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John Fetterman says he'll 'never understand' progressives who refuse to support Joe Biden
(www.businessinsider.com)
this post was submitted on 13 Sep 2023
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politics
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Whether you buy it or not, at least for the presidency, the US is realistically a two party system. A vote for 3rd party is a wasted vote, because you certainly must have a preference in which of the two real options you'd rather have.
Voting 3rd party is selfish. You're willing to let the worse option win because you want to make a "statement"
And your statement translates to "we can easily manipulate these 3rd party voters away from our rival by back channel funding our oppositions redheaded step child"
And this is definitely why we haven't needed any parties but the federalists and the anti-federalists.
The parties only change when one of them just totally shits the bed. Then they're usually replaced by a party that kind of does the same things but doesn't seem to stink as much as the last one. Sometimes their opposition moves toward the center enough that the new party springs from their base instead.
At this point, the Democrats shitting the bed is very realistically the end of democracy, so instead of getting a shakeup and a New Left we'll just end up with increasingly restrictive rules on who gets to participate in elections and increasingly questionable vote counting. But if you want to shake things up by just completely destroying the Republicans and hoping the Democrats (who are kind of suckers for "converting" Republicans) become the new conservative party, that I can get behind. The Republicans are already in shaky territory as they get more and more repulsive while dwindling in number. They're dangerous because of that, but they legitimately could fall apart if they keep getting destroyed in elections while the diehards refuse to believe they need to change.
Even more than that, if you don't vote the way your state is going, you're wasting your vote. For example, if I'm a Dem in a Red state, I have to vote Red, otherwise, you know, I'm wasting my vote! You may think you're making a "statement", but it's just a failure to accept reality.
That's not how it works. At all.
A few percentage movement to the underdog side in a solid state indicates there's potential for a swing in future elections, which means the underdog party may funnel more money and campaign tour time to said State.
But sure, keep justifying wasting your vote, and not doing the one very easy thing you can do to fight fascism.
Edit - I want to make something clear. By all means, support your independent / 3rd party candidates on the local level, where they actually have a chance. Support their continued attempts to rise. We need to break the 2 party system, eventually.
But don't waste your vote on the battle line. President, senate, congress. We need every last vote in the preferred 2 party candidate. These fucking matter.
Until you get a real 3rd party candidate making governor, senator, congress, there's literally zero chance they can win a major election.
LOL. You people are just so predictably. You know, history shows that the more people vote, the more left things lean. But go on yelling from the top of your plastic soap box that people who don't vote the "right" way are throwing their vote away. You'd do far more good trying to get people to vote.
I'll keep winning no matter what, while you are the true vote waster!
Three issues: There is almost no state so red or blue that it couldn't swing with ~10% shift to the other party.
There are plenty of local elections that will not go the same direction as the state, and they have more effect locally than the president.
Your vote is "wasted" by voting for who's going to win. Voting for the winner, against your judgment, doesn't make your vote more valuable. If anything, it makes it less valuable. The only time your vote really matters (intellectually) is when it's used to swing a vote opposite of expectation.
Who gives a fuck about (intellectually)?
Because that's the only way a vote is wasted. It is probably least valuable voting for who is expected to win, but second least used voting for who doesn't stand a chance.
Anything other than a vote for one of the two leading parties in a swing state is a waste
Yeah, pretty much. There are other means to do things in favor of other groups, but for voting it's only between the two (in most elections).
You do you. I just support more people voting. I'm too old now to continue walking the precincts to try to get the vote out every election. You seem to have a flexible judgment of when a vote counts and when it doesn't. Pretty fucked up way of looking at things. In my humble opinion at least.
I don't think it's fucked up. I think it's realistic. We need to change the way representation works in the US, but it's built and manufactured to support the status quo, so that's the way it works.
Actions outside of voting though, there are plenty available. Expecting voting to be the thing to make things work is probably faulty.
I also expect the republican party to come crashing down soon. My expectation is that the democratic party takes the place of the right wing party and something else takes the left. At that point, things will change. Right now though, status quo is the voting options.