this post was submitted on 26 Feb 2024
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Moderates would rather lose to fascists than compromise with leftists and progressives.

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[–] Ekybio 23 points 9 months ago (26 children)

In the USA, voting Third Party is just helping Republicans, aka. the Fascists.

If you want to change something, organise and unionise.

But dont throw away Democracy, just to be the smuggest guy in the concentraition-camp in the end...

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[–] chronicledmonocle 20 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (5 children)

Unfortunately, many countries have First-Past-The-Post voting systems, so voting for a third party is often, mathematically, basically the same as voting for the competition.

It's called "The Spoiler Effect", if you want to look it up, and it's why we have many of the two party problems we have today in modern democracy. Ranked Choice/Single Transferrable Vote are much better systems.

[–] zakobjoa 3 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Well, many democracies do not vote for their president directly – parliament elects one. They are usually from the strongest party, although if enough smaller parties can get a majority, they can elect the president.

[–] chronicledmonocle 2 points 9 months ago (2 children)

Yeah but FPTP is used for parliament in those countries, which means the party that chooses the president is elected via it.

Ranked Choice, STV, or Mixed Member Proportional Ranking are much better systems. I wish more countries used it.

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[–] dynamojoe 12 points 9 months ago (5 children)

4th panel is what you're going to get when a republican wins the white house because "leftists" voted for a spoiler candidate.

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[–] paddirn 12 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (14 children)

Or just hand the election over to the guy who is going to push the pedal down all that stuff you claim to care about. We’re trying to minimize our losses as best we can, and right now, Biden seems to be the best that Democrats can muster up. Not the best situation to be in, but he’s still miles ahead of Trump on everything. Any issue you care about, well you’ll be reading about them in history books as an afterthought if Trump comes to power… if history books haven’t already been censored to just ignore any controversial issues altogether. Who the hell even needs history books when we have the Bible, the only source of information a citizen would ever need, that and TNN, the Trump News Network.

If third parties really want to make a change, they need to go after smaller, local elections, you build up a movement from the ground up. Any third parties in national elections that have almost no presence anywhere else are highly suspect and likely just there for the attention and/or to draw votes from one candidate or another.

[–] Idreamofcheesy 4 points 9 months ago (3 children)

I live in a solidly red state. The odds of it flipping in the next 20 years is nil. If I vote 3rd party, it

  1. tells the entrenched parties that I'd rather have a lunatic than either of their candidates and
  2. cause more infighting in the RNC as they will assume the lost vote was meant for them.
[–] [email protected] 4 points 9 months ago

Sad that the system disincentives people in safe states to take their vote seriously. I get it, though. I protest voted in a safe state in 2016. Just... remember that if things go south, the knowledge that your vote was pointless doesn't always erase all of the guilt.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Your third party vote count will be below the lizardman constant and will be ignored.

[–] Idreamofcheesy 1 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

Everyone ignores the lizard people until they can no longer be ignored 🦎🦎

[–] jordanlund 1 points 9 months ago

If you want to cause infighting in the RNC, organise a campaign to write in the name of some other Republican. Mitt Romney, or Liz Cheney.

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[–] [email protected] 11 points 9 months ago (1 children)

This reeks of right wing propaganda.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 9 months ago (14 children)

“I’m going to vote against the dude that is giving weapons to Israel, who gives weak-effort strongly worded letters to try to stop being assholes in the butchering of Gaza. Nevermind that in doing so it ensures the win of the fascist megalomaniac who will shove weapons faster, and has given full throated support to Israel, along with the party that says that everyone in Gaza should die. That’ll teach them. Fuckin moderates, compromise with me or I’ll help Gaza burn faster.”

[–] [email protected] 8 points 9 months ago (2 children)

"Fix everything NOW or I help the fascists make everything worse!"

[–] [email protected] 3 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Thats all I’m hearing. “Everything must be 100% or I’ll turn this bus and speed back to Fascistland, so help me!”

[–] [email protected] 5 points 9 months ago

We tried compromising, you guys didn’t want to.

Now that you need us you pretend to care

[–] go_go_gadget 1 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

If you think cutting off arms to Israel and promising not to block strikes is "everything" you really aren't paying attention. And please, take a moment to consider what compromises Biden has made with progressives and leftists. Give me some examples.

Let's have an honest discussion about where in between "nothing" and "everything" compromises have been made for the policies and decisions leftists and progressives are fighting for.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 9 months ago (1 children)

I don't play games with sea lions.

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 9 months ago

“I’m going to vote for a dude that will ensure the comfort of westerners at the cost of black and brown lives around the world and I feel good about this because the alternative is worse. Of course my life is more important than someone in Gaza! The status quo of this system isn’t stomping on me as much as it can and I’d like to keep it that way as long as I can. Yes, please focus your stomping boot somewhere else and I’ll continue to vote for that boot. There’s no ethical line I won’t cross to save myself from oppression because I’m a coward who refuses to listen to the oppressed”

Democracy is already dead if we are forced to vote for genocide. It might just take those comfortable with the status quo longer to figure that out.

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[–] jordanlund 8 points 9 months ago (1 children)

3rd party candidates will never win. Ross Perot did the best in 92 and did not capture a single state.

There is no 3rd party candidate currently doing as well as Perot was doing in 96 - when he dropped out of the race - much less as well as he did in 92.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1992_United_States_presidential_election

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1996_United_States_presidential_election

Heck, there isn't one doing as well as Anderson did in 1980:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1980_United_States_presidential_election

All a progressive 3rd party candidate can accomplish is a Biden loss.

If you want 4 more years of Trump, vote 3rd party.

[–] go_go_gadget 1 points 9 months ago (2 children)

All a progressive 3rd party candidate can accomplish is a Biden loss.

Sounds like Biden should make some compromises in order to get those votes then doesn't it?

[–] jordanlund 4 points 9 months ago (1 children)

He literally can't, because the compromise progressives want is to stop the attack on Gaza and Biden can't stop that, only Bibi can and he is absolutely intent on killing everyone in Gaza.

Cutting off aid to Gaza isn't going to stop the attack because Israel isn't reliant on current aid to make it happen. They have a stockpile built up from decades of support.

So, Biden tells Israel to get fucked, he loses the campaign donations from the Israel pac to get elected.

https://www.opensecrets.org/industries/summary?cycle=All&ind=Q05&recipdetail=S

https://www.opensecrets.org/news/2023/12/pro-israel-pacs-poised-to-spend-big-to-unseat-progressive-members-of-congress-in-2024-election-cycle

https://thepoliticswatcher.com/pages/articles/congress/2023/12/7/aipac-donations-congress-members-unveiling-influence

There is no equivalent donation machine on the Palestinian side, they have bigger things to worry about.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 9 months ago

Someone go tell Bloomberg that campaign money is a better indicator of electoral victory than voters. I’m sure he’d be happy to hear that he won the presidency.

[–] TokenBoomer 1 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

Watch Trump come out during the RNC convention and condemn Israel and the genocide. Just raw dogging that cognitive dissonance. Get Dan Scavino on the phone. Let’s do a focus group and just fuck this shit up. /s

[–] TokenBoomer 3 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

I just realized America’s entire history has been right wing propaganda.

There's a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can't take part; you can't even tacitly take part. And you've got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon all the apparatus and you've got to make it stop. And you've got to indicate to the people who run it, to the people who own it, that unless you're free, the machine will be prevented from working at all

-Mario Savio

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Moderates would rather lose to fascists than compromise with leftists and progressives.

You got close, but considering voting third party pretty much assures Trump wins, meme logic aside, it's more like:

Leftists and progressives would rather lose to fascists than compromise with moderates.

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