were so many candidates, there had to be two separate nights of Democratic debates to fit them all in?
At that stage, we got way more than 2 choices for president.
It’s true that we only really have two parties to choose from. But I think @Left_Hand_of_Dorkness is correct that a third party would have build from the ground up.
I also suspect that a third party, should one gain such power, would be more likely to supplant one of the other two than to coexist on a more-or-less equal footing with them; but I could be wrong about that.
I think not enough people knew what it was before the campaign started, and preferred the devil they knew in these uncertain times. Also in the pro/con arguments in the voter pamphlet, the pro side had a confusing explanation for how RCV wouldn’t be confusing. They were basically trying to explain that if you want to you can rank the candidates, but if you don’t your vote still counts but I think for someone who doesn’t know what RCV is in the first place it was a lot to take in.
Also MA voters might have a bit of ballot question fatigue (BTW I have no clue how CA voters manage it every election). Last time around there was a ballot question on whether the state should mandate a nurse-to-patient ratio in hospitals that was really complicated and basically caused the majority of people who have no idea what the implications of that would be to badger people they knew who worked at hospitals what they should think. And even nurses were really divided on it. There was also a trans-rights ballot question that basically amounted to an anti-trans group trying to trick people into accidentally voting to repeal an existing law that protected trans rights. I think after that type of stuff MA voters are going to have a higher barrier of trust with ballot questions.