Reminder that someone online arguing that you shouldn’t vote for Biden because of whatever pet grievance is either a Russian agent or an idiot playing into their hands
Reminder that not everyone who disagrees with your guilt tripping self righteous nonsense is a Russian bot. Some of us actually use critical thinking and can see a pattern that must be broken.
I’ve been called a Trumper/Russian bot/Chinese bot since 2016 (on Reddit, same username) because I’m critical of ALL politicians. I got banned from /r/politics for listing reasons why Hillary would lose and what she needed to change in order to beat Trump. Welp…
Did you think people in the Hilary campaign would be trawling through r/politics, looking for your comment and changing their platform to what you wanted?
Or were you just encouraging voters not to participate in the election?
And soon those farms are going to be powered by ChatGPT. When you hear that Russian line it’s going to have ten replies all agreeing and giving supporting arguments.
I wonder if we’ll be able to spot hallucinations in such a simple task.
You don’t have to if you live in a state that will vote overwhelmingly democrat. Maryland, California, New York, Massachusetts, Hawaii, and DC Biden won by over 20% margin I have wiggle room to vote 3rd party.
In Maryland there is like 33% wiggle room I am ok. If I was in Pennsylvania it would be a different story.
Hillary and Biden both beat Trump by huge numbers in Maryland I can vote for 3rd party no issues. People are just scared that people from Pennsylvania have the same idea which it would actually cause harm.
Bruh. Before 2022 I had bodily autonomy and Trans people could receive their medications with a semblance of reliability. Immigrants weren’t being bussed around the country against their will.
We have gone way more right, way faster, than I think anyone could have foreseen.
If you’re referring to the lack of roe v wade, that was the supreme court, not the president, and I’m not aware of any current justices planning to retiring in the next four years. It’s now a states rights issue. Support the state level candidate who is inline with your views.
Trans people could receive their medications with a semblance of reliability.
With few exceptions, “trans” adults can do whatever they want. Assuming they’re an American citizen, they have the exact same rights as you and I.
Immigrants weren’t being bussed around the country against their will.
You’re right. They were piling up in border states and no one gave a shit until they started getting bussed around.
We have gone way more right, way faster, than I think anyone could have foreseen.
These issues are far more complicated than you would pretend.
Who do you think stacked the Courts in the favor of Republicans? And if you think Trump won’t press it further by expanding the Courts and putting more Conservatives in, you’re high. Additionally, if you don’t think a Republican will push for a nationwide abortion ban, you’re even more high.
Well, you’re worse than high. You’re likely a Russian troll.
You didn’t answer my questions about stacking the Courts or an attempted nationwide ban, you just replied with sarcasm.
Who do you think encouraged Greg Abbott, Ron DeSantis, and Mike Parson to push the fold on women’s rights?
Also, I live in South Texas. Please tell me about the “immigration crisis piling up at our borders”, before the bussing to different states. I’m listening.
I’m allowed to respond with sarcasm. Mostly because I don’t take your fear mongering seriously. But as a courtesy:
There won’t be any stacking the courts. Stop it. Just like Biden was suppose to stack the courts. It was bullshit then, it’s bullshit now. But feel free to call gotcha on me if Trump wins and stacks.
What happens in a few states isn’t relevant to a “nationwide” ban. Trump is barely a conservative (he was a Democrat for much of his life). Abortion is a losing issue for moderates and left leaning conservatives. Many are in favor of some type of abortion (12 weeks, 15 weeks, etc…). Any conservative would be a fool to campaign on a federal ban on abortion.
Honestly I don’t care to argue immigration much. It’s not a issue in my state.
I would argue that the folks who voted 3rd party in 2016 decided we needed to do more than just not vote for Trump in 2020. The folks who voted for Trump in 2016 and 2020 are gonna vote for him again in 2024.
I’d say equally this year it is worthwhile to do more than just “not vote for Trump” but vote for Biden (especially if you intended to vote 3rd party … but by all means vote your conscience first!) to further cement the statement that we did not choose Trump.
The stats show he lost no ground, the issue will be how much ground Biden has lost because of the attacks about their age and pushing folks to vote 3rd party or whatever as an act of protest.
Vote your conscience first, but don’t protest by a third party vote. If you have no good option CHOOSE HARM REDUCTION ALWAYS
I say this as a Bernie 2016 / 2020 voter. It still hurts. I’m choosing to reduce the harm regardless.
harm reduction is when you know a bad thing is going to happen, and you give the people it’s happening to resources to mitigate the harm from it. needle exchanges are the best example: people are going to use drugs. that’s bad enough with the stigma and risks of impurities etc. giving them clean needles eliminates one of the dangers, though.
voting doesn’t give the effected people any resources to deal with the problems created by our government.
edit:
harm reduction would be sending medical supplies to gaza. setting up abortion care resources in the states. distributing HRT resources. voting is just that: voting.
Harm reduction, or harm minimization, refers to a range of intentional practices and public health policies designed to lessen the negative social and/or physical consequences associated with various human behaviors, both legal and illegal.
I don’t want either candidate, they both suck to me. I’d prefer to not have to vote for either of them. I’d prefer to vote my conscience for policy.
Instead I am voting for the candidate who has not stated he intends to continue removing my wife’s bodily autonomy and push policies that will deliberately harm “the others” as they see them.
Voting for Biden, despite not wanting to and wishing I had a better option, is harm reduction for those I care about because if I didn’t act I was doing nothing.
Instead I am voting for the candidate who has not stated he intends to continue removing my wife’s bodily autonomy and push policies that will deliberately harm “the others” as they see them.
same here. that’s why i’m voting for cornel west (or maybe jill stein).
Hillary and Biden both beat Trump by huge numbers in Maryland I can vote for 3rd party no issues. People are just scared that people from Pennsylvania have the same idea which it would actually cause harm.
I’m simply arguing that it is a good idea to not rest on your laurels and when we are faced with what feels like a crazy threat to democracy maybe then its especially good to vote in your best interests instead.
Only you can choose what your best interests are, but anyone who argues that you SHOULD protest vote probably has an agenda which is likely to get you to not vote for Biden or Trump.
What if I think people should still vote but they should be ready to be unhappy with the outcome either way and that it won't actually provide meaningful change?
Citizenship is responsibility - participation in the civic life of a polity. That's what being a citizen, and not simply a subject, means - to have the right to a share in the direction of the polity. Like it or not, if you're active in exercising your influence to affect politics instead of abrogating that power to the elite, you're a good citizen of wherever you live.
So long as we have “too moderate democrats”, the wannabe dictators are gonna look great for actually believing in something. Fuck Biden for appeasing and therefore empowering the right, shifting goalposts back decades- I hope he suffers excruiating back pain today and forever if not ruinous guilt. He makes the democrats look SO bad. Especially on a international scale.
Ah i see, so positive change is worth pushing for, but avoiding calamity isn’t and you through throw away your vote instead. Insightful political philosophy.
What if I think people should still vote but they should be ready to be unhappy with the outcome either way and that it won't actually provide meaningful change?
I guess you are going to vote for Trump. What are your reasons for that? How do you deal with voting for a man who incited January 6 events? Do you value democracy?
I am genuinely interested in those answers, and I am actually glad that at least some people from the right are present in fediverse. So, I am upvoting your post, not because I like it, but because you are contributing to the discussion.
Not sure who I’m voting yet. If it’s between Biden and Trump, I’ll be going for Trump. I’d love to go third party, but I live in a swing state my vote has more impact, so I figure I should use it — and convince my friends and family to use theirs — on a candidate that has the potential to win.
What are your reasons for that?
Until COVID-19, we had an insane economy under Trump. I think he can bring that back, and Biden has been fumbling the ball on that for his entire presidency.
Militarily, I think we’re in a better position with Trump than Biden. The Afghanistan withdraw that Biden oversaw was a mess, and the bulk of the war in Ukraine only started after Biden took office. I take issue with Trump’s apathy towards NATO — but on balance, I’d prefer that to instability in the Middle East and the endless money pit that Ukraine has become.
Socially, I have a huge issue with the authoritarian measures that Biden has tried to enact. The OSHA vaccine mandate and DHS Disinformation Board are my two biggest. He’s also been ignorant to our border crisis, and the war cry from his party seems to be that anyone who wants a secure border is a racist.
I’m sure there’s more, but these are at the front of my mind as I’m in between projects.
How do you deal with voting for a man who incited January 6 events?
I’m an attorney. I have doubts that Trump’s rhetoric on January 6th could be considered incitement. Is it dispositive either way? No. I think a jury could return either result. That said, I lean more towards it not being incitement. I see it lacking in terms of intent and imminent nature, which are two of the primary criteria for an incitement conviction.
I can explain my legal thoughts in more detail, but you’ll have to give me until later today if you want that.
Do you value democracy?
Yes. I don’t see Trump as a threat to democracy. I think his assertions of widespread election fraud are asinine, but I think he firmly believes in them. If someone truly believes an election was fraudulent, I do not believe there is any issue with allowing them to investigate that and prove it in a court of law — which he attempted, and failed, to do.
As to the suggestions that Trump could do a military coup or some other consolidation of power, I truly think the people suggesting that were not monitoring the MAGA forums back around January 6th. That stuff was a powderkeg. Those folks were utterly nuts, and I claim no association with them. If Trump truly wanted to undertake a coup — or “cross the Rubicon,” as a bunch of them were spewing back in that day — he certainly knew he had the resources to be able to.
First, thank you for the answer. I wish people would upvote interesting positions even if they do not conform to theirs.
But I did not ask you as attorney whether he incited revolt or not. He is the reason for what happened. He is
did not commit to peaceful transfer of power well before election
states that election is fraudulent with obvious conclusion that it must be overturned. And by the way (1) strongly suggests that (2) was planned.
(1) + (2) means that he calls for forceful change of power. It is irrelevant whether he actually believes or not that he won election. How you do not think that he is a threat to the democracy??
And how can you vote for a person who holds by your own admission “asinine ideas”? Should it disqualify him automatically?
Incitement is a legal charge. I gave you a legal analysis as to why that’s not met here.
How you do not think that he is a threat to the democracy??
Because he’s not. If you have sincerely held beliefs that an election was fraudulent, you should press them through the appropriate judicial channels, like he did, and — if an election is adjudicated to be fraudulent before the transfer of power occurs — it is consistent with that to not answer whether power will transfer.
And how can you vote for a person who holds by your own admission “asinine ideas”? Should it disqualify him automatically?
Because the only other options has even worse ideas. Moreover, I live in a swing state, so I can’t afford to throw my vote away on a third party.
You hold strange ideas. As long as he truly believes in it, he is not a threat to democracy. If he believes truely that he needs to kill all humans, he is not a threat to humans.
Not commuting to pieacefull transfer of power, and creating situation that lead to January 6 is OK, since he truly believed it. And, by the way, Jan6 includes congressmen attempting not certifying votes from several states as direct consequence of his “asinine ideas” (your words not mine) but it is also not a threat democracy because those are true beliefs? Strange.
In my mind, he is a single most greatest threat to US democracy. I just can’t se how anyone who values our democracy can vote for him.
As long as he truly believes in it, he is not a threat to democracy. If he believes truely that he needs to kill all humans, he is not a threat to humans.
That’s a false analogy. He believes that the election was fraudulent. Fraudulent elections are not consistent with democracy, in fact they are the opposite of it. Attempting to ascertain and prove that an election was fraudulent is exactly what should be done if someone believes that to be the case.
Not commuting to pieacefull transfer of power, and creating situation that lead to January 6 is OK, since he truly believed it.
As set out previously, I do not believe he incited the events on January 6th. If you believe an election is fraudulent, you should pursue that claim in the proper judicial channels — which necessarily means not agreeing to a transfer of power, as a court could find an election fraudulent before that transfer is set to occur.
And, by the way, Jan6 includes congressmen attempting not certifying votes from several states as direct consequence of his “asinine ideas” (your words not mine) but it is also not a threat democracy because those are true beliefs?
Democratic congressmen did the same thing when Trump was first elected. I’m voting for a president, not a congressman.
I just can’t se how anyone who values our democracy can vote for him.
Ironically, the only party indicting it’s chief political opponent and trying to limit the ballot of electable candidates — an action that is arguably the most antithetical to a true democracy — is the democrats.
The problem is, he was not commuting to peaceful transfer of power BEFORE elections. That completely destroys your “believe” behavior as a sign of integrity. It was calculated and planned move.
And I do not understand what is false about “kill all humans “ analogy. If you truly believe that killing humans is the right thing to do, then it is a sign of integrity if you actually start killing them. And yet you would be a threat to humans. Situation with Trump and democracy is exactly the same if (and that’s a big if) he believes into, as you said, this asinine idea. He would be twice bad - both in ability believing asinine ideas (how anyone can trust such person with anything, and especially with presidency) and he would be still a threat to democracy, the same way a true believer human killer is a threat to humans.
As for democrats objecting to Trump votes, it is not the same. Just 7 Democrats did it. Can not be considered a threat to democracy in any way. Compare this to 139 republicans. That’s the real threat. And don’t hide behind “I am not voting for house representative”. Trump is the reason of their objection, in precisely because he was saying that he did not lose election and was not committing to transfer of power (again, starting before election). This is in sharp contrast to democrats and Hillary who admitted the defeat, so those 7 democrats who objected have done not because of Hillary, but despite of her. Hillary was not a threat to democracy and Trump was/is.
“Pet grievance” is one of my new favorite euphemisms for genocide.
Voting does nothing other than reform the capitalist regime. It doesn’t matter whether this cycle’s presidential figurehead is blue or red. Give it a few decades and you’ll see how the US will still be sowing death and destruction across the world, as it always has. The presidential race that liberals get so rabid about is nothing more than kabuki theater.
Lol way to show you know nothing about your own ideology, buddy.
Progressivism: Progressive liberalism is a response to marxism, (radical) socialism, and communism. It was a recognition that the problems marxists, (radical) socialists, and communists were bringing to the forefront were proper problems, but it contests that marxists, socialists, and communists have the correct solutions. For that matter, progressive liberalism is anti-marxist, anti-socialist, and anti-communist.
Progressive liberals hope to “save capitalism from itself” not abolish it unlike genuine marxists, socialists, and communists wish to do.
If people think an “evangelical” is going to handle the conflict in Gaza on the side of the Palestinians better than Joe Brandon they are sorely mistaken and/or misguided. 45 wanted a straight up Muslim ban ffs.
I don’t think anyone thinks that. Conservatives are fine with Israel defending itself against a terror group, and the pro-Hamas crowd is so diehard on their “values” that they’ll either vote third party or not vote at all to avoid siding with Israel.
Evangelicals want this conflict, because in order for Jesus to come back and rapture them, the mosque on the Temple Mount must be destroyed so the temple can be rebuilt, which is step one of their prophecy. That’s the real reason they pretend to care about the Jews.
They truly believe this is their end times, and worse, a few years ago their perfect red cow they’ve been waiting for these thousands of years was certified; if that cow dies before they get the chance to sacrifice it to rebuild their temple, they may have to wait another thousand years.
Yeah, I’d rather deal with someone who enables Israel’s bad behavior instead of someone who not only cheers it on but offers to help make it worse. There’s at least a snowball’s chance of convincing the enabler to stop enabling.
Yeah? Like our devotion to repeatedly voting in neolibs like Carter, Clinton, Obama, and Biden has had nothing to do with tilting the political spectrum to the far right?
I’ll probably pull the lever for Biden, but I don’t blame anyone who doesn’t. Based on the results of recent decades of leftists holding their noses to vote for the neolib, even if Biden wins something much worse than Trump will arrive just in time for the 2028 cycle.
look, I can understand the argument that you must vote for the most effective way to contain an evil. It's a good solid argument.
However it starts taking damage almost immediately when:
The plan to fight the evil is using the most disliked president in recent history to win a popularity contest.
They pre-emptively destroy any and all opportunities to find a better candidate to win the popularity contest against the evil.
They refuse to debate anybody just like the evil they want to defeat. Making it impossible to verify they're the one for the job.
They forcibly re-schedule the primary schedule to delay any signs that this plan might be a terrible idea.
Their age is seriously in question, their mental acuity is in question, and they also decide to dodge being in a completely unscripted environment for two hours while standing.
Certainly with all this you can at least understand why someone would rather vote third party, because this Biden option is not making me feel any safer.
At what point can we stop pointing the finger at the voters and start pointing at the guy they're "supposed to vote for"? Is there a point we can ever point that finger at Biden? Or is it like Trump,where we need to vote for him "even if he were to shoot someone in the street"?
It works better when you have an idea of what the President actually does and what direct action would mean.
Almost everything we would want to do is at the local or regional level. Want higher density housing? Your mayor and city council control that with no say from the President. Better public transportation? Same, though the President can try convincing Congress to pass grant funding for it. More and better bike lanes? Same thing. Get rid of anti-homeless architecture? All city level stuff.
School lunch programs? State government can stop it if the wrong people are there. Expand Medicare? Same. Better rail networks? Same. Ban gay conversion therapy? All state government.
Foreign policy is the one thing where the President does have a lot of control. That’s actually the exception. I like Biden’s approach on Ukraine–getting most of Europe to go along with sanctions at all, especially after Trump destroyed our soft diplomatic power, was amazing. His approach on the Gaza conflict is far less amazing, to put it mildly. Other than foreign policy, the position is mostly advocacy and horse trading around funding priorities with Congress. Soft power for the most part.
A bad President, especially combined with a bad Congress, sure as hell can stop the local agenda items, though. Pull the grants for cities to implement public transit. Pull Medicare expansion entirely. Don’t provide school lunch program funding at all. Put judges in power who rule arbitrarily in favor of conservatives with no care for precedent.
What voting for Biden is for is to make sure the federal government doesn’t overrule things built locally and regionally. That’s it. The rest needs direct action on the part of all of us at different levels of government.
A bad President, especially combined with a bad Congress, sure as hell can stop the local agenda items, though. Pull the grants for cities to implement public transit. Pull Medicare expansion entirely. Don’t provide school lunch program funding at all. Put judges in power who rule arbitrarily in favor of conservatives with no care for precedent.
What voting for Biden is for is to make sure the federal government doesn’t overrule things built locally and regionally. That’s it. The rest needs direct action on the part of all of us at different levels of government.
finally somebody gets it dude hoo lee I feel like I’ve been wearing the nightmare vision goggles and taking the crazy pills or something
Not the user I was expecting to see post this. Good look.
Hopefully more people are waking to the very obvious fact that there are a ton of right wing trolls on here pretending to be leftists. The most obvious one is all over this thread.
But people did vote for Hillary, IIRC, she won the popular vote by like 3 million votes.
So it wasnt a lack of voting that gave trump the presidency and repealed abortion rights. It was the mecanisms and institutions that are part of your electoral process and that only seem to exist in order to dilute your democracy (e. voting districts, electoral college) that gave trump the win.
Perhaps people would be more willing to vote if their voices were actually heard.
Kinda irrelevant but frustrating that someone down voted you for being genuinely curious about something that could have a huge impact on the future of our country -_-
Vote local, vote often, and try to help people be able to do the same. We’ll get better candidates if and when we start voting them into smaller positions first. Republicans are generally more likely to vote locally, and this allows them to gerrymander the voting districts and control stuff from the local level up. Change your town and state officials to be more progressive, and they’ll support more progressive policies and politicians at higher levels of government.
Preach, preach, fucking preach. I am so tired of people being completely disengaged from politics for 3 years and change then showing up at the last minute during the general election doing nothing but whining. It is unbelievable. So many people go “all the candidates are the same nothing matters” but they can’t even be bothered to vote in the primaries to, I don’t know, get a candidate they like on the ticket?
It’s so lazy and entitled at the end of the day. It’s willful ignorance paraded around as moral clarity.
If leftists in Florida voted for Gore instead of Nader, we would have started a comprehensive program to address climate change in 2001. And the Iraq War would not have happened.
Hillary Clinton is/was not obliged to anyones vote and should have run a better campaign to attract leftest by doing bare minimun actions like supporting trans people or election/education reform. She also could have chosen a different candidate for running mate rather then the complete personality void that she ended up with as a sop to some imaginary “moderate conservitive” that was simpathetic to humanity over their net worth.
But she didnt. I wish she ran a better campaign as well, we may have been better off with her in office in 2016, but the issues that trump brought into focus in our society were not caused by him. They have been here the whole time.
The whole "you didn't vote for Hillary so Trump is your fault" is a typical liberal statement. Just like how their solution to plastic pollution wasn't to regulate the producers, but to get everyone to recycle things. And then if an individual didn't recycle that person was bad, but they ignore what the massive industry is doing.
Same with health care. Their solution wasn't universal coverage, it was making sure every individual had to buy health insurance, and then fining the individuals who didn't. No action against the massive, inefficient industry causing most of America's health care problems. Nope, it was passing the buck off to individuals yet again.
The Clinton campaign sucked. It was so dull the news shows would rather show an empty Trump podium than a speech by her. I thought the reason Clinton won the primary was because people wanted adults in charge who knew what they were doing, but clearly they didn't because she lost to a reality TV show con man.
While that might be the case, the line from the Clinton campaign on why they won was because they were the grownups who could actually beat Trump, not a bunch of petulant Bernie Bros.
That is completely ridiculous. The superdelegates have never changed the results of the primary ever, not once. She had no secret arrangement, you can literally see the votes for yourself. She won at the ballot box. We can talk all day about whether or not the party elites put their thumb on the scale financially and messaging-wise (they did), but the superdelegates did not make one lick of difference, nor was there some grand conspiracy.
Now did you know when it was clear he was going to lose Bernie said he was going to try and win via superdelegates? Curious about your thoughts on that one.
I voted for her despite my distaste for her, after primarying for and making calls for Sanders against her. I cast my ballot like I was attending a funeral. But I did it. Out of least worst, water pumps on the Titanic time buying harm reduction. Polling place was a ghost town.
What was your excuse?
Better yet, you hate her so much, where were you during the primary? There was a significantly better option.
As we see with the Republicans eating themselves, there will always be opportunists looking to take down their own and fill the Gap. But we can use that to our advantage to get the legislation we actually want. But we kind of have to take care of the crazies before we can 100% focus on fixing our house.
That didn't exactly answer the question. If Democrats consistently get all the power, why would they bother changing? Don't they already have what they want?
Democrats aren't a monolithic entity that wants to gorge itself on power and then sit around fat and happy. It's a bunch of competing politicians who are constantly at risk of losing their seat - if not to Republicans, then, as in Cali, to fellow Democrats who propose a different line.
Speaking for myself, voting for down ballot candidates is the first step towards changing a party. My home city secured a progressive majority in 2022, and previous elected progressives are now running for higher offices. It’s always a process, and when done right provides better changes for the years to come.
If the right never wins, they move further left to collect more centrist votes. If the right moves more left, the left moves more left to differentiate themselves and appeal to the more progressive crowd that might otherwise vote green party or some other third party.
This has actually been happening for the last few decades but in the other direction. Left leaning voters not turning out for elections, partially because Dems have a history of suppressing exciting progressive candidates meant that Dems sought more centrists to compete with the right. Particularly after 5 of the 6 presidential elections went to Republicans between the late 60s and late 80s So they moved further right as a result. Both Clinton’s, Obama and Biden are not progressive, they’re barely left of center. The Democrat Party actively discourages progressivism, particularly in presidential candidates, to make them feel “safe” and “reasonable” to centrists. That shift to the right meant that the right has had to appeal more to the relative eccentrics on the right like anarcho-capitalist libertarians, the Christian nationalists, and the white nationalists. And not just at a presidential level but on every level even down to school boards. Thus our current status quo.
Not that Nixon, Reagan, or the Bushes were at all good people, but at the very least they didn’t feel comfortable publically and openly appealing to bigotry and the dismantling of the federal government as a campaign tactic. That is no longer the case with the modern GOP.
If the right never wins, they move further left to correct more centrist votes
That would be the theory, but it doesn’t seem to actually play out in practice. Look at the UK, where worsening performance in recent elections and drastically worse polling at present is leading to their right wing doubling down and being upset that their leader’s policies aren’t right-wing enough.
Or Australia, where at the last election our right-wing had its moderates absolutely wiped out by even more moderate independents (and in some cases, by proper progressives). There are no prominent moderates left in their parliamentary party. As a result, the people who are left are the right wing of the party, and they have selected as their leader a rabid tough-line conservative.
Question on more left leaning candidates - do you think there's a possibility a progressive party can actually gain traction?
I like the thought of revamping the Green Party as it's goals seem more relevant than ever, though they have to shed the kooky perception they've gained.
No, a third party will never make traction with our current voting system in place. The solution is the push the Democratic party left like Republicans have sprinted to the right (but obviously to not go crazy like they did).
I can speak firsthand here and say that the answer is yes. Australia uses Instant Runoff Voting for our House of Representatives, and Single Transferable Vote for our Senate. I’ll concentrate on the Reps here because it’s by far the more politically powerful of the two, though it’s worth noting that STV being a somewhat-proportional system makes it even better for minor parties.
The Australian political climate was, for most of my youth, not too different from America’s. Our conservative “liberal national coaltion” is not quite as awful as the Republicans, and Labor is a bit left of the Democrats, but it was very much a two-party system in practice. In 2010, after years of slowly doing better and better, the Greens won their first seat. They came second on first preferences, at 36.17% to Labor’s 38.09%. But the Greens received preferences from minor parties like the Sex Party, and even from the LNP in their attempt to destabilise Labor, and ended up winning the seat 56.04–43.96
Now, this is the innermost city electorate of Australia’s most progressive city, and you’ll note that even in FPTP, Labor would have won, which wouldn’t be a disastrous outcome. But the Greens saw an over 13 point swing toward them in that election alone, which is only possible in a situation where voters aren’t afraid of the spoiler effect leading to the LNP winning.
They’ve kept that seat ever since, and at the last election in 2022, the Greens almost won that seat entirely on first preferences, with 49.6% of the vote, and 60.2% after preferences were distributed.
Even more excitingly, in 2022 the Greens won their second ever seat. And their third and fourth. These all in a much less typically progressive area, the inner Brisbane seats of Brisbane, Griffith, and Ryan. Brisbane and Ryan previously belonged to the LNP, and Griffith was previously Labor. In Brisbane and Ryan, the LNP lead on first preferences, but the Greens lead in Griffith. If it were only down to these three parties, Labor would have won Brisbane, since the Greens came third by just 11 votes. The Greens would have won Ryan and Griffith. But thanks to preferences coming in from the smaller candidates (most smaller candidates are further right than the LNP, but most notably the Animal Justice Party pulled in a couple of per cent), the Greens finished ahead of Labor, leading to Labor being eliminated and most of their votes going to the Greens candidate. As a result, right now, I am living in an area represented federally by a Greens member. I also have a Greens state representative, and I’m hoping that something similar will play out so that in just under 2 months, I’ll also have a Greens councillor.
The rise of the Greens party in Australia has been incredible over the last couple of decades. It’s still slow progress and there’s a long way to go. Sadly IRV is not a proportional system, so despite polling about 10% nationally they still only have 2.7% of seats—if you’re going to switch systems, try to switch to a proportional one if you can!—but it is a system that allows for this kind of growth to play out in a way that it simply can’t when voters are forced to vote strategically for the least-worst of two main options, lest you get 2000’s Ralph Nader play out in Florida.
No, a third party will never make traction with our current voting system in place.
Who said anything about a third party? I, for one, am hoping that the Republicans self-destruct thoroughly enough that the Democratic Party becomes the more right-wing of the two major parties.
Counter point: If centrists had forced RBG to retire OR had they codified Roe into law in 2008 when Obama held the WH and the Democrats had the House and Senate… abortion would still be legal coast to coast.
I’ve held my disgusting leftist nose to “vote for the lesser of two evil” for two decades now. Shaming voters for having serious qualms with the Democratic Party’s inaction on important issues isn’t a good look for… the Democratic Party.
I get it. You love your favorite politicians winning by the margins instead of shifting American electoral politics left, as conservatives getting elected doesn’t make the populace magically more leftist.
More people voting in the US → The political conversation shifts left as more progressive/leftists candidates are viable. A lot of elections in the US happen in small amount of votes, also known as narrow margins.
People not voting because not voting for the perfect candidate feels icky → As the conservative candidates are more favoured by people voting less, this shifts electoral politics right.
I would prefer to live in a world where Americans would vote between centre and left candidates, for instance, than centre and right (relatively speaking, of course) as they do today.
Finn here. You guys can’t let Trump win. Gaza will be even more fucked than now. Ukraine will be fucked, which will lead to all of Europe being fucked. Your own country will also be more fucked than now. I hate Biden too, but Trump will be a total nightmare.
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