# You vote third party for President, and the worse option gets in. Do you feel any responsibility? **URL:** \ **Category:** Politics & Elections\ **Created:** [May 16, 2020, 10:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-vote-third-party-for-president-and-the-worse-option-gets-in-do-you-feel-any-responsibility/853949 "2020-05-16T22:51:53Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 5
**Author:** ![dalej42](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/67e7ee/32.png) [@dalej42](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dalej42)\ **Post date:** [May 21, 2020, 1:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-vote-third-party-for-president-and-the-worse-option-gets-in-do-you-feel-any-responsibility/853949/81 "2020-05-21T01:31:38Z")
> [@Linty\_Fresh](#): > > I’ve been noticing a rather disturbing trend here and in some other threads, mostly in the Pit. It’s the tendency to talk in terms that imply that Biden is somehow _deserving_ of our votes, that anyone and everyone owes it to him and the country to vote for him regardless of personal feelings. > > _Responsibility?_ Being _absolved?_ A vote for a third-party candidate is comparable to drunk driving? (Full disclosure, I will most likely not vote third-party. There is only one thing that would make me do so, and this isn’t the thread to discuss it.) > > People, nobody owes Biden shit, OK? If they think he’s a lousy candidate, they are under no obligation, legal or moral, to vote for him. Biden is not owed your vote any more than Trump is owed the votes of _his_ base. Biden and Trump both have to EARN the votes. If that leads to four more years of Trump (and while I hope I’m wrong about that, I think that’s what’s going to happen), well that’s what America wants. > > Really, it’s the way that every presidential election in my lifetime going back to 1968 has worked. People who are pissed off at the status quo owe no loyalty to the person giving it to them, and, in fact, voters tend not to give it to them if they feel they have a choice. In my lifetime, incumbents have been beaten in presidential elections three times since '68, and I don’t even really count 1976. 1976 was a weird year. That leaves 1980 and 1992, and what did Reagan and Clinton have in common? They were dynamic. They were different. They were popular, charismatic, and new, and they found a way to convey that newness into their message. They ran rings around their stodgy, ineffectual opponents, and whatever you can say about Trump, the man is _not_ stodgy. Trump does one thing–one thing–very, very well, and that is sell the image. You might not like that image, but folks, he’s good at putting it out there. Voters as a whole might vote along party lines, but they won’t vote along loyalty lines. Not to you, not to the country, not to anyone else. > > And maybe that’s for the better. Think about it: If it were that easy, if the whole key to getting rid of a shitty incumbent were to find a slightly less shitty challenger, then what would be the motivation to get fresh blood into the races to begin with? > > As someone from another message board put it so eloquently: “If your opponents run a guy who couldn’t beat a gong, what’s to stop your side from running a gong?” > > Again, I might be wrong. Trump might lose. But if so, it’ll be the first time the incumbent loses against a total goofball in _my_ lifetime, and I’m almost 55. You forgot one thing: every 3rd party candidate in your lifetime has been a loon, a white supremacist or both ---
**Author:** ![Linty\_Fresh](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/c5a1d2/32.png) [@Linty\_Fresh](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Linty_Fresh)\ **Post date:** [May 21, 2020, 1:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-vote-third-party-for-president-and-the-worse-option-gets-in-do-you-feel-any-responsibility/853949/82 "2020-05-21T01:36:16Z")
> [@dalej42](#): > > You forgot one thing: every 3rd party candidate in your lifetime has been a loon, a white supremacist or both I didn’t forget it at all. Let’s take a look at what I wrote in my post: > [@Right there in the post](#): > > And maybe that’s for the better. Think about it: If it were that easy, if the whole key to getting rid of a shitty incumbent were to find a slightly less shitty challenger, then what would be the motivation to get fresh blood into the races to begin with? ---
**Author:** ![MaxTheVool](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/9fc29f/32.png) [@MaxTheVool](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MaxTheVool)\ **Post date:** [May 21, 2020, 1:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-vote-third-party-for-president-and-the-worse-option-gets-in-do-you-feel-any-responsibility/853949/83 "2020-05-21T01:51:59Z")
> [@Kyrie\_Eleison](#): > > Since the 90s, the DNC strategy has mostly been to run inoffensive candidates and to move rightward in the hope of convincing right-leaning independents to vote Democratic This is where I think you’re completely looking at things wrong. You’re assuming that the eventual DNC nominee is the result of a considered strategy… effectively the old smoke-filled-room still functioning, except that somehow that choice has to be enforced on millions of primary election voters. And it just doesn’t work that way. Not that the DNC doesn’t have a fair bit of influence, mind you. But the reason that Hillary was the unstoppable nominee in 2016 was not because the DNC got together, thought “hmm, what’s the best strategy for winning the election? oh, hey, genius idea guys, let’s pick a centrist to appeal to the center. OK, now, hmm, who do we have that fits that description? Oh, Hillary Clinton! OK, Hillary it is”. Rather, Hillary was the inevitable candidate because of her decades of influence. If the only similarly popular and well-known figure in the dem establishment had been 25 units left of Hillary on the scale, it’s not like DNC would have consciously decided not to “let” that person win the nomination because they were at the wrong place on the left/right scale. Also note that your theory is that if enough people vote progressive, the DNC will suddenly notice and nominate a more left candidate. Well, in 2016 a buttload of people voted for Bernie. So why then did the DNC not nominate a more left-leaning candidate in response to that in 2020? Because they’re hidebound idiots who are too stupid to realize that a more left-y candidate would have appeal? Of course not… in fact, I think that to the extent the DNC could be said to be “thinking” something, they were probably thinking “jesus fuck I wish there was a popular somewhat-left-ish-but-not-too-far young candidate who would get people fired up”. And, hey, look, who was running and hyped up early in the race? Kamala Harris… Cory Booker… to the extent that the DNC as a hive mind was trying to force someone down our throats, I think it was someone in that mold far ahead of Biden. To sum up, the whole “casting my vote for a progressive will send a signal to the DNC and pull future dem nominees to the left” falls apart when you look at how chaotic and unpredictable and uncontrolled the process is that actually results in the dem nominee each year. There’s not someone there listening to your signal and responding. ---
**Author:** ![MaxTheVool](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/9fc29f/32.png) [@MaxTheVool](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MaxTheVool)\ **Post date:** [May 21, 2020, 2:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-vote-third-party-for-president-and-the-worse-option-gets-in-do-you-feel-any-responsibility/853949/84 "2020-05-21T02:47:06Z")
> [@Linty\_Fresh](#): > > I’ve been noticing a rather disturbing trend here and in some other threads, mostly in the Pit. It’s the tendency to talk in terms that imply that Biden is somehow _deserving_ of our votes, that anyone and everyone owes it to him and the country to vote for him regardless of personal feelings. > > _Responsibility?_ Being _absolved?_ A vote for a third-party candidate is comparable to drunk driving? (Full disclosure, I will most likely not vote third-party. There is only one thing that would make me do so, and this isn’t the thread to discuss it.) I do think that any reasonable citizen has a responsibility to vote for Biden. But it’s not because you owe a vote to him. Or to the democratic party. Or to me. It’s because you owe it to the country to do your civic duty. Imagine a city in a valley with 1000 residents where periodically a flood is going to come down and threaten to wash the city away and kill everyone. And in order to prevent the flood, a wall of sandbags has to be built. Experience shows that it takes somewhere around 550 sandbags to build that wall, and each person in the city has time to carry one sandbag up and put it in the wall when the flood warning arrives. Now, I’d argue that every citizen of the town has a civic responsibility, a responsibility to his neighbors, to carry a sandbag. And that’s true even though there’s only a tiny chance that any one person’s decision to carry a sandbag or not will be the decisive factor in whether or not the wall fails. Furthermore, suppose that the previous mayor had been urged to invest some money and build a permanent wall that would protect the city forever. And instead he had taken that money and blown it all on hookers and blow, and publicly said “hey, the sandbag things has always worked, I’m sure it will work again”. And he’s clearly arranged things so that people carrying sandbags is in some sense a victory for him, proving him to be right. And you’re like “hey, I don’t like that guy, I don’t like the choices he gave us, I wish he’d done things differently… why does he think I owe it to him to carry a damn sandbag?”. Well, you don’t owe it to him. But you still owe it to your townspeople. Trump is the flood. And our votes are the sandbags. ---
**Author:** ![xenophon41](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/xenophon41/32/253_2.png) [@xenophon41](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/xenophon41)\ **Post date:** [May 21, 2020, 11:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-vote-third-party-for-president-and-the-worse-option-gets-in-do-you-feel-any-responsibility/853949/85 "2020-05-21T11:06:54Z")
> [@MaxTheVool](#): > > Trump is the flood. And our votes are the sandbags. Got a better one. Trump, his appointees and his enablers are the shit-covered meth monkeys running through the apartment building we all inhabit, attacking residents, setting fires, caging children and tearing down strategic pieces of the structure. Biden is a qualified building manager with a group of volunteers willing to chase the monkeys out. And we have a small group of residents with bullhorns and a portable DJ setup in the rec room broadcasting helpful rhetoric: “Hey Joe, nobody owes you the $8/hr contract to clean up all the shit, take care of the monkeys, find and repair the damage and make building improvements almost half of the residents won’t understand or approve. -You gotta _earn_ that kinda trust.” After all, we have choices; there’s a plumber over there with a team of pot-smoking lemurs; she’s promised lavender lights in the hallways! And any way, we’d survive another four years of those meth monkeys, we’ve gotten by so far. (Besides, Joe’s been managing buildings for so long there’s a long list of maintenance decisions in his employment history many of us just don’t like AT ALL.) Those of us shaking our heads at all of _teh stupid_ being broadcast are getting tired of countering it, but it looks like we’ll need to stay on our own soapboxes until the building votes on a new management plan. The problem is just that _stupid_ is loud and simple; _responsible_ and _pragmatic_ require some effort from the listeners. ---
**Author:** ![Linty\_Fresh](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/c5a1d2/32.png) [@Linty\_Fresh](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Linty_Fresh)\ **Post date:** [May 21, 2020, 11:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-vote-third-party-for-president-and-the-worse-option-gets-in-do-you-feel-any-responsibility/853949/86 "2020-05-21T11:18:23Z")
I dunno, man, that plumber with the pot-smoking lemurs has my attention. For lavender lights, I’ll clean the monkey shit up myself. ---
**Author:** ![xenophon41](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/xenophon41/32/253_2.png) [@xenophon41](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/xenophon41)\ **Post date:** [May 21, 2020, 11:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-vote-third-party-for-president-and-the-worse-option-gets-in-do-you-feel-any-responsibility/853949/87 "2020-05-21T11:21:13Z")
Sorry, if you don’t have the haz-mat accreditation we can’t let you near that shit. And you gotta bid for the subcontract. The lemur gang’ll probably get to that after all the lights are set up. ---
**Author:** ![Linty\_Fresh](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/c5a1d2/32.png) [@Linty\_Fresh](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Linty_Fresh)\ **Post date:** [May 21, 2020, 11:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-vote-third-party-for-president-and-the-worse-option-gets-in-do-you-feel-any-responsibility/853949/88 "2020-05-21T11:58:40Z")
> [@xenophon41](#): > > Sorry, if you don’t have the haz-mat accreditation we can’t let you near that shit. And you gotta bid for the subcontract. The lemur gang’ll probably get to that after all the lights are set up. Great, _fucking_ liberals!! That’s it, now I’m a single-issue voter. I’m behind whoever promises me pot-smoking lemurs. THAT’S what’s going to save the world. And also, I just got into a big fight with **Mrs. Fresh** , because she says that if I install lavender lights in the living room, she’s kicking me out and changing the locks, and I’ll have to live in the shed for a week, _ **again** _!!! So thanks a lot, xenophon! Thanks for screwing up my life! :mad: I swear, between you, Corona, OSHA, secular humanism, my third ex-wife, and the state-appointed psychiatrist whom I’ve gotta Skype every week, life is just so much more complicated than it needs to be! ---
**Author:** ![Unreconstructed\_Man](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/76d3ee/32.png) [@Unreconstructed\_Man](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Unreconstructed_Man)\ **Post date:** [May 21, 2020, 12:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-vote-third-party-for-president-and-the-worse-option-gets-in-do-you-feel-any-responsibility/853949/89 "2020-05-21T12:43:34Z")
> [@iiandyiiii](#): > > “Must beat Trump” is just a way to sum up “Trump is so bad on these dozens of issues that replacing him with someone better on most or all of these issues is the most important factor”. So yes – Democrats care about the issues and the agenda – it must be better than Trump so the country doesn’t go down the drain. > > I also preferred Bernie. Unfortunately, most Democrats disagreed (and many actually disagreed on the issues – in my understanding, Biden’s position on the issues is actually mostly in the middle of the Democratic party). > > If Biden is elected, I plan to advocate for Biden to take the “correct” stance on all the issues, as hopefully will all Democrats. “Must beat Trump” is not remotely a single-issue stance, any more than “must retake the Senate” is a single-issue stance. Okay, so let’s test this. Let’s say there are two Democratic candidates, and you get to choose one of them to go up against Trump. Candidate A is going to fight for the issues you care about, and he’s going to work hard to reverse the damage Trump has caused. You know (because it’s a hypothetical and I say so) that he has a 75% chance of beating Trump. Candidate B is going to do absolutely nothing. Like, he’s going to put his feet up on the President’s desk, crack open a beer, and just stay there like a barnacle for four years. Nothing will get any better, but nothing will get any worse either. But he’s guaranteed to beat Trump. Which candidate do you pick? Also, would your answer change if candidate A had a 99% chance of winning? ---
**Author:** ![xenophon41](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/xenophon41/32/253_2.png) [@xenophon41](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/xenophon41)\ **Post date:** [May 21, 2020, 12:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-vote-third-party-for-president-and-the-worse-option-gets-in-do-you-feel-any-responsibility/853949/90 "2020-05-21T12:49:52Z")
Y’know, in all seriousness, if we average citizens were capable of repairing and reversing the damage from bad government _without using better government to do that_, then we wouldn’t need to vote. But government is a MMPMSG (Massive MultiPlayer MeatSpace Game), and POTUS gets to choose most of the players with the game controllers. And gets to nominate the judges. And if his team is part of the game design team, he gets to set a lot of the rules. So it’s really less about POTUS and more about who he’s gonna listen to and put in those game chairs, and whether he’s going to sign off on good or bad design changes. (Hot _damn_, I enjoy analogies! I should slow down on these, it can’t be healthy.) ---
**Author:** ![Linty\_Fresh](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/c5a1d2/32.png) [@Linty\_Fresh](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Linty_Fresh)\ **Post date:** [May 21, 2020, 4:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-vote-third-party-for-president-and-the-worse-option-gets-in-do-you-feel-any-responsibility/853949/91 "2020-05-21T16:12:39Z")
> [@MaxTheVool](#): > > I do think that any reasonable citizen has a responsibility to vote for Biden. But it’s not because you owe a vote to him. Or to the democratic party. Or to me. It’s because you owe it to the country to do your civic duty. > > . . . > > Furthermore, suppose that the previous mayor had been urged to invest some money and build a permanent wall that would protect the city forever. And instead he had taken that money and blown it all on hookers and blow, and publicly said “hey, the sandbag things has always worked, I’m sure it will work again”. And he’s clearly arranged things so that people carrying sandbags is in some sense a victory for him, proving him to be right. And you’re like “hey, I don’t like that guy, I don’t like the choices he gave us, I wish he’d done things differently… why does he think I owe it to him to carry a damn sandbag?”. Well, you don’t owe it to him. \*\*But you still owe it to your townspeople. > \*\* > > Trump is the flood. And our votes are the sandbags. (ellipses and bolding mine) Wrong. Absolutely, one-hundred percent wrong. This is an argument for voting for Trump, not Biden. Leaving aside the practical consideration that _no_ citizen would pack another sandbag in this situation if he or she had any other viable alternative, the whole reason we have free elections is to prevent this kind of leader from getting into the White House to begin with. Are you seriously arguing that the moral and civic choice is to knowingly put a corrupt, drug-addled whoremonger into a leadership position (in terms of your analogy)? Are you sure this is the only way to solve the problem? How could you then condemn a Republican for voting for Trump? In your analogy, any citizen who could would justifiably leave the village to its fate. And if the flood came down and took everyone else out? Well . . . maybe this is what Henry Kissinger was talking about when he said that we had to destroy the village in order to save it. Or . . . maybe we should learn to clean up our own messes before the Republicans render the entire argument moot. ---
**Author:** ![Velocity](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/velocity/32/18006_2.png) [@Velocity](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Velocity)\ **Post date:** [May 21, 2020, 4:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-vote-third-party-for-president-and-the-worse-option-gets-in-do-you-feel-any-responsibility/853949/92 "2020-05-21T16:25:48Z")
Oftentimes, in these “third-party voters, why don’t you realize what you are doing is bad?” threads, I think many people, especially on the political left, fail to understand that \*some third-party voters \*\*genuinely \*_perceive both parties (Democrat and Republican) as being equally bad_. They seem to think that these third-party voters are deliberately trolling, or, “Surely you can’t \*really \*believe that? You must be joking.” They start out with this assumption that “Our party (D or R) is \*genuinely \*superior to the other side, why can’t you see that? You must be kidding if you think they are equally bad.” ---
**Author:** ![Jasmine](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jasmine/32/2964_2.png) [@Jasmine](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jasmine)\ **Post date:** [May 21, 2020, 4:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-vote-third-party-for-president-and-the-worse-option-gets-in-do-you-feel-any-responsibility/853949/93 "2020-05-21T16:28:13Z")
I would think that the large majority of people who did so, did so with the knowledge that they were basically throwing away their votes and, by not opting to vote for the lesser evil, helped the greater evil to obtain the most powerful office in the world. ---
**Author:** ![Linty\_Fresh](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/c5a1d2/32.png) [@Linty\_Fresh](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Linty_Fresh)\ **Post date:** [May 21, 2020, 4:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-vote-third-party-for-president-and-the-worse-option-gets-in-do-you-feel-any-responsibility/853949/94 "2020-05-21T16:37:46Z")
> [@Jasmine](#): > > I would think that the large majority of people who did so, did so with the knowledge that they were basically throwing away their votes and, by not opting to vote for the lesser evil, helped the greater evil to obtain the most powerful office in the world. Then it’s our job and our responsibility to convince them to do otherwise, **Jasmine** , because while truth might have a liberal bias, cold hard reality has been swinging right these past few years. ---
**Author:** ![xenophon41](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/xenophon41/32/253_2.png) [@xenophon41](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/xenophon41)\ **Post date:** [May 21, 2020, 4:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-vote-third-party-for-president-and-the-worse-option-gets-in-do-you-feel-any-responsibility/853949/95 "2020-05-21T16:42:55Z")
**Velocity** , the Democratic party, for people who still believe in having a rational basis and ethical foundation for legislation and executive action, is _genuinely_ superior to the Republican party. Where those of us on the political left have a beef with third party voting, it’s with the ‘fellow lefties’ who recognize the pathology of the Republican party but think the Democratic party is insufficiently different or that only a more radical party platform will produce real change, both of which are wrong -the first factually and demonstrably, and the second strategically In Our Humble Opinions. I don’t recall anyone responding who asserts that third party voters in these threads are simply trolling -although there _are_ actual trolls on social media pushing apathy and alienation, so that exists in reality. ---
**Author:** ![MaxTheVool](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/9fc29f/32.png) [@MaxTheVool](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MaxTheVool)\ **Post date:** [May 21, 2020, 4:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-vote-third-party-for-president-and-the-worse-option-gets-in-do-you-feel-any-responsibility/853949/96 "2020-05-21T16:43:05Z")
> [@Velocity](#): > > Oftentimes, in these “third-party voters, why don’t you realize what you are doing is bad?” threads, I think many people, especially on the political left, fail to understand that \*some third-party voters \*\*genuinely \*_perceive both parties (Democrat and Republican) as being equally bad_. Certainly, all the arguments I have made have been assuming that the person I’m arguing with is a progressive who loves Bernie, tolerates or dislikes Biden, and realizes how supremely and uniquely awful Trump is. If someone genuinely thinks that Biden and Trump are close to equally bad, my arguments will mean nothing to them. That said, I really truly believe, deep down, that the vast majority of people who say they think Biden and Trump are equally bad don’t really, truly believe that – although maybe they’ve convinced themselves they do. Rather, they adopt that position to justify their desire to be smarter and more elite than the sheeple by voting for a 3rd party. If nothing else, Biden and Trump are so very different, and Trump is such a totally unique figure in so many ways, that is’ vanishingly unlikely that any reasonable person would come up with a fairly comprehensive and sensible scale for measuring decency of candidates, put Trump and Biden on it, and genuinely come out with the same rating. ---
**Author:** ![Jasmine](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jasmine/32/2964_2.png) [@Jasmine](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jasmine)\ **Post date:** [May 21, 2020, 4:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-vote-third-party-for-president-and-the-worse-option-gets-in-do-you-feel-any-responsibility/853949/97 "2020-05-21T16:45:25Z")
> [@Linty\_Fresh](#): > > Then it’s our job and our responsibility to convince them to do otherwise, **Jasmine** , because while truth might have a liberal bias, cold hard reality has been swinging right these past few years. Racism; sexism; elitism; political bribery, and a dedication to the agenda of the rich, corporate fueled plutocracy that actually runs this nation is “cold hard reality”, and dedication to human rights, health, and welfare are a “liberal bias”? I don’t think so. ---
**Author:** ![drad\_dog](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/aeb1de/32.png) [@drad\_dog](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/drad_dog)\ **Post date:** [May 21, 2020, 4:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-vote-third-party-for-president-and-the-worse-option-gets-in-do-you-feel-any-responsibility/853949/98 "2020-05-21T16:56:06Z")
> [@Velocity](#): > > Oftentimes, in these “third-party voters, why don’t you realize what you are doing is bad?” threads, I think many people, especially on the political left, fail to understand that \*some third-party voters \*\*genuinely \*_perceive both parties (Democrat and Republican) as being equally bad_. > > They seem to think that these third-party voters are deliberately trolling, or, “Surely you can’t \*really \*believe that? You must be joking.” > > They start out with this assumption that “Our party (D or R) is \*genuinely \*superior to the other side, why can’t you see that? You must be kidding if you think they are equally bad.” Two vast political parties being exactly “equally bad”? How often does a coin land on the edge? OK, now how often does someone say “Both parties are both equally bad”? The statements of this “equality” are vastly exaggerated. The probability is almost zero. ---
**Author:** ![Linty\_Fresh](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/c5a1d2/32.png) [@Linty\_Fresh](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Linty_Fresh)\ **Post date:** [May 21, 2020, 5:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-vote-third-party-for-president-and-the-worse-option-gets-in-do-you-feel-any-responsibility/853949/99 "2020-05-21T17:09:39Z")
> [@Jasmine](#): > > Racism; sexism; elitism; political bribery, and a dedication to the agenda of the rich, corporate fueled plutocracy that actually runs this nation is “cold hard reality”, and dedication to human rights, health, and welfare are a “liberal bias”? I don’t think so. On the other hand, the candidates who support racism, sexism, elitism, political bribery, and a dedication to the agenda of the rich getting voted into office . . . and by and large getting their way is most certainly cold hard reality. Political concepts aren’t reality. The candidates who (a)support them and (b)win elections most certainly are. ---
**Author:** ![Linty\_Fresh](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/c5a1d2/32.png) [@Linty\_Fresh](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Linty_Fresh)\ **Post date:** [May 21, 2020, 5:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-vote-third-party-for-president-and-the-worse-option-gets-in-do-you-feel-any-responsibility/853949/100 "2020-05-21T17:11:31Z")
> [@MaxTheVool](#): > > Certainly, all the arguments I have made have been assuming that the person I’m arguing with is a progressive who loves Bernie, tolerates or dislikes Biden, and realizes how supremely and uniquely awful Trump is. > > If someone genuinely thinks that Biden and Trump are close to equally bad, my arguments will mean nothing to them. That said, I really truly believe, deep down, that the vast majority of people who say they think Biden and Trump are equally bad don’t really, truly believe that – although maybe they’ve convinced themselves they do. Rather, they adopt that position to justify their desire to be smarter and more elite than the sheeple by voting for a 3rd party. If nothing else, Biden and Trump are so very different, and Trump is such a totally unique figure in so many ways, that is’ vanishingly unlikely that any reasonable person would come up with a fairly comprehensive and sensible scale for measuring decency of candidates, put Trump and Biden on it, and genuinely come out with the same rating. Be that as it may. Ratings don’t put a candidate into office. Votes do, and once again, looking at history–another cold hard reality–the votes just don’t come in for a guy like Biden running against an incumbent. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-vote-third-party-for-president-and-the-worse-option-gets-in-do-you-feel-any-responsibility/853949.md?page=4) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-vote-third-party-for-president-and-the-worse-option-gets-in-do-you-feel-any-responsibility/853949.md?page=6)