Welcome to the discussion of US Politics!
Rules:
Links must be to the original source, not an aggregator like Google Amp, MSN, or Yahoo.
Example:
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
• Congressional Awards Program
• Library of Congress Legislative Resources
• U.S. House of Representatives
Partnered Communities:
• News
You can see the attempts even here on Lemmy to convince people to vote for a third party. Virtually anyone hyper focusing on Gaza and suggesting we should “show Biden what we think” is attempting to convince you to vote against your own interests.
Take a look at the post history of anyone who calls him genocide Joe, and you’ll see “subtle” suggestions to vote for a third party candidate.
Hit the nail on the head. Theres been noticeable push back these last 2 months, but i expect worse as we edge closer to november.
They also completely ignore bringing the Ukrainian genocide when its brought up, even though russia has repeatedly now called them a stepping stone in denazifying Eastern Europe.
For all of Status Quo Joe's issues (and theres a million) he still doesnt compare to trump (and his billions of issues) in terms of how much damage they can do/are doing to the country and the planet as a whole.
As much as I would love for there to be more options and the two-party system dismantled, voting third party right now in the presidential election is just stupid. A real third party has to start from the ground up or be a genuine splinter party from one of the two primary parties. Trump almost created a third party, but Republicans chose power over principle and party over country to make him their golden calf.
Not saying you are saying this, but it's as good a post as any on which to say it:
You can't dismantle the 2 party system by voting for a third party. Even in the extremely unlikely situation that that third party wins, it will just quickly, if not immediately, go back to a two party system. It's the nature of a FPTP voting system.
It's a process you have to start from the ground up. You can't just vote for a POTUS and then magically we have multiple parties. You have to focus on your local politics and get people into office who will push to get our voting system changed. And that will have to "trickle up." It's not something that will be solved overnight, and people focus too much on the POTUS, when they should be putting their effort in where they have the most influence: locally.
It's the classic establishment's pincer maneuver.
All progressive change needs to be attacked from both sides:
All left wing candidates / laws / tax / regulations / proposals are both too left and not left enough.
Only ideals that have no chance are "pure enough" for some on the left.
This is an organised attack from the right / establishment for decades. Yeah, we are finally waking up and seeing through this shit.
Junior is not going to get that many Dem votes. He's clearly MAGA, or at least MAGA adjacent
They're going after formerly reliable Republican votes that have had enough of Trump but don't really want to vote for Biden.
Those are very reliable voters and they don't want them staying home or voting for Biden. So they give them a shitty third-party candidate so they won't vote for Biden and still show up for the down ballot Republicans. Might take a few potential votes from Biden but that's only half the goal.
Yeah but he’s as fringe as trump just in different ways. Plus it’s the opposite of what they think will happen with the dem vote. Republicans who would otherwise vote Biden or stay home will hear Kennedy and think liberal. But near 0 dems will fall for the same trick.
But near 0 dems will fall for the same trick.
People who are paying attention to the news, sure. But a lot of people don't. And that's who they're trying to reach. So it's important to tell people what's going on.
His campaign is built around on attracting low-information voters, and he has a ton of money to do just that — Kennedy's vice-presidential pick is the former wife of a Google founder who broke up with him after allegedly sleeping with Musk.
That's not entirely true. There is one proven left-leaning group that can be drawn in by MAGA talking points, and that's the Antivax moms. During the height of the pandemic, QAnon influencers were pretty effective at getting the cruchy-granola-crystal-healing-antivax moms into Trump. The guys at the QAA Podcast covered it really well, but the indoctrination path was basically: The Vaccine is Bad-> The Pandemic is Fake/Overblown-> Face Masks Actually Help Child Traffickers ->You Know Who's Fighting Traffickers?Trump! Anyway, if an Antivax message can get these folks to support Trump, it can get them to support RFK.
People need to start looking at the polling around this. RFK is more of a threat than people realize.
https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/4568220-biden-trump-kennedy-polling/amp/
“Only the other side will vote for this third party” is the constant refrain of someone about to lose because of a spoiler
I think it's more that the Republican party recognizes what an albatross Trump has become and are trying to mitigate the damage to down ballot Republicans by old-school Republicans staying home because they're fed up with Trump.
They do? He’s their candidate and they sure seem to be embracing almost everything he does. I don’t really think there’s much that supports this viewpoint
k- then what's your theory on why Republican donors would support a third-party candidate?
Because it will pull Biden voters away more than it will pull Trump voters away
What third party candidate do you think would pull more voters from Biden than Trump?
I mean yeah I’ll bite https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/third-party-candidate-spoiler-trump-biden/
What makes these financers so sure their spoiler candidates will only take votes from Biden?
Polling. Right now the polls show RFK and West pulling from Biden more than Trump, which is why right wing strategists want to promote those candidates more.
Edit:
https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/4568220-biden-trump-kennedy-polling/amp/
It kinda makes them look even more short sighted tbh. Like yeah, you can look at "there's a few polls where he takes from Biden" and call it a day, but it's kinda missing the fact he's lost a lot of relevance already with no signs of stopping.
It's kind of a catch 22: he's stealing votes from the low-info pool, but at the same time if he's not defined at all he'll make no impact by election day. Elevating him can fix that, but that risks those low info voters realizing what they're getting into and then start biting into Trump's numbers as expected.
They don't need that. All they need is to take more votes from Biden than they do from Trump. And the the polling makes it very clear that the 3rd party candidates as a group do exactly that. The benefit is something around a 3 percentage point advantage for Trump with the 3rd party candidates on the ballot vs not.
Yeah idk, I haven't heard any Dems say they're going to break from Biden for someone like RFK, the dude is an anti science nut job and at least my circles see right through it. I have heard trumpists say they'd consider him if trump ended up in jail or whatever though. 🤷
Hopefully this strategy backfires spectacularly.
Honestly, the bigger issue for dems has always been low enthusiasm leading to a lot of voters just refusing to vote.
It's almost as if more people need to vote in the primaries
Yeah it's more difficult with an incumbent because the Smarter Than You DNC decides a primary is bad, but if we actually voted in numbers then instead of just allowing the old people who actually vote in primaries to decide who is the one running, we'd actually have a candidate people can be excited for.
So far the polls don't show that kind of backfire. Would take a bunch more people hearing about why he's actually running to create it.
Republicans have done this for decades to great success. Usually they'll push a wedge-driving issue with online operatives sometimes posing as grandstanding leftists who will vote 3rd party, independent, etc.
It rarely works for Dems, but Libertarians did screw over Trump to some extent last election thanks to Jojo
"Shit, Rita, that's what we're getting paid to do, not what we're getting paid to say!"
Consider the possibility that the game here does not depend on Trump winning in the Electoral college- all that needs to happen is Biden not winning 271 or more EC votes for the congress to decide the presidency via the Contingent Election process outlined in article2, sec1 clause3 of the constitution, later modified in the 12th amendment.
In that scenario, each state delegation has 1 vote- and the GOP has enough state-level gerrymanders to control enough state delegations that if it comes to pass that the 12th Amendment process decides the presidency, they are very likely going to be able to install whoever they want.
If the smart money in the GOP has decided Trump won't win but it still wants him in the oval, anything that prevents Biden from getting 270+ gets them better odds than any other pathway
~~Trump Allies~~ Russia has a Plan to Hurt Biden's Chances: Elevate Outsider Candidates.
A lot of it is US billionaires:
One thing we should expect is for all of the “major” third party candidates — Kennedy, Stein, West — to be funded in part by ultra-high-net-worth Republicans. That’s already happening to some degree.
Well yeah, project 2025 is backed by the heritage foundation.
So, Kanye for President 2.0?
He'd probably be at least as awful a president as Trump, though it's a different West who is on the ballot in some states this year.
Sorry—my comment was in reference to this not being a new playbook since that’s exactly what the GOP did with hawking Kanye as a candidate. He would never win but maybe he would steal votes from the democrats.
Definitely the same playbook. It's been used for decades at this point.
This is fucking asinine. How do you possibly think that anyone who would vote for kanye West or RFK would otherwise be Biden voters you dummy. Do you not understand that the Nazis in the vaccine conspiracy heads are all conservatives, who would vote for Trump?
The third party candidates you have to worry about stealing votes from only Biden or Jill Stein Dr. West and Claudia de Lacruz. So congrats you got Jill Stein right. Now compare the share of the vote. RFK is getting compared to Jill Stein and the others. Dumbass.
This insane worldview where anything that's not a vote for Biden is a vote for Trump is fucking crazy and it's why no one likes neoliberals.
Ah. Using Hillary Clinton's strategy. That famously worked out real well for her.
To be fair, her husband arguably got into office because a third party candidate disproportionately ate more into his opponent’s votes.
Not that I disagree with your point, but implementation is everything.
Just gonna note that this is a strategy as old as political parties.