No you get dozens. They are whittled down to a final two, but in the primary you often get quite a few.
The "Democrats’ dont do anything. The voters do. Voters want a more centrist candidate for the Oval office, Democratic voters want a liberal but not radical candidate. Every time the Dems have nominated a very liberal candidate, they have lost the White House.
Now, the Dems have plenty of progressives in local offices and the House. They have a loud voice and have helped shape the platform. Many planks in the platform are theirs.
But the person who sits in the Oval Office has to represent all the nation.
Do we need to share the chart again?
Republicans have pulled waaaaaay to the right and you claim the country wants centrists? 
The Nation wanted a Moderate Liberal for President.
I agree that it would be extremely difficult to have more than 2 strong parties at a time with the current system of first-past-the-post combined with a strong President. Heck, I’m surprised that even places without a strong President but with FPTP seem to have representation from many different parties in their Parliaments, but once you tack in the President’s incentive to favor their own party within their own coalition it looks pretty insurmountable.
FPTP is probably easier to change constitutionally than moving toward a more Parliamentary system. The one I’d like to see try is instant runoff with the eliminatees being determined by Dowdall Borda count (so you’d still have to have a lot of people want you as a first or second choice to stand much of a chance.)
… But until then, yeah, don’t vote 3rd party unless you think that the two major candidates are exactly equally good.
The first thing a third party needs to be viable is someone popular enough to draw voters from the main two in significant numbers. See Teddy Roosevelt, 1912.
People who vote strategically for who they think most likely to win tend to move towards the center (at least I see that sentiment often around here). This does not necessarily actually reflect what most people want.
I am one of those people living in the nation. I get one vote. The Democrats are not automatically entitled to it. The question in the OP was who voted third party. The follow up question became why did you vote third party. I am answering that. You don’t have to like or agree with it.
Yeah, this. I wish I’d voted for Carter.
That’s true in so many places — because the US’s incarnation of the Green Party is absolutely unserious about being a political party.
(Insert those few local orgs that are exceptions here: __________.)
I am amused by those who can’t bear to vote for candidates like Clinton or Biden (or, from the right, Trump) but are fine with choosing jokes like Jill Stein or Howie Hawkins (or, from the right, the Constitution Party’s would-be theocrats) for the most powerful job in the world. They’re not any less narcissistic than regular politicians,* and their grift is a far worse deal for their supporters: all they can promise you is a chance to spoil an election.
*I will point out that Saint Ralph Nader constantly expresses wrong ideas about politics and policy with as much certitude as Trump ever has, and unlike Trump probably believes himself to be correct.
Yes you are correct people wanted another choice other than career politicians from the same old parties. A new person with new ideas and a new way of doing things that would tear up the original order and shake things up in Washington. In 2016 almost 63 million people voted for such a candidate and the result was a disaster. which just goes to show that even though the majority may want a change in the status quo, they may not agree with you as to exactly what that means. Everyone has in different ideal in mind what is meant by an alternative candidate.
Which brings us to the real problem with the more pure than thou third party voter. They are standing up and demanding that their views and policies be implemented despite the fact that the majority of the population doesn’t agree with them. if you want a green new deal, or free college tuition, or the government out of Washington, or a build giant border wall to keep the furriners out, work to get the mandate large enough that Democratic or Republican candidates see supporting those ideals as the key to getting elected. As Do_not_taunt says the time for that is during primary season. They to get Yang nominated. But if in-spite of your efforts and what you think is right and true he doesn’t make it to the big show, accept the loss and move on to do what you can at the next level to secure your interests.
Now if you really feel that those interests are best served by having the green party play a role as spoiler ensuring a Trump victory, then go ahead. But understand that when the party swings to the left to try to recover those few extra percent they missed, a whole new crop of disaffected Democrats will arise who realize that the Republicans are abhorrent but that the Democrats are just a bit more socialist that then they feel comfortable with so decide to vote Libertarian, and the as a result a party that the majority despises, but which excels in party discipline marches on to victory.
That is true. But if you have a choice between a likeably mostly honest guy, who is indeed a career politicians, with all that entails, (and yeah, that is a lot of baggage, i concede) and a guy who is/was trying to drive the USA into fascism, then there is no choice.
I need to be continually reminded of how poorly informed the average US voter is. Even lots of otherwise smart and knowledgeable people know little about alternative (and better) forms of voting like approval and RCV. The Center for Election Science, which has had a few victories the past year or so like in St. Louis and Fargo, and others of its type have lifetimes of work ahead of it.
I voted Libertarian this time and four years ago. Apparently, it didn’t affect the outcome in my state.
I think everyone goes through this at some point. Mine was in 2000 - I voted for Gore, but I felt like it didn’t matter. I was disillusioned with politics and it seemed to me that Gore and Bush were essentially the same. It took 9/11 and the Iraq War to realize no, they aren’t the same, and the country would have been in a very different place by 2003 with Gore in charge.
Most of us grow beyond this phase, some do not.
Biden is mostly honest? LMFAO. Is that the best we can do? Mostly honest? the only good thing I can think about Biden is he’s not Trump. People thinking Biden is the 2nd coming of Obama are in for a rude wakeup call.
which is?
But you see- it does. Look, the Popular vote, even tho it doesnt fully control the results, is important in a moral way.
I think we have a duty as citizens to cast a vote for the highest office in the land so that the best person gets the job. Notice I didn’t say vote for the best person. Your obligation in 2020 was to ensure that Joe Biden won the election, since Donnie T. more than proved he is an incompetent, racist, xenophobic, fascist, corrupt, grifting liar and a clear and present danger to democracy. This election was far too important to waste your vote on a third party.
Not in love with Biden? Tough. He was the one person with a chance to stop the US’s descent into totalitarianism. Maybe you would have preferred Sanders, but he would have gotten his ass handed to him. We fucking barely won with a centrist, running with a self-described socialist would have been suicide.
Want ranked choice voting? I’m down with that. Knock yourself out. But if your state doesn’t have ranked choice voting, you have an obligation to future generations not to enable a fascist entering the White House. You may have principles, but please don’t consider them to be a suicide pact.
To return to the notion of ranked choice voting (hopefully not in too tiresome a fashion), if we had it, people would tend to vote for the candidate whose positions they really really like as their FIRST choice, and (when not the same individual) for the candidate they support as the possible winner between the two major parties as their SECOND choice.
a) It would mean casting a vote for (let’s say) Jo Jorgensen is NOT “throwing your vote away” and no longer can be constituted as “you might as well have not voted”; so if the possibility of those horrid socialist godless Democrats coming into power is just revolting to you, but you aren’t at all happy with that feckless idiot with the orange face, you could cast your first vote for Jo and mark the clown down as your second choice.
b) Right now, a lot of people vote 3rd party in hopes of “pulling the [Democratic or Republican] party in this direction”, i.e., get them worried that if they don’t reshape some of their legislative priorities and shift their platform, they will lose votes, and perhaps elections. This would be a different equation with ranked choice — on the one hand, the Democratic Party could probably count on most Green-first-choice voters casting their second choices for Democratic candidates, which makes Greens less of a threat; in theory, this would reduce the need to tailor an appeal to Green-oriented voters (not that they do a whole lot of that now). But see the next point.
c) When voting 3rd party no longer means NOT voting for one of the two major parties that are likely to win, that gives a lot more voters “permission” to vote their real first choice and presumably more folks would. Over time that might take the form of the left-leaning vote spreading out among two, three, four, or more left-flavored parties, and at some point the Democratic Party might not be the largest recipient of first-choice ballots among folks who voted at least one of their choices “Democratic Party”. That doesn’t always mean that the left party in question would win — the Dems might be the first party to get >50% as the lowest-vote candidates get their votes redistributed to those voters’ 2nd choices etc. But it means the political choices become less binary, less either/or. In the future it could end up being true that the majority of 1st-rank Greens voters choose the Citizen’s Party as 2nd and Socialist Workers Party as 3rd and Dems only 4th, and similar patterns among the other left non-Dems, creating an informal coalition of smaller parties that causes one of their candidates to win an actual election or two. At that point, the various parties are all in need of appealing to voters on a basis other than “we’re your only real alternative to THAT horrid party”.
Biden is who the Dem primary voters chose, so he is literally the best that could run against Trump.
I have been beating that drum with my Libertarian minded “friends” for a few years now. They don’t care. “The only way we can fix it all is with the power of the White House!” “We don’t have time to do that, we have to save the country!”
It’s very frustrating.