this post was submitted on 09 Apr 2024
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United States | News & Politics
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Through a basic understanding of the First Past the Post election mechanism. Voting third party does not help move the establishment parties left, it only hurts the left. The best thing for the left to do is turn up every single election (especially local elections) to vote D down the whole ticket en masse, until the Republican party is defunct. Additionally, voting for progressives in the primary.
The only way out of "voting third party is throwing your vote away" is to move away from FPTP. That means showing up and holding your nose until we elect enough candidates who support Ranked Choice.
This is truth. The old adage about throwing your vote away isn't exaggeration, or even opinion. In a First Past the Post election, is just math. And math doesn't care about anyone's sense of moral righteousness.
Everything is true except this. It's good to have at least two healthy parties competing for voters. So often, single party states allow the dominate party to get lazy because it no longer has to work hard to get votes.
At least ideally, the end result would be an electorate that is further to the left and Republican party that is not as crazy conservative. Overton window shifting and all that.
You misunderstand me. Once the Republican party is defunct, the Democratic party can fill in as the center-right neo-liberal party while a progressive party can emerge to the left. Two healthy parties.
I think your misreading the US electorate as being much further to the left than it actually is. What we have now is a fairly delicate dance between the two major parties, attempting to suck up various constituencies. It's resulted in an almost perfect equilibrium nationally. What you're suggesting leaves an enormous group of ex-Republican voters without a political home. In that scenario, the Democrats would move right to appeal to ex-Republicans for political advantage and the Progressive Party would move to the center to appeal to center-left voters. You would land more or less where we are now in the end.
Eh, the further left portion of the electorate has much lower turnout that the further right, largely due to apathy toward the centrism of Democrats. I think you're right that a Democrat/Progressive landscape would result in both moving right, but I think the Progressive would be firmly to the left of the modern Democrats, and the Democrat would be firmly to the left of the modern Republican.
Actually what we currently have is unbridled capitalism specifically the military industrial complex, with two vaguely different coats of paint. Culture warrior shit is just used as a rhetorical differentiator, "nothing fundamentally changes" under either party. I don't really want to ote for the party the has roe v wade abolished under it's watch, and then just uses it as a fund raising talking point.
But why would any current candidate that benefits from first past the post prefer ranked choice voting and why is it that magically a candidate that supports ranked choice voting will inevitably be preferred choice?
It really sounds like you are using RCV as a Shangri-La, but really just enforcing the status-quo.
This has happened already. Even though the landscape is dominated by the power hungry, there are in fact principled people who run to actually make a positive difference, from time to time. And yes, I would say that generally candidates who support ranked choice also agree with me on other issues.
What attitude? You asked where we learned the adage that "voting third party is throwing your vote away", I stated that it was evident in the basic math of the First Past the Post mechanism. It's not a notion to be challenged, it's a mathematical inevitability. The FPTP system is what obstructs free democracy. The futility of third parties is only a symptom of FPTP elections. Attacking the notion of third party futility is ignoring the symptom. The only cure is changing from FPTP to a different electoral model.
And you will change to this different model how? By voting?
Yes, that's how representative democracy works. Do you have an alternative method which yields better results?
So then there shouldn't be any issue with me voting for socialists, since they are who represent me and my views best. Sounds good.
I'm the primaries? Of course! In the general? Of course not, did you completely ignore everything that's been said? Splitting the vote on the left only hurts us. The only people who advocate leftists voting third party are people who don't understand FPTP, and people who want the left to lose.
My ballot must be different then yours, I don't see any leftist parties who represent "us" in the general election at the federal level.
I see two front-runners in the general election at the federal level. One is a centrist neoliberal party, the other is a fascist party. My interests lie with the fascist party losing. Since our system is FPTP, that goal is achieved by voting for the lesser evil. Voting third party increases the odds of the fascist party winning, so that is unaligned with my interests.
If you think acknowledging basic math is offensive I don't know how to communicate the principle here. Your basic premise is either uninformed, or a deliberate bad faith attempt to divide the left.
Pretending that the principles of FPTP are different doesn't make them so. As I said before, the cure is ranked choice. The mechanism of getting there is consistent turnout in primaries and all elections, especially local. That's the only way to push the Democratic party toward ranked choice, which is the only reasonable way to achieve ranked choice, which is the only way to make third parties viable.
Voting third party in FPTP only splits the vote and hurts the left. Your point about he media narrative, while not false, is not particularly relevant. The main issue is FPTP.
Thank you, I will try my hardest.
Presently, the biggest obstacle to that goal is the combination of ignorance and propaganda affecting the upcoming election cycle, which has been empowering the right and fragmenting the left. The goodness of the one I am going to have is largely proportional to leftist turnout, and largely inversely proportional to the percentage of leftists confused by that ignorance and propaganda.