the narrative of vote splitting presumes i would ever vote for your candidate. i wouldn’t. if any splitting is happening, it’s that you won’t vote for my candidate, and when i phrase it like that you will see how silly it is.
only a vote for a candidate helps that candidate. a vote for any candidate is a vote against all other candidates.
Yes. Yes indeed. People doing not voting out of disdain for Hillary is what got Trump elected in the first place. You cannot sit back and assume that one candidate or another is strong enough to win without your vote.
Besides, you should be voting in your local elections anyways.
Be civil, No violations of TOS. It’s OK to say the subject of an article is behaving like a (pejorative, pejorative). It’s NOT OK to say another USER is (pejorative). Strong language is fine, just not directed at other members. Engage in good-faith and with respect!
Be civil, No violations of TOS. It’s OK to say the subject of an article is behaving like a (pejorative, pejorative). It’s NOT OK to say another USER is (pejorative). Strong language is fine, just not directed at other members. Engage in good-faith and with respect!
Hmm. And yet we agree that orange man bad. And underneath your pedantic dig here, you know that Biden isn’t a great leader… you’re just passively accepting it like a bleating sheep because DEMOCRATS GOOD PUBLICANS BAD.
Biden’s an awesome leader. I’m going to show up and vote for him even though my state will almost certainly go red in November, because I’m a patriot and Joe Biden has actually tried to improve my life, which is more than I can say for Trump, Obama, Bush, or most other presidents in my lifetime, and it’s certainly more than I can say for every third party candidate with the sole exception of Ralph Nader (thanks for making my car safer, Ralph).
Joe Biden tried to forgive my student debt, he tried (and partially succeeded) to improve the company’s crumbling infrastructure, he revived antitrust and labor, and he’s been fighting to keep Russia from taking over Eastern Europe. Donald Trump told me to drink bleach. You don’t have to like either of them, but pretending they’re equally bad is either trolling, being willfully uninformed, or doing the propaganda work of a foreign adversary (knowingly or not).
You vote your conscience; it might not matter much, depending on where you live, or it might matter a whole lot. But reality should show you, like it does the rest of us, that the only possible outcomes of this presidential election are a second Biden presidency or a second Trump presidency. Anything you do will make one of those things more likely to happen, and you don’t get to opt out by staying home or setting your ballot on fire in protest.
Sorry kids, I know we kinda ruined that whole democracy thing which also lead to further erosion of the planet for ya, but there was a hivemind! I couldn’t allow that!
Be civil, No violations of TOS. It’s OK to say the subject of an article is behaving like a (pejorative, pejorative). It’s NOT OK to say another USER is (pejorative). Strong language is fine, just not directed at other members. Engage in good-faith and with respect!
Not voting or voting third party isn’t sticking it to the man and saying you don’t like either candidate. It’s saying you like them both equally well and you are indifferent to who wins.
No, in a system that has been gerrymandered and uses the electoral college system to favour a party (Republicans) that wins power while losing the popular vote, voting outside the two parties favours that party.
Real fascism is what you’ll likely get by allowing Trump back in.
I’m not allowing anything. I’m just voting with my conscience. These two ineffective octogenarians are not suitable leaders, and the two parties simply MUST know that.
Last reply because I sense you either don’t see the threat, don’t want to see it, or trust in the system to self correct.
If it were a truly equal system, you would be right. I completely agree that tactical voting should not be needed and I wish your ideological standpoint was effective in sending messages to these guys.
Fact is they do not care how many people vote outside the top two if they still win. You might be trying to send a message but they won’t hear it. Unless you can convince 60 million people to follow you of course.
The Republicans particularly know that the protest votes are typically subtracted from the democrat tally.
PR is the only solution that provides the type of government you want but you don’t have it yet and if you want it, what you plan to do is probably reducing the likelihood you’ll ever get it .
It is a sad fact that a vote for anyone but the two biggest parties (in almost every country) is essentially wasted.
When you have PR vote your conscience all the way. With it you may even have more choice because there would be less pressure for candidates like to firm an alliance with a large party. Until then the very real threat to democracy is far more pressing. Donald Trump tried to take the white house by force 3 years ago. This proved he cares more about his own power than the will of the people. He expended a lot of energy trying to use the system against itself to overturn the results when the capitol riots failed. For decades, the Republicans have repeatedly gerrymandered and tried to prevent certain groups from voting, typically minorities. Lately some Republicans at CPAC called for the end of democracy.
I’m not saying the Democrats are saints that can do no wrong, but at least they are not openly trying to rig the system.
If Trump is legitimately elected this time, your protest vote may mean even less next time than it does this time, because democracy in the United States might look more like Russian “elections”. 87% going one way. No politician is that popular. Side note , I’m surprised those guys don’t choose more realistic numbers to make their “election” more credible, but their ego won’t let them.
But, you do you, just don’t complain about the outcome when one of those octogenarian politicians is in power.
“I didn’t vote for him” won’t do you much good when it hurts your wallet, or worse your freedoms.
PS the point of giant douche vs. Turd sandwich was that no candidate will be perfect. We always have to choose based on who aligns best with our viewpoint even if that choice is far from ideal. From the outside I see two very different candidates. Both are to the right of my politics, but only one wanted to take the people’s choice away altogether.
I have a truly earnest question: do you think the trolley problem has an obviously correct answer?
I see so many people who are just flabbergasted (or unwilling to believe, as above) that people can see that trump is worse, but still not want to vote for Biden.
Nobody asked you to want to vote for him, but if you truly believe Trump is worse, you have to do it anyway if you care about what happens next to your country.
That’s exactly the attitude I’m talking about. Do you think the trolley problem has a right answer?
The other wrinkle is that voting for Biden shows no difference between full support and holding your nose to save democracy, so if I vote for the democrats every time, they’ll just put worse and worse candidates up. The republicans are already doing that, so every election from now on will be the pivotal one to “save democracy” (while the democrats ignore the wants of their party members in primaries).
I will do evil no matter how I vote.
I know which of these two candidates is less evil, but that doesn’t mean it’s the obvious best choice. Perhaps voting for a third party is, especially for my completely meaningless vote (CT). I don’t know yet, I need to think, and being constantly berated or called a trump supporter is really fucking annoying. It’s not going to make me vote trump (that one’s certain, at least), but it’s making it harder to neutrally evaluate the situation, because discussing it with people is fruitless.
The lack of nuance here has been a little shocking. I had hope that was just a Reddit thing, but it may just be an Internet thing. I have no idea.
I’m not ever going to vote for Trump, because he’s terrible. And I’m not ever going to vote for Biden, because he may be less terrible, but he’s still terrible.
I may one day vote Dem or Rep again, if either of those parties ever pulls their heads from their asses and produces a quality candidate.
Until then, I’m voting third party. If you can’t produce quality, I’ll find it elsewhere.
You’re absolutely right that there’s a lot of nuance here. People living in red, blue, and purple states each have a different calculus involved, and it’s not simple. If it were, the polls would be much more in favor of Biden, because even among republicans, fewer and fewer people support trump.
If Biden cut military ties with Israel or did something to stop or hinder them from continuing to commit genocide, I would probably vote for him. I don’t really like him, even with that taken out, but I would feel like my vote there would reinforce something I want to reinforce in democrats. As it is, I still don’t know.
I mean, in Biden we’re talking about a political power broker who was invited to be the VP even after he referred to Obama as “articulate and bright and clean.” That’s…WILD that that was publicly said about a black man in my lifetime.
And the Israel support, and smelling kids’ hair, and the epic Popcorn the bully story, and the black kids rubbing his leg hair story…like…grandpa ain’t making too much sense sometimes these days.
And then the other side produces a narcissist with a clear personality disorder who isn’t doing that well cognitively himself…these are our best and brightest, huh? Wow.
And this argument that a vote for a third party is essentially a vote for Trump…it’s not, and I don’t know when we made politics into a team sport, but it feels kind of weird to me.
Whichever family of weirdos gets in, they’re gonna make a whole bunch of money in legally gray ways, and it ain’t gonna enrich you a single penny. So you can put down the foam finger and stop cheering for your “side.”
Third party is typically a vote for Republicans. I’m not sure why democrats never seem to put up a plant 3rd party. Just get some Uber Ultra Instinct racist and that peel of at least 10% of the Trump voters.
…preventing an overt fascist and his sycophantic supporters and enablers from winning the next election, further dismantling (small-d) democratic institutions in our country, and likely attempting to turn the country into a weird hybrid of a kleptocratic monarchy and an extremely nepotistic aristocracy?
preventing an overt fascist and his sycophantic supporters and enablers from winning the next election, further dismantling (small-d) democratic institutions in our country, and likely attempting to turn the country into a weird hybrid of a kleptocratic monarchy and an extremely nepotistic aristocracy?
If the Dems actually believed Trump were a threat to democracy, and that fundamental liberties would be lost, they wouldn’t be running a man clearly in decline with a running mate who has zero constituency and an even lower approval rating.
The DNC and web scolds don’t get to bitch about third-party voters, when they obviously assessed the situation and thought, “This is fine.”
If the Dems can’t be arsed to respond seriously to Trump, the rest of us are under no obligation to fix their wagon.
It needs to be spelled out to you, so here you go: It’s unacceptable in American politics to run against a federal incumbent without a) significant reason (age is not a reason) and b) significant backing (because the national party won’t support you).
But thanks for parroting the right-wing bullshit about decline, which I suppose was your real reason for posting. PS I’ll bitch about third party voters all I fucking want - a centrist or left-leaning voter casting a ballot for a third party is really casting half a vote for Trump and they should be fucking shunned. Vote your heart in the primary but vote for the team in the general.
I don’t begrudge anyone who goes for a third option or doesn’t vote.
There is no ‘third option’ in the 2024 presidential election. I know reality makes idealists sad and all but you’re either voting for a republican or a democratic president or your vote doesn’t count.
lol- a presidential third-party ‘protest vote’. Like flat earth- there’s always some sucker that believes in it.
I vote third-party down ballot where it can make a difference, but voting for a third party presidential candidate with zero chances is about as effective as setting your hair on fire and yelling “ME MAD AT GOVERNMENT!”. Funny either way though ;)
Welp, good thing I’m voting third party again. Giant Douche vs. Turd Sandwich doesn’t need my help.
Donald Trump thanks you for your support.
Well, I don’t support him in the least. But you think I do, so there’s that.
By not voting you’re helping to elect whoever you prefer less. Voting for a realistic candidate is one of those shitty adult responsibilities.
It is a narcissistic childish presupposition that there is assumed opportunity cost for my vote.
“Of COURSE you would have voted Democrat! Why WOULDN’T you?”
I make a fair bit of money. Like them or not, Republicans are kinder to my income level.
Don’t just assume I’d vote Democrat.
only votes for a candidate help elect that candidate.
Demonstrably untrue, splitting the vote always helps the other party despite casting no additional votes for their candidate.
the narrative of vote splitting presumes i would ever vote for your candidate. i wouldn’t. if any splitting is happening, it’s that you won’t vote for my candidate, and when i phrase it like that you will see how silly it is.
only a vote for a candidate helps that candidate. a vote for any candidate is a vote against all other candidates.
That is simply not the political reality we find ourselves in.
it’s the only way voting can work.
So your belief in Biden’s ability to win is THAT fragile?
Yes. Yes indeed. People doing not voting out of disdain for Hillary is what got Trump elected in the first place. You cannot sit back and assume that one candidate or another is strong enough to win without your vote.
Besides, you should be voting in your local elections anyways.
Removed by mod
Removed, Rule 3:
Be civil, No violations of TOS. It’s OK to say the subject of an article is behaving like a (pejorative, pejorative). It’s NOT OK to say another USER is (pejorative). Strong language is fine, just not directed at other members. Engage in good-faith and with respect!
So I’m a fool, but…okay, got it.
Nope, I went up-chain and removed those too. :)
I still see them. :)
There’s a lot going on with federation right now, might be some lag.
Removed by mod
Removed by mod
Removed, rule 3:
Be civil, No violations of TOS. It’s OK to say the subject of an article is behaving like a (pejorative, pejorative). It’s NOT OK to say another USER is (pejorative). Strong language is fine, just not directed at other members. Engage in good-faith and with respect!
So him calling me a child and utterly pathetic is cool, but…okay, got it.
Nope, those got removed too. ;)
Hmm. And yet we agree that orange man bad. And underneath your pedantic dig here, you know that Biden isn’t a great leader… you’re just passively accepting it like a bleating sheep because DEMOCRATS GOOD PUBLICANS BAD.
Sounds very mature of you.
Biden’s an awesome leader. I’m going to show up and vote for him even though my state will almost certainly go red in November, because I’m a patriot and Joe Biden has actually tried to improve my life, which is more than I can say for Trump, Obama, Bush, or most other presidents in my lifetime, and it’s certainly more than I can say for every third party candidate with the sole exception of Ralph Nader (thanks for making my car safer, Ralph).
Joe Biden tried to forgive my student debt, he tried (and partially succeeded) to improve the company’s crumbling infrastructure, he revived antitrust and labor, and he’s been fighting to keep Russia from taking over Eastern Europe. Donald Trump told me to drink bleach. You don’t have to like either of them, but pretending they’re equally bad is either trolling, being willfully uninformed, or doing the propaganda work of a foreign adversary (knowingly or not).
You vote your conscience; it might not matter much, depending on where you live, or it might matter a whole lot. But reality should show you, like it does the rest of us, that the only possible outcomes of this presidential election are a second Biden presidency or a second Trump presidency. Anything you do will make one of those things more likely to happen, and you don’t get to opt out by staying home or setting your ballot on fire in protest.
no one said that
i’M nOt PArT oF tHe HiVeMiNd
He says as he falls prey to Russian propaganda 🤡
Downvoted for alternating case. That shit should have stayed on reddit.
what russian propaganda?
Sorry kids, I know we kinda ruined that whole democracy thing which also lead to further erosion of the planet for ya, but there was a hivemind! I couldn’t allow that!
Removed, Rule 3:
Be civil, No violations of TOS. It’s OK to say the subject of an article is behaving like a (pejorative, pejorative). It’s NOT OK to say another USER is (pejorative). Strong language is fine, just not directed at other members. Engage in good-faith and with respect!
Not voting or voting third party isn’t sticking it to the man and saying you don’t like either candidate. It’s saying you like them both equally well and you are indifferent to who wins.
no, voting for someone else is saying i want someone else.
I don’t think you support him intentionally.
So a vote for “not your guy” is a vote for their guy.
Sounds vaguely…fascist. Weird.
No, in a system that has been gerrymandered and uses the electoral college system to favour a party (Republicans) that wins power while losing the popular vote, voting outside the two parties favours that party.
Real fascism is what you’ll likely get by allowing Trump back in.
I’m not allowing anything. I’m just voting with my conscience. These two ineffective octogenarians are not suitable leaders, and the two parties simply MUST know that.
Last reply because I sense you either don’t see the threat, don’t want to see it, or trust in the system to self correct.
If it were a truly equal system, you would be right. I completely agree that tactical voting should not be needed and I wish your ideological standpoint was effective in sending messages to these guys.
Fact is they do not care how many people vote outside the top two if they still win. You might be trying to send a message but they won’t hear it. Unless you can convince 60 million people to follow you of course.
The Republicans particularly know that the protest votes are typically subtracted from the democrat tally.
PR is the only solution that provides the type of government you want but you don’t have it yet and if you want it, what you plan to do is probably reducing the likelihood you’ll ever get it .
It is a sad fact that a vote for anyone but the two biggest parties (in almost every country) is essentially wasted.
When you have PR vote your conscience all the way. With it you may even have more choice because there would be less pressure for candidates like to firm an alliance with a large party. Until then the very real threat to democracy is far more pressing. Donald Trump tried to take the white house by force 3 years ago. This proved he cares more about his own power than the will of the people. He expended a lot of energy trying to use the system against itself to overturn the results when the capitol riots failed. For decades, the Republicans have repeatedly gerrymandered and tried to prevent certain groups from voting, typically minorities. Lately some Republicans at CPAC called for the end of democracy.
I’m not saying the Democrats are saints that can do no wrong, but at least they are not openly trying to rig the system.
If Trump is legitimately elected this time, your protest vote may mean even less next time than it does this time, because democracy in the United States might look more like Russian “elections”. 87% going one way. No politician is that popular. Side note , I’m surprised those guys don’t choose more realistic numbers to make their “election” more credible, but their ego won’t let them.
But, you do you, just don’t complain about the outcome when one of those octogenarian politicians is in power. “I didn’t vote for him” won’t do you much good when it hurts your wallet, or worse your freedoms.
PS the point of giant douche vs. Turd sandwich was that no candidate will be perfect. We always have to choose based on who aligns best with our viewpoint even if that choice is far from ideal. From the outside I see two very different candidates. Both are to the right of my politics, but only one wanted to take the people’s choice away altogether.
soundl like voter suppression tactics.
That is a choice to support the only insurrectionist in the race, which is probably the point of your comment to begin with.
I have a truly earnest question: do you think the trolley problem has an obviously correct answer?
I see so many people who are just flabbergasted (or unwilling to believe, as above) that people can see that trump is worse, but still not want to vote for Biden.
Nobody asked you to want to vote for him, but if you truly believe Trump is worse, you have to do it anyway if you care about what happens next to your country.
That’s exactly the attitude I’m talking about. Do you think the trolley problem has a right answer?
The other wrinkle is that voting for Biden shows no difference between full support and holding your nose to save democracy, so if I vote for the democrats every time, they’ll just put worse and worse candidates up. The republicans are already doing that, so every election from now on will be the pivotal one to “save democracy” (while the democrats ignore the wants of their party members in primaries).
I will do evil no matter how I vote.
I know which of these two candidates is less evil, but that doesn’t mean it’s the obvious best choice. Perhaps voting for a third party is, especially for my completely meaningless vote (CT). I don’t know yet, I need to think, and being constantly berated or called a trump supporter is really fucking annoying. It’s not going to make me vote trump (that one’s certain, at least), but it’s making it harder to neutrally evaluate the situation, because discussing it with people is fruitless.
The lack of nuance here has been a little shocking. I had hope that was just a Reddit thing, but it may just be an Internet thing. I have no idea.
I’m not ever going to vote for Trump, because he’s terrible. And I’m not ever going to vote for Biden, because he may be less terrible, but he’s still terrible.
I may one day vote Dem or Rep again, if either of those parties ever pulls their heads from their asses and produces a quality candidate.
Until then, I’m voting third party. If you can’t produce quality, I’ll find it elsewhere.
You’re absolutely right that there’s a lot of nuance here. People living in red, blue, and purple states each have a different calculus involved, and it’s not simple. If it were, the polls would be much more in favor of Biden, because even among republicans, fewer and fewer people support trump.
If Biden cut military ties with Israel or did something to stop or hinder them from continuing to commit genocide, I would probably vote for him. I don’t really like him, even with that taken out, but I would feel like my vote there would reinforce something I want to reinforce in democrats. As it is, I still don’t know.
I mean, in Biden we’re talking about a political power broker who was invited to be the VP even after he referred to Obama as “articulate and bright and clean.” That’s…WILD that that was publicly said about a black man in my lifetime.
And the Israel support, and smelling kids’ hair, and the epic Popcorn the bully story, and the black kids rubbing his leg hair story…like…grandpa ain’t making too much sense sometimes these days.
And then the other side produces a narcissist with a clear personality disorder who isn’t doing that well cognitively himself…these are our best and brightest, huh? Wow.
And this argument that a vote for a third party is essentially a vote for Trump…it’s not, and I don’t know when we made politics into a team sport, but it feels kind of weird to me.
Whichever family of weirdos gets in, they’re gonna make a whole bunch of money in legally gray ways, and it ain’t gonna enrich you a single penny. So you can put down the foam finger and stop cheering for your “side.”
there is no insurrectionist candidate, except maybe cornel west, but i’d say he’s more black nationalist.
I don’t support either. Both have abysmal track records.
Third party is typically a vote for Republicans. I’m not sure why democrats never seem to put up a plant 3rd party. Just get some Uber Ultra Instinct racist and that peel of at least 10% of the Trump voters.
a so-called third party vote is a vote for the so-called third party.
That’s your narrative, sure. I won’t support a two-party system that produces such TERRIBLE candidates anymore.
The two party system exists whether you support it or not and voting third party doesn’t help remove it.
It gets a third or fourth party government funding. That’s more important than anything to me currently. We need more choices.
Getting a third party is more important than…
checks notes
…preventing an overt fascist and his sycophantic supporters and enablers from winning the next election, further dismantling (small-d) democratic institutions in our country, and likely attempting to turn the country into a weird hybrid of a kleptocratic monarchy and an extremely nepotistic aristocracy?
are they fascist, mornarchic, or aristocratic?
Don’t vote third party in the general. You know exactly who that helps.
If the Dems actually believed Trump were a threat to democracy, and that fundamental liberties would be lost, they wouldn’t be running a man clearly in decline with a running mate who has zero constituency and an even lower approval rating.
The DNC and web scolds don’t get to bitch about third-party voters, when they obviously assessed the situation and thought, “This is fine.”
If the Dems can’t be arsed to respond seriously to Trump, the rest of us are under no obligation to fix their wagon.
It needs to be spelled out to you, so here you go: It’s unacceptable in American politics to run against a federal incumbent without a) significant reason (age is not a reason) and b) significant backing (because the national party won’t support you).
But thanks for parroting the right-wing bullshit about decline, which I suppose was your real reason for posting. PS I’ll bitch about third party voters all I fucking want - a centrist or left-leaning voter casting a ballot for a third party is really casting half a vote for Trump and they should be fucking shunned. Vote your heart in the primary but vote for the team in the general.
i’m not on the democrat team
this is misinformation.
The team has given us a series of neolibs since 1976.
I’ll probably pull the lever for Biden, but I don’t begrudge anyone who goes for a third option or doesn’t vote.
There is no ‘third option’ in the 2024 presidential election. I know reality makes idealists sad and all but you’re either voting for a republican or a democratic president or your vote doesn’t count.
This. Thank you.
It’s obvious to see which way the wind blows around here, but the unpopular truth has to be spoken.
lol- a presidential third-party ‘protest vote’. Like flat earth- there’s always some sucker that believes in it.
I vote third-party down ballot where it can make a difference, but voting for a third party presidential candidate with zero chances is about as effective as setting your hair on fire and yelling “ME MAD AT GOVERNMENT!”. Funny either way though ;)