jhymesba

The only reason Jill Stein has a chance to spoil this election is because we've got a large and rabid minority of voters who actually like what Trump is serving. If Trump were down 10 points in the Swing State polls, Jill Stein's 1% wouldn't matter. If Harris had 270 EVs worth of locked in states, Stein could take double digit vote counts in places like Oklahoma and California and still be a non-factor. But in this closely divided of an election, with the political system the USA has, your purity crusade will result in possibly the last election you ever get to vote in, and at minimum, 4 years of policy that will utterly destroy every priority you have.

And do you really think cutting support for Israel will gain more votes for Harris than it loses from people who happen to think Israel has a right to exist and a right to defend itself? Here's a hint. It won't. First, we are certain you'll just find some other reason not to vote for Harris, and second, it'll piss off moderate and conservative Jews and run them straight into the Republican's arms. According to this article, there are somewhere around 3.6 million Jews nation-wide who vote for Democrats. In 2016, only 1.4 million people nation-wide voted for Jill Stein. If you only turned off half the Jewish vote while capturing every Stein voter there is, you'd still have a net negative, and I'm absolutely sure AIPAC would go apeshit over this (and they support Republicans too), and Stein voters would just find another reason they couldn't possibly vote for the Democrats.

So, if you are really dumb enough to think a protest vote is a good idea, know that your meaningless protest will cost LGBTQ and minorities and non-Christians and women HERE in this country dearly, while doing absolutely nothing to help the Palestinians. It'll also fuck the Ukrainians over, and maybe even the Taiwanese, as I can see the Shitgibbon leaving them to China's tender mercies. Muslim voters who back Stein over Harris will own-goal themselves as they'll be the first to be attacked by Project 2025 and Trumps Mass Deportation/"Remigration" plans. LGBTQ, Minority, and women Third Party voters will also bring their doom, while White, Male, and passable-as-Christian Third Party voters will benefit from their privilege but best get down to being Good Americans because the Trump Goon Squads will be set loose looking for Leftist rabble to round up.

Again. This is not how this works.

Stein isn't taking Trump voters. She's a Left-Wing distraction candidate. In some systems, like RCV or Proportional Representation, her candidacy wouldn't hurt the Dem as long as voters were thoughtful with their votes. But in FPTP, which we have here, she's definitely a threat. We're bitterly divided here, to the tune of close to 51% wanting lefties and 49% wanting righties. All she needs to do to throw this election to the Right is poach 3% plus whatever Right-Wing third party candidates there are. Since the Right is unifying behind the Shitgibbon, it's real easy for her to spoil the election and get all 51% who want progressive and/or liberal policies to get conservative policies instead. This is even worse when you realise Conservatives have gone Fascist.

This. We need to turn out in such numbers that they'll have to be blatantly fucking transparent and have to expand their bullshit into purple and blue states .

It's worse than that. And understanding this is key to understanding why voting third party will never work in the USA without reforming our electoral system.

Suppose tomorrow, a genie grants one of these posters' wishes and suddenly it's Stein with 48.0% of the vote in critical swing states, and Harris and other candidates on the Left sit on 3% of the vote, while Trump has 51% of the vote. Suddenly, it's Harris who's the spoiler and we end up with Trump because 10k voters thought Jill was too cosy-cosy with Russia.

I have specific issues with Stein that would definitely have me far less sure of my vote, but I'd still take her over Project 2025 and DJT. I'd still be calling as hard against voting third party as I am in this universe where it's the Greenie and not the Democrat that would spoil the election.

None of what this poster said countered a thing of what I said, and all its personal attack did was concede the debate.

Because Russia has a long history of propping up third party distractors, especially those who are friendly to Russia's causes, and another of their tools, useful idiots and bought-and-paid for bad actors (note: Mods, not accusing THIS poster of this, but you can't disagree such people exist and operate here on Lemmy and on other forums across the Internet) spread bullshit across the web to convince people that the Shitgibbon with his plans to directly enable his fellow authoritarian shithead to exterminate and/or subjugate the Palestinians AND his plans to let Russia do the same RE: Ukraine AND his plans to bring that same subjugation/extermination to LGBTQ+, non-Christian, minority, female, and non-Conservative populations HERE IN THE USA is somehow better than letting Team Biden/Harris have 4 more years.

You don't like me calling that out? Well, you can fuck right off because I'm not going to stop.

This particular poster seems to think I didn't read the article, and if I had, I couldn't possibly disagree with it.

My takeaways and disagreements:

• They say RFK Jr. wanted to ignite discussions on the political duopoly. (Then why did RFK Jr. withdraw and endorse Trump?)
• They claim to speak for independent Coloradans. (I am registered as an independent in Colorado. Who are they to speak for me?)
• They think Third Parties are the solution to our problems. (I do agree here and will be voting for Colorado's RCV option this November, and will vote for third party candidates for city, county, state, and federal offices, with Dems ranked appropriately, if that passes. POTUS, however, is still ratfucked by the Founders and their EC, so I'll be voting Lesser Evil there)
• This is despite wide variations in what they believe in. (Third parties don't agree on much!)
• Some of them endorsed Trump

“If you really understand Bobby (Kennedy Jr.) and what’s going on, you have to suck it up,” Maxsenti said. “Vote for Trump and hope and pray, as we do, that Trump is truly a changed individual — and, now, that he’s learned his lessons from his first opportunity.” (You really don't think this is enough all on its own to earn a downvote on the article?)

This poster throws big words, likely without understanding them, and definitely incorrectly. The article was all over the place, but mostly confirmed what I already believed. There is a huge faction in the Third Party movement who wants Trump elected. Third party views are mostly single-issue magical thinking type views, unaware of how elections actually work in the US. They agree on very little with each other, let alone with the Major Parties, and they expect us to trust us with the decision making. And entertaining them, right now, will result in greater harm than listening to Andrew Yang who capped the whole thing off with "we're with Harris".

There isn't cognitive dissonance here when I interact with these posters, dear reader. There is a desire to point out that they are wrong, that their choices are dangerous, that you shouldn't listen to them, and that you should cast your vote for Kamala Harris, no matter where you are, how red or blue your district is, how much you disagree with Biden's decisions over the past four years, or even if you think there's a genocide being enacted in Israel, because frankly, either she or Trump wins, and everything you might accuse the Biden/Harris Admin of doing will be done in spades by a future Trump admin, not just to Palestinians, but to Ukrainians, Taiwanese, Muslims, Mexicans, and a whole host of American groups such as LGBTQ+, minorities, non-Christians of all sects, and women. Maybe go read a primer of Project 2025 (I won't subject you to the whole almost thousand-page document) and give some serious thoughts as to why these people are trying to get you to throw your vote away on a Third Party Candidate with Trump on the election?

The Trolley Problem is all about how there's frequently no good options in a scenario. People are gonna die whether or not you make a decision, and you'd be right to walk away from that lever if there were equal amounts of death on each track. But there frequently are not equal situations. Six people versus one person. A kid versus an old man. 7 Nuns versus 10 Lawyers. The person you love the most in the world versus the person you hate the most in the world.

Sure, you have to be discerning and look for any tracks that don't have something tied to them. That's why I mention that self-driving cars, thanks to their sensors, don't have to hit the bus full of school children or the SUV full of nuns -- they've seen the bus and the SUV and the idiot merging into traffic and the idiot on their phone and everything else due to their 27 different cameras and their LADAR and RADAR and so on, and to the advanced AI computer that can pay attention to all those sensors at once, and have calculated a path to escape to the track that doesn't have anyone being killed in the phony concocted examples of why AI cars are bad.

But in regards to the Presidency, there literally is a Trolley Problem here, and it IS as straight forward as you say it isn't. Come January of next year, one of two people will take the Oath of Office.

• Kamala Harris, who you say is a genocidal maniac who will enable the mass murder and enslavement of Gaza by the Israelis...
• Donald Trump, who himself has said is a genocidal maniac who will not only enable but accelerate the mass murder and enslavement of Gaza by the Israelis, and who plans on bringing that treatment right back to home for LGBTQ+, minorities, non-Christians, and women.

Jill Stein, Cornel West, Chase Oliver (seriously, I had to go look this guy up!), and whoever else promises you they can fix a Broken Washington won't be elected to that office. Period. End of line. All they'll accomplish is taking votes away from the major party candidate closest aligned to your positions, and ensure the other guy gets into office. The track of no genocide is an illusion, a mirage that fades the moment you look at it too hard. I know. It sucks. We all want more options for people to represent us. But those are the rules, and have been the rules for literally this country's entire existence. It sucks, but denying reality won't help. Come January, one of two people will take the oath of office: a Republican and a Democrat, just like it has been for the past 150 years, and even before, albeit with Federalist vs. Anti-Federalist or Democratic-Republican vs. Whig.

I'm going to vote for the person who will do the least harm to those I care about. I'm going to push and push hard for everyone else to join me in voting for her. I'm going to constantly call out this 'but third party!' stuff. Because for everything you have accused Harris of allowing, Trump will not only do that, but a dozen other hateful things.

No worries!

Overall, an engaging ad, and it speaks to me, a White (College Educated) Dude. My only criticism of the ad is it is too long. I hope they have a 30 second version!

The ads themselves don't cost much. Really, it's just a voiceover of scenes for every political ad. What costs money is getting it in front of voters' eyes.

Lots of money trades hands during election season, and it's all about getting ads in front of influence-able people and getting them to do the thing you want them to do (vote for me!!!!).

I do have my criticisms about the ad. It spends too many seconds articulating the message "White dudes can easily vote for Harris/Walz and you should to save the US from Donald Trump." It should be shorter, IMNSHO. But you'll be surprised at how little money goes to the designers and actors for an ad, compared to the metric fuckton of money that gets put into the pockets of advertisers and media companies.

Sorry, can't answer that question. I'll be Rule 3'd if I did. :3