this post was submitted on 19 Oct 2023
339 points (97.7% liked)

politics

18977 readers
3978 users here now

Welcome to the discussion of US Politics!

Rules:

  1. Post only links to articles, Title must fairly describe link contents. If your title differs from the site’s, it should only be to add context or be more descriptive. Do not post entire articles in the body or in the comments.
  2. Articles must be relevant to politics. Links must be to quality and original content. Articles should be worth reading. Clickbait, stub articles, and rehosted or stolen content are not allowed. Check your source for Reliability and Bias here.
  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! This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban.
  4. No memes, trolling, or low-effort comments. Reposts, misinformation, off-topic, trolling, or offensive.
  5. Vote based on comment quality, not agreement. This community aims to foster discussion; please reward people for putting effort into articulating their viewpoint, even if you disagree with it.
  6. No hate speech, slurs, celebrating death, advocating violence, or abusive language. This will result in a ban. Usernames containing racist, or inappropriate slurs will be banned without warning

We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.

All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.

That's all the rules!

Civic Links

Register To Vote

Citizenship Resource Center

Congressional Awards Program

Federal Government Agencies

Library of Congress Legislative Resources

The White House

U.S. House of Representatives

U.S. Senate

Partnered Communities:

News

World News

Business News

Political Discussion

Ask Politics

Military News

Global Politics

Moderate Politics

Progressive Politics

UK Politics

Canadian Politics

Australian Politics

New Zealand Politics

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 7 points 11 months ago (3 children)

There’s a reason why republicans donate to the Green Party candidates. That’s how we got Bush (and Trump, tbh).

On the flip side, we got Clinton because of Ross Perot.

Do you know what didn’t happen? The major parties didn’t look at their third party rivals and decide they needed to change their policies. Protest votes do not work.

In 2012 I voted for Jill Stein. Jill fucking Stein may be the literal worst presidential candidate I’ve ever voted for. I mean, worse people have run. KKK grand wizard David Duke ran. Donald Trump ran. But Stein is definitely the worst, most idiotic person I voted for. I did it because Obama was going to win my state, no questions asked. If I were in a purple or even a red state, I’d never have voted for her. I just wanted to send a signal about Obama’s policies being too far to the right. Obviously, that did not work.

Hell, it doesn’t work even when they lose the election with vote splitting. All of the party post-mortem analyses say that they lost because they needed to be more centrist.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago

That’s how we got Bush

wrong. the supreme court put W in, not voters.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago

we got Clinton because of Ross Perot.

wrong. an analysis found perot actually hurt clinton's margin of victory

[–] aelwero -1 points 11 months ago (1 children)

You officially stated for the record that Obama wasn't the best option for you... that's how democracy is supposed to work... you voted correctly, ostensibly...

I understand you didn't think "pie in the sky" was the best option, but for the sake of argument, you operated the system of democracy in the correct manner by voting your "best fit" (with some liberties taken on context, with no malicious intent).

Every loss kind of actually is a failure to pursue centrism/moderation. The alternating between Dems and repubs isn't caused by people changing their ethos or core values every 4 years, it's caused by a rather small portion of the population that is centrist/moderate, and flip flops to try and knee jerk everything towards the center (and a portion who vote against the incumbent party because they don't like the status quo, which is different, but arguably very similar)

I don't believe that third party votes determine outcomes, and the very specific reason is because of the electoral college. Third parties did pull a large number of third party electoral votes, but even with all of them, Clinton still would have lost. Third parties "stealing" elections is simply not the reality (but the trump/Clinton race woke some bitches up... I was part of that and I'm pretty happy about it).

The "your vote did nothing" opinion you have about your Jill stein vote is the reality of fptp, everywhere. Even swing states (maybe more so if they're an "all in" state).

We think of America as being split by a fine line, but I don't buy that shit. I think there's a whole hell of a lot of people who would prefer a nice fat grey area, and I'm gonna hang out in that gray area no matter how thin it gets in the hopes that sensible people will join me.

JoJo was a better option than trump or Biden. Perot was. Paul was. The bern was. Colin Powell was (dude was pretty army though...). Id go as far as even Jill stein was. There's no shame in checking the block on that as far as I'm concerned, and I'm gonna continue to hope that more people will start thinking critically and voting for their best fit instead of what they think they need to settle for. It's your vote, that's supposed to be the whole point of democracy, your voice, not a collective compromise of voices.

I'll probably be voting RFK, and if you think about it objectively, If Biden wasn't incumbent from having had trump lower the bar enough for Biden to step over it easily, Dems would be running RFK on their ticket next year, because he's the best fit for the office (and for us, the people)out of the current pool (as near as I can tell so far anyway... could change, I'm gonna Google the hell out of all the runners and I won't be focused on their campaign webpages...). I'm not voting for "not this" or "not that", I'm voting to say what I think is the best idea... I don't give a shit how anyone spins that, and technically, that spin is illegal ;)

[–] [email protected] 3 points 11 months ago

Under no circumstance would the dems be running RFK if Biden wasn't in the picture. RFK has never been anybody within the party and Democratic voters don't like him that much, to say nothing of his discredited beliefs that are pulling more conservative voters to his campaign than liberal ones.

But we should look at why conservative voters are responding so well to him.