We have been arguing this [if both sides are bad] for 18 months now since most of us joined this site last June. How are these memes not spam or misinformation?
Edit: I meant June of 2023.
in the first 3.5 years of the question cycle
We are literally always in an election cycle this country is so fucked up
That’s how cycles work, lol.
We’re always in every cycle.
It’s in the root of the word cycle. Greek word kuklos and the Latin word cyclus, both of which mean “circle”.
I love me a good piece of pedantry. Technically correct, the best kind of correct.
Here goes:
PSL is running Claudia de la Cruz on a platform of Palestinian statehood and an end to arms shipments to israel.
Here’s your chance to not be like the ops meme.
Just say you want Trump to win. No need to hide it.
Why would I say that? I’m literally advocating people support a party running against trump.
It’s pretty safe to say everyone is aware of what you’re advocating for here.
I’ve made it abundantly clear, I want people to vote for the party for socialism and liberation no matter what political party they might have been planning on voting for.
Greens? They’re empty triangulators, vote psl instead.
Republicans? They’re the vile servants of capital who have no intent to disentangle America from foreign wars. Vote psl instead.
Democrats? Also the disgusting servants of capital who have no intent to stop the genocide, vote psl instead.
Under no circumstances should anyone with a functioning brain consider this as a good idea. It’s a sacrificed vote. A worthless ceremonial attempt to “protest” by casting a vote for someone that has a barely above zero chance to win.
It’s nothing more that pageantry and it’s irresponsible.
And there is probably no one that would in good faith, ask you vote for this person that isn’t trying to siphon votes from Harris.
DO NOT LISTEN TO THESE PEOPLE.
It’s bold of you to assume everyone who would vote 3rd party would otherwise “vote blue no matter who”. Also, not everyone lives in a swing state.
Votes aren’t sacrificed, they’re cast and counted. The count is public so you know they aren’t tossed into a pit after their hearts are carved out with an obsidian knife or burned on a stake or whatever.
I think the description of pageantry probably isn’t one to invoke when we’re staring down the barrel of three weeks of constant detailed media coverage focused on every detail.
I also think it’s pretty vile to describe voting for a party opposed to genocide as irresponsible. Irresponsible to whomst exactly?
A vote isn’t ceremonial or protest (and if it were protest it would be a lot cooler!).
I just want to take a minute to examine the protest vote rhetoric for a second. People only deploy it to imply that a vote they name protest is not valuable, not effective, immature and other pejoratives.
Why would anyone listen to the input of a person who looked at the history of the last twenty years or even the last century and not just thought “yeah, that’s immature, ineffective and worthless” but then tried to convince the people who are voting third party, overwhelmingly young people, of it?
I am literally asking anyone who would vote for either of the two major parties or a third party to consider the party for socialism and liberation in good faith. I don’t care who it siphons votes from. If a party thinks they need third party voters then they can adopt third party platforms.
I don’t care who it siphons votes from.
This obvious admission of entitlement says everything about how you have nothing to lose in this election, and therefore have no one’s best interest in mind aside from your own.
That is of course if we are to even assume that you aren’t here to support a spoiler and disrupt an election.
You’re creating a strawman of me to argue against.
It’s pretty clearly in bad faith. Why not actually respond to anything else I said instead of quoting one short sentence outside of any context and building a bunch of assumptions around it?
It’s pretty laughable to suggest that my vote against genocide has no one’s best interest in mind but my own.
Your claim that I’m speaking from a place of privilege and entitlement also falls pretty flat when it’s the high and privileged place of entitlement that’s defined by rejecting genocide.
Why not try a different line of reasoning.
Gloria La Riva, PSL’s 2020 presidential candidate, got a total of 85,623 nationally.
Do you think Claudia de la Cruz will beat that?
Does she have a path to presidency?
Harris or Trump will win and to think anyone else has a chance at this stage of the game is delusional.
She can win if you vote for her.
Really, I think you’d have a really good point if winning were all that mattered.
Election turnout is used to determine all kinds of stuff like funding, ballot presence, event eligibility, media coverage and it does a lot for public awareness.
Plenty of consultants, analysts and workers from the two major parties themselves examine third party turnout when triangulating their platforms and policies.
I don’t think the idea that only candidates who are already in a position to win the presidency should be considered is a very good tack. It’s really hard to defend, relies on some easily disproven misconceptions about the electoral system and if you succeed it just drives people who would vote away from voting at all.
Maybe try a different line of reasoning?
The time to show support for third parties was months ago. Not less than a month from an election
No one in good faith remains to support any third party. It’s mathematically and empirically known there no third party has a remote chance to ever win at this point.
You appear to me- to be here in bad faith and only in bad faith to disrupt an election.
Oh the time to work towards the change I want to see in my country is months ago? Back then people were saying it was years ago. Years ago people were telling me the same as you, I should have been at it months ago.
I’ve been doing the same thing that whole time.
The best time to support party for socialism and liberation was months ago, the second best time is now.
I explained in my comment that you replied to how there’s so much more than winning to take into account. Surely you aren’t just gonna accuse me of bad faith actions after you ignore my ideas? That would almost be like arguing in img_megamind.jpg bad faith.
Wouldn’t it make more sense to vote for the better of the two presidential nominees then vote all PSL down ballot where they can make real change?
Why wouldn’t that work?
If I cared more about supporting the democrat or republican policies than about building an alternative, yes.
Of course, I came to the conclusion that I didn’t want to support republican or democrat policies and don’t trust the democrats to do what they campaign on almost a decade and a half ago, so personally I would never do that.
And I’m here voicing support for a third party which has a platform wildly different than the republicans and democrats so it’s pretty clear I don’t want to support republican and democrat policies at all.
then vote all PSL down ballot where they can make real change? Why wouldn’t that work?
You kind of clumsily skipped over the main question here.
I promise you I didn’t.
I don’t want to support republican or democrat policies.
Voting for a candidate who is running at the head of either of those parties tickets would be supporting their policies and platforms.
So no, that wouldn’t work.
Don’t worry, I’m gonna vote party for socialism and liberation wherever I can on the ballot too and my distaste for the two major parties softens the more localized the race is, both because the outcomes at stake are unique and the candidates are less doctrinaire.
But no, I’m not gonna vote for a democrat or republican for president but then put the party for socialism and liberation in downticket.
E: wait a minute, if you really thought the down ballot races were what mattered wouldn’t you be positing that I vote democrat at the local level?
What gives? Which one matters, president or everything underneath it?
To address your edit, both the republican and democrat parties are already built.
Have been for a couple years.
But that isn’t building a party.
That’s like building a skyscraper by putting together the top floor first.
Not sure how to tell you this, but the right wing has, does, and will target ANY Democratic (or 3rd party) candidate that poses a realistic chance of beating them in the presidential election. The right wing doesn’t want or know how to govern, they just want to control, so they attack those that are qualified to govern.
Russia and China support and amplify unserious 3rd party candidates like Stein and RFK Jr with the support of the Republicans, because without splitting the left’s votes, the Republicans would be a powerless minority
The right wing doesn’t want or know how to govern, they just want to control
Thank goodness liberals don’t have this problem.
Big broom sweeping Eric Adams, Lori Lightfoot, Kristen Sinema, and Henry Cuellar under the rug
Russia and China
American politicians would rather fight two more world wars than go to therapy.
It’s just naive in my opinion. They say they care so much about Palestine, but refuse to sit down, grow up, and face our current political reality. I would love to have ranked voting, or even just a valid third party choice, but that is not going to happen in the next 3 weeks. And we are still reeling from the repercussions of the last Trump Term. They’ll continue to stack government and courts with the same backwards thinkers to make progress, if any, even harder. They’ll continue to make life harder and more dangerous for not even just minorities, but just anyone who’s not able to buy their way out of it.
But it doesn’t matter! They’re both the same! There is no way Trump could be worse. Because while Palestinians watch Israel’s interpretation of “just end it” with out a cease fire, they’ll die with the knowledge that, somewhere, in another country, a woman is bleeding out in the parking lot because some people wanted to make a point. Oh, boy, won’t that be great? /s
IMO anyone who argues to vote third party right now is a Russian troll.
Well I wouldn’t disagree with out of hand but I would want to see your research on that.
A third party has literally no chance to win in our system, and nobody gives a single fuck about the miniscule amount of votes they do get - you’re not moving any metrics, or sending any messages, or taking any stands. All you’re doing is helping the worse option win.
So, if you truly hate Palestinians, then by all means vote Stein. If you want to see Ukraine taken over, then please vote Stein. If you want to see our country start murdering every version of queer people, then you really should vote Stein. That’s all you’re going to get for it.
Whether you like to see the truth or not, a vote for a third party is still a vote for genocide.
And abstaining a vote is… still a vote for genocide. People need to get over this desire to make believe that voting makes them complicit in something and instead realize that it’s a cold and rational duty. Vote for the best outcome possible. What you do the remaining 364 days of the year will decide your complicity.
So much of this dialogue appears to boil down to “America is a fascist country and everyone in it supports fascist policies no matter what they say or do”.
Vote Republican: You’re for genocide. Vote Dem: You’re for genocide. Third Party: Genocide. Write-In: Genocide. Abstain: Genocide. Protest Outside Your Polling Booth: Genocide.
What you do the remaining 364 days of the year will decide your complicity.
Fateful last words of Thomas Matthew Crooks
miniscule amount of votes they do get - you’re not moving any metrics
If that’s true then why do you care? It’s a miniscule amount that’s not moving anything.
Let’s build some towers out of blocks and see whose is biggest!
The Dem tower is 48 blocks tall. The GOP Tower is 49 blocks tall. The 3rd party tower is 3 blocks tall. That 3 block tower isn’t enough to win, but if they stacked onto the Dem tower, that’s the difference between 4 years of status quo and 4 years of fascism.
I know a lot of hard lefties that would be very upset if they could math right now.
There are only 9 blocks that matter and 6 of them are in the GOP Tower.
Huh sounds like the people who have 3 blocks have a lot of influence. Considering the stakes shouldn’t the ones with the big towers be trying to appease the ones with three blocks?
I mean this doesn’t sound insignificant at all. I thought they were “not moving any metrics”?
Sure, let’s go down this line of reasoning. You appease the 3 blockers, and lose 10 blocks in the process. Now the Dem tower is 41 and the GOP tower is 59. Objectively a bad trade. What incentive does that provide?
so it’s, “our way or Hitler 2.0?”
doesn’t sound very progressive to me. kinda sounds like…
so it’s, “our way or Hitler 2.0?”
Isn’t “Our Way” the whole Green New Deal to save everyone on the planet from roasting alive due to climate change?
And when your analytics shows that adopting those policies will lose you more voters than you’d gain from the likely third party vote, what then?
Sounds more like the people with three blocks know the consequences of a Trump victory and are using their vote as ransom to make demands over a single issue that will get far worse if Trump wins.
So in essence. The people with three blocks are entitled and ignorant and quite possibly purposefully helping Trump win.
It’s crazy that the average American voter doesn’t know what the electoral college is.
It’s crazy that you used a made up statistic to feel superior lmao.
Crazy how foreign election-meddlers don’t even know how obvious they are with their agitprop.
it’s crazy the average hard lib is a humorless husk of a human being with zero awareness of what a joke is.
“Wait, I can support genocide while pretending I’m not a Nazi??”
- Diet RacistsThat is exactly what a lot of people here are doing yes.
They can say they vote third party, while hoping Trump wins.
Who in your scenario is supporting genocide exactly?
Low-key Nazis who vote third party just so they can later claim they didn’t vote for Trump? Idk, I hadn’t really thought that far into it. I mean, the guy down the road from me took down his swastika when he put up his “I stand with Israel” sign, but now his yard is covered in 50000 Trump signs, so I’m guessing he’s not voting third party…
I’ll keep saying it: This is not a Mexican standoff you can win because the Dems have an out: the center voter. If you want the Dems to stop going center, they have to win all 3 houses consistently. They’ve had all 3 for only 4 of the last 24 years.
Also that one time, if I recall correctly, had a bunch of Dems who were “pro-life” and vaguely Dem to get votes but not really progressive at all.
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as they move further and further center.
Why do they move further and further center? Because they lose. They lose almost all the time. They need all 3 (house of reps, Senate, presidency) to do much of anything. And they’ve had that for, drumroll please, 4 of the last 24 years. Or 6 of the last 32 years. Or 6 of the last 44 years. When they lose they go to the center to find voters. You’re talking as if they had control, but they didn’t.
Going to the center is why they are losing. Jimmy Carter was a centrist who tried to distance the party from the New Deal. He was wildly unpopular, which is why Ted Kennedy primaried him from the left. Kennedy lost the primary but Carter lost the presidency. Mondale and Dukakis were both moving to the center as well, and they both failed to beat Regan and Bush, respectively.
Clinton was the only centrist to win, and that probably had more to do with the fact that Ross Perot took a huge portion of the electorate (19%) than anything else. Gore and Kerry were another set of centrist losers, followed by Obama, who was a centrist President but a progressive candidate who won the primary by going to Hillary’s left. Hillary was a historic loss, and while Biden is a considered a centrist, he’s also very pro-labor, and ran a progressive platform against an incredibly unpopular president.
You’re absolutely right about what’s happening; the Democrats are going to the center to find voters. But when they go further from the left, it costs them voters, so they go even further towards the right to try to get new votes, which costs them more voters, over and over again in a feedback loop that, frankly, you could only get stuck in by either being completely incompetent or deliberately obtuse. You need to start blaming the party for losing voters, not the voters for being abandoned by the party.
No, it’s because you can’t get anything done in the American federal government without clear majority support from at least both houses of congress, just by the nature of how the government works and the current partisan climate. Democrats cannot pass progressive legislation without that support. Republicans are consistently successful in their goals because their goals do not require passing legislation; they require blocking it.
This is naive. Democrats have been stringing you along, decade after decade saying one thing and doing another, using whatever excuse they have available, and you seriously think they’re just waiting for the perfect time to unleash all this progressive legislation? Theyll just keep moving the goalposts as long as they have a willing voter base who never questions them because theyre better (undeniably true but still not good enough) than the evil republicans. They set up the opposition as the ultimate boogeyman so you’ll never question their half-measures. You should demand more when you have the power and leverage.
Right, yeah, they’re evil and they’ve had unfettered power to enact popular policy that would work in their favor for decades but haven’t done any of it yet because we’re dumb sheeple who actually understand how the U.S. political system works
If you’re third party, it’s currently a 2 party system but your end game is ranked choice voting, so throw your vote at the non-Republican who has the highest chance. After all, they use third party candidates such as RFK to siphon votes so you can only guess how strongly they’d oppose any system that disallows them from using that to their advantage. A vote for Republicans is a vote to never ever have third party candidates have any chance in any presidential election, just a strategic tool to help Republicans win
Most of far leftists you see here with their accusations of “dOiNg a gEnOciDe” were absent from any discussions about Palestine prior to October. And I’d wager that a large portion of them couldn’t have pointed to Palestine on a map until around then either. I’d even guess that many of them still couldn’t.
I’ll digress.
At this point- you should probably know by now that there is no changing their minds. They know what they’re doing- we know what they’re doing. And there’s no point in debating with them because they’re just going to drag things out and repeatedly accuse you of shit that isn’t true in order to not have to answer anyone asking them to make sense of the rhetoric they repeatedly post here…
Call out their nonsense for what it is and move on. Save yourselves the time.
Most of far leftists you see here with their accusations of “dOiNg a gEnOciDe” were absent from any discussions about Palestine prior to October
This is one of the funnier things I’ve seen a Democrat make up to smear anyone to their left.
The whole meme is bullshit. Libdems screamed at leftists to shut up throughout 2016. First it was to forget about Bernie and vote for the historically unpopular warmonger whose “turn” it was. After she lost to a nearly equally unpopular opponent, they screamed that it was time to resist, not actually consider the mistakes they made.
Just like there is no actually acceptable method to protest under neoliberalism, there is no actually acceptable time to push for third parties and alternate voting systems.
If Hillary made it in 2016 we’d have a much better supreme court and Roe v Wade would still be a thing but you sure showed all the libdems.
Hillary Clinton would have almost certainly won if her entire platform wasn’t based around the idea that she didn’t have to do anything good because, hey, what do you want to do, vote for Trump?
Blame her, because she is the one who fucked it up.
If you mean she didn’t have anything left*, she saw what happened to Obama. Obama passed the ACA and his thanks was to lose the house of reps for years 3-8. And the Senate for years 7-8. Aka the left never showed up, even after left policy was enacted.
*Except that she fucking declared war on climate change, that big existential issue that the left says they care about and will totally show up for, right?
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The whole meme is bullshit.
I VOTED FOR HILLARY
So did Bernie.
This is one of the funnier things I’ve seen a Democrat make up to smear anyone to their left.
And this is one of the funnier rebuttals to being called out if only because there’s no denial of it.
Leftists are some of the only people who paid attention or cared about Palestine before last year.
Yeah… they’re not though.
Voting þird party under fpðp is like voting for mexican food while dining out in ð UK.
Even if you some ð fuck how managed to bully everyone else into doing it, you’re still eating mexican food made in ð UK.
Ðat shit makes Taco Bell look like ð mom and pop shop that just labels ðeir sauces by ð color and ðat consider hundred k scoville ingredients ð dietary accomodation food for midwestern white people.
Am I having a stoke?
Dude likes using the ancient letters “thorn” and “eth” which sound like th and the. So fp(eth)p is short for “first past the post” which is how our voting system works. Sorry for quick series of ninja edits!
Strðke?
Remember, Ho Chi Minh knew all about America’s history of genocide when he helped American soldiers fight the Japanese in WW2.
Sometimes, it’s expedient to ally with those who aren’t nice,
