If these didnt upload correctly let me know I'll delete the post. Conversation I just had in a local discord where dude didn't even read my comment and attacked me for not being onboard with Harris and fed me a fearmonger. So over fucking dem voters man.
I just dont have any leftists in my life to gripe with, sorry. ๐คฃ
EDIT: Ive always gotten on well with this dude and we agree on a lot, which really made it worse that he didnt bother reading what I wrote. I just deleted my comments and left the server (its just a small side server for our area anyway.)
With all do respect, I live somewhere where we actually have a viable 3rd and even fourth party candidate, who I'm happy to vote for. I've voted for the lesser evil in the past, and it always feels bad. I'm telling you this because I empathise with your position, and I agree that in theory to have viable 3rd parties, people like you do indeed need to vote for them.
What scares the shit out of me, though, is that Trump is backed into a corner. His only choice to guarantee he doesn't see the inside of a jail cell is to extend his term indefinitely. We all know he'd do it if he could, he's said so himself.
So the question, then, becomes: how much faith do you have in the guardrails of the system to stay a democracy? SCOTUS has already been stacked, and the recent presidential immunity scope increase is just waiting to be abused.
Never in my life has your democracy been in such real peril, and, disappointingly, there is only one person you can vote for to defend it. I hope your ideals are worth risking falling directly into totalitarianism over.
If you still can't understand why this one is actually different, I'm not sure there's much more I can say.
Some quick info on American duopoly, since you aren't here-
Voting Democrat isn't voting against Republican policies, it's voting against them NOW and getting them 5-10 years later once they've let the Overton window shift and Republicans are crazier. That's the cliffs notes of how we got here - Democrats have been arguing for at least 10, probably 20 years, that (however worded at the time) leftists are the problem and use that to move further right to court "centrists" who are just Republicans who don't want the social blowback, giving Republicans the room to pull further into the extreme right. Democrats of year X are basically just Republicans of year X-10.
"Well if you don't vote Dem you can't get change!" You already can't now. they're half of the two parties who move the goalposts anytime a third party looks like they'll meet the requirements for inclusion, and they (the DNC) went to court in 2016 to have it legally ruled that their charter is bullshit and as a private entity they can do what they want - voters and donors be damned.
Democrats pay lip service to Trump only because they don't have a platform without "we aren't them." Democrats spend more time and energy bullying leftists for not being onboard than they do trying to beat Republicans. For at least 10 years now, they love to blame us for all their woes, but instead of adjusting policy to capture those voters they move farther right because "it's the left's fault we lost." It's an intentional cycle to forever justify sprinting rightward and to always have a scapegoat instead of admitting they aren't in sync with voters.
TLDR: Everyone claims blue MAGA are the saviors and the only ones who can save us, but they don't do fuckshit to stop the rise of fascism because they're also fascist, just with a smile. A vote for Dems isn't a vote against fascism, it's a vote for fascism in 4-8 years when all the Dem voters will root for it and call anybody who disagrees the enemy (Like they're already doing now.)
I've been following US politics for years, so yeah, I know the drill. I live close enough that y'all's politics directly effect us too, so it's important to stay informed. (Hello from the great white north. :)
I won't argue about the ratchet effect. I totally agree. My concern is that if Trump wins, you could very well go from a 2 party system to a 1 party system, and lose any ability to ever vote 3rd party.
I'd like it if you could do no fascism this election, but in lieu of that possibility I'd prefer the facism in 4-8 years, buying you guys some time to fix things, rather than the facism now and potentially in perpetuity.
I've never felt the need to comment on your politics before now, but installing a wannabe dictator is where my line is I guess.
Are you sure you're not American?
It has already been said and demonstrated that if a 3rd party candidate ever gains traction, the Dems and Republicans band together to ensure they fail. So you really can't vote 3rd party now either. Well you can, but it's the equivalent of throwing your vote into the trash.
Fair, I see a lot of Europeans on Lemmy so that tends to be where my brain goes for non-US on here.
I get real irate about the "must vote dem or you'll never get third party" because its gaslighting. No matter which election, what year of the cycle, there is no time in no way that libs will entertain the idea of a 3rd party. Voting dem only rewards them for moving right, and they use it as justification to sprint even further. Hell, half of Kamala's campaign has been "I'm rolling with republicans."
Every action the DNC takes is to keep power isolated to the chosen establishment. Kamala recently paid lip service to the need for aid in Gaza and a hold on weapons to Israel, then sent somebody out to do stump speeches assuring that policy opinion hasn't changed, she's still all in on Israel, and she was just trying to shut up progressives.
This isn't a sudden happenstance, its been a long road leading to this, and Democrats are actively complicit - Fascism is just the end game of capitalism. Hell, Musk just sued an advertiser into paying him for ads. Freedom!
I honestly fully sympathize with you. We have the same thing here. "Vote ABC - Anything But Conservative", but actually that means just vote Liberal. And now that the Liberal party is floundering, I don't think Liberals will be singing the same tune to strategically vote NDP (labour/social democrat). They'd rather burn the country to the ground, than to give anyone even a hair's width left of centre any power.
Normally I'd agree with you, but if you guys get Trump, he's going to do everything in his power to not leave after 4 years, 8 years, etc. You might not have the opportunity to vote 3rd party until he keels over, and he's going to make that time hell for any non-white non-cis-male non-red-hat-wearer.
Nobody who can imprison trump has the will to do so. He's not in any danger at all. In the words of George Carlin, "it's all a big club, and you ain't in it". Trump is in the club, and nobody is going to do anything of any significance to him. If they were going to do something, they would have already done something.