Now let the candidates from the Libertarian, Green and Constitution parties join the debates so that everyone can see some actual contenders beyond the 2 terrible options that are Biden and Trump.
Now let the candidates from the Libertarian, Green and Constitution parties join the debates so that everyone can see some actual contenders beyond the 2 terrible options that are Biden and Trump.
Frankly, I don't see what the point of that would be. None of them has any chance of winning, both because the FPTP voting system makes that enormously unlikely, and because I don't think any of...
Frankly, I don't see what the point of that would be. None of them has any chance of winning, both because the FPTP voting system makes that enormously unlikely, and because I don't think any of the American third parties are even interested in it. You don't build a viable political movement by making a moonshot presidential run every four years while holding approximately zero other elected offices and then fading back into the woodwork for the next four years when you don't win; the American third parties consist largely of useful idiots funded by one major party to spoil elections for the other. The only thing having them on stage would do is waste time and up the odds of having a president opposed by the majority eke out a win from the spoiler effect.
While I dislike the two party system as well, the way to get rid of it is not putting third parties in presidential debates, it's reforming our voting system to something like IRV to take the spoiler effect out of play.
Also, as a side note, the prominent American third parties don't even bring anything to the table that's not already represented in one of the main parties. The Libertarian and Constitution parties are literally just Republicans by another name, and the Green party are just progressive Democrats with higher odds of woo.
You don't gain any viability by never being part of the debate. Nobody knows who these people are or their position on anything even if they do align similarly with the other major parties. Some...
You don't gain any viability by never being part of the debate. Nobody knows who these people are or their position on anything even if they do align similarly with the other major parties. Some of these people even run under the Dem or Rep ticket for lower offices because that's what gets them elected, much like Sanders calling himself an Independent and running as a Democrat. The differences can still be quite huge, where a Libertarian might respond to fiscal issues like a Rep but respond to human rights like a Dem. Their presence at a debate might also change the stance of a Dem or Rep on a particular issue similar to Biden adopting a policy change that Bernie and Warren were running on.
It also paves the way for more people to notice the party, join it, run for office under it and expand their platform. You can't expect a movement to grow by being sidelined by the status quo forever and you aren't going to reform the voting system by continually voting the same 2 party tickets that don't want it to be reformed.
Sanders does not run as a Democrat for his Senate seat though. There's a precedent and a path for independents and third party candidates in lower level federal and state offices that these third...
Sanders does not run as a Democrat for his Senate seat though. There's a precedent and a path for independents and third party candidates in lower level federal and state offices that these third parties could take, but they don't. If they want to become better known, they should focus on actually winning some offices in districts or states small enough for competent campaigning to have enough of an impact, rather than hoping for some trickle down effect from participating in a debate wherein they're functionally a sideshow. And furthermore, it's by pursuing these offices that third parties could actually start pushes for voting reform, as voting laws are almost entirely handled at the state and local level, and again, there's precedent for changing the voting system. Maine uses IRV for its congressional elections.
As another aside, I also think there's less air between the Libertarians and Republicans on human rights than that. Libertarians are all about freedom in the context of property rights; they couldn't care less about oppression as long as it's privatized oppression.
The viability of a third party is not a national concern. That’s their own problem. The point of debates is to help voters decide which realistic choice to make of the ones they have available....
You don't gain any viability by never being part of the debate.
The viability of a third party is not a national concern. That’s their own problem. The point of debates is to help voters decide which realistic choice to make of the ones they have available. These things are too important just to let some grandstanding hack have their “Rudy” moment by getting on the field in the big leagues.
That's like having a scientist and a creationist debate global warming. 2016's Libertarian candidate got booed at his own party's debate for suggesting driver's licenses were maybe not a bad...
That's like having a scientist and a creationist debate global warming. 2016's Libertarian candidate got booed at his own party's debate for suggesting driver's licenses were maybe not a bad thing, 2016's Green party candidate suggested that wi-fi is harmful to children, and the Constitution party are theocrats.
I don't think we should be involved in Yemen either, but voting Green or Libertarian isn't going to fix that. I have moral qualms about voting for Biden, same as I did for HRC in 2016 and Obama in...
Exemplary
I don't think we should be involved in Yemen either, but voting Green or Libertarian isn't going to fix that. I have moral qualms about voting for Biden, same as I did for HRC in 2016 and Obama in 2012. But the alternative is four more years of Donald Trump, which means the Supreme Court is conservative for another generation, LGBT rights will be further eroded, the gap between the haves and the have-nots will continue to grow in the form of tax breaks and defunding of public services, and white supremacists have support from the highest office in the land, among other things.
If you want third parties to be viable, those parties need to focus on lower-level positions which require fewer resources to be won and our national electoral system needs to be reformed. As long as you can only vote for one person for president and an elector in the Electoral College can only vote for one person, there will never be more than two viable parties long term. If one side split into two, they would lose every election to the other side that's still united. If there were two liberal parties and two conservative parties, whichever side had both parties lose would see one of those parties gain people from the other until they won again and then you're back in the three-party situation again, which goes back to two parties. It's better to get 60% of what you want and have a 50% chance of winning than get 95% of what you want and have a 0% chance of winning.
You want a parliamentary democracy in which a Prime Minister runs the executive branch and preferably either get rid of single-representative districts entirely or do a mixed-proportional system, because otherwise you still run into the spoiler effect like we saw in the last UK election: the Tories got less than 40% of the vote but a solid majority in Parliament because votes opposing them were often split between Labour, the Lib Dems, and the SNP.
In all three of Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania, Jill Stein got more votes than the margin between HRC and Trump. If those people who voted for Stein had voted for HRC instead, she would have won those three states and the election. We wouldn't have a regime that lies about things as meaningless as the crowd size at an inauguration, that has an attorney general that covers up its blatant crimes, that is almost entirely unaccountable due to unconditional backing from the Senate. I guarantee you there would be significantly less than 120,000 people dead from coronavirus right now if Hillary Clinton was president. She wouldn't be talking about a third term or making friends with Xi, Putin, Duterte, and Kim, or encouraging violence against her political opponents.
The moral of this story is that there will ever only be two viable candidates for president unless our electoral system is changed and you have an obligation to vote for the least bad one. You voting for a third party candidate gives a boost to the viable candidate that you like the least since you could have voted for their viable opponent, and you don't get to complain about what the winning candidate does when they're president because you threw your vote away. If Trump wins in the fall and you voted third party even though you don't like him, that's on you as much as much as it is on people who voted for him. When my rights and the rights of women and people of color are inevitably taken away further, when some report comes out about how the regime has stolen a bunch of that $500 billion of stimulus money that's unaccounted for, when we learn just how much the regime's 4 or 8 or more years of not just inaction but going backwards on fighting climate change has cost us, I hope you realize you make more of a difference by voting for the lesser of two evils than by voting for someone who's better (but still very flawed given recent third-party candidates) and giving that person one percent of the vote.
If Biden wins, I'm not gonna pretend everything is suddenly better. I want Democrats to have control of the House and Senate and progressive judges in the courts. I want Democrats in control of every governorship and state legislature and mayor's office, and I'm going to hold them accountable. I'm going to push for universal healthcare, zero emissions by 2035, a system of policing and community safety that doesn't result in unaccountable violent officers murdering us, for workers to have equity in the companies they work for, better access to all levels of education for everyone, and everything else that I think would make a better country. I and a lot of people who plan on voting for Biden are never going to tell you that he hasn't done or will not do anything that's morally reprehensible.
And for @viridian: Don't accuse me of blindly voting Democrat. I know what I'm about. I'm not a libertarian, I never will be, and I would clown on the Democrats' candidate if they didn't know what Aleppo was either. Foreign policy is a huge part of being president and if you don't know something as basic as Aleppo is a city in Syria, which is where one of the big conflicts right now is going on, then you're going to be completely out of your element. For all their faults, HRC and now Biden both have a handle on foreign policy in a way that neither Johnson nor Stein do.
Saying wi-fi hurts children is more than acting weird, it's harmful almost on the same level as being against vaccinations. In addition, I don't think she was ever a good faith candidate. I saw her take potshots at HRC but none at Trump, and I don't want anyone who's friendly with Vladimir Putin to be president. I'm a socialist, but even if the Green party was viable I would have voted for HRC over Stein in 2016.
I'm not accusing anyone of blindly voting for X major party, the claim is that folks bend over backwards to dismiss minor parties over issues far more trivial than the worst baggage either party...
I'm not accusing anyone of blindly voting for X major party, the claim is that folks bend over backwards to dismiss minor parties over issues far more trivial than the worst baggage either party is sitting on; even more trivial than the worst baggage the minor party itself is sitting on. It strikes me as a way to sweep inconvenient alternative parties under the rug without engaging them on a policy level, in pursuit of narrowing a window of discussion. Use of these memes (in the selfish gene sense) are a rhetorical tactic that has the effect, intended or otherwise, of lowering the level of discourse by reducing the target to an easily dismiss-able sound byte.
People, parties, organizations, and ideas can not be accurately represented by the single smallest, easiest to swallow sliver that makes up the whole. You can't reasonably sum up the democratic party as "If you have a problem figuring out whether you're for me or Trump, then you ain't black", or GOP as "very fine people on both sides", so why should we essentialize minor parties down to their worst gaffes?
A major party candidate has more leeway because the alternative is usually worse. It's not fair, but it's the way things are until we change our electoral system (which I'm in favor of). Biden is...
A major party candidate has more leeway because the alternative is usually worse. It's not fair, but it's the way things are until we change our electoral system (which I'm in favor of). Biden is prone to saying dumb shit, but I'm not sure any of it is as harmful or dumb as believing that wi-fi is harmful.
Also, I think a decent amount of the anti-capitalists on Tildes are still voting for Biden, so at least here we're not limiting the range of conversation. I won't speak for anywhere else though.
Dismissing minor parties is probably the smartest thing to do in a "First Past The Post" plurality voting system. Minor parties will always spoil your second favorite candidate; that's how the...
Dismissing minor parties is probably the smartest thing to do in a "First Past The Post" plurality voting system. Minor parties will always spoil your second favorite candidate; that's how the mathematics of voting works out.
This isn't just a "meme" but a cold hard reality of how our voting system works. Indeed our system does create an inbred duopoly of two bad choices. But if you want to change that, you need to change the voting system.
Therefore it's in mine and society's best interest to criticize and de-legitimize third parties. The appropriate way for extremist candidates to compete is to compete within the Democratic and Republican primary system. That for example is exactly what people like Ron Paul, Bernie Sanders, Alexandria Occasio Cortez, etc etc have successfully done. These Libertarians and Socialists have obtained substantially more power within the primary system than the Green or Libertarian candidate ever has. That for example is exactly what the typical strategy the Democratic Socialists of America do to get their people elected into office - challenging Democrats in the Democratic primaries.
It's in my strategic interest therefore to make fun of third parties, to emphasize their gaffs, and to ensure that you don't vote third party, and convert you to a straight-party Democrat or Republican. The appropriate avenue for you to challenge the party is with primary challenges.
Indeed our system has idiotic foibles. One important component of plurality elections is that these elections are extremely manipulable to political strategy. For example, the typical layman might not understand viable voting strategies and indeed may waste their vote. If you don't like the way things are, what you need to advocate for is fundamental electoral reform into:
Newer voting systems such as ranked choice voting, scored voting, Condorcet voting, and a plethora of methods.
Proportional voting systems such as party list, Single-Transferable-Vote (STV), Mixed-Member-Proportional (MMP), etc.
Direct democracy methods such as Citizens Assemblies and sortition methods. Citizens Assemblies are in my opinion the ultimate version of scalable direct democracy with near perfect proportional representation.
But until the necessary reforms are put into place, a vote for a third party will always spoil your second favorite, causing your most hated option to win. That's how the math will work out. Plurality systems do not work correctly when voters do not behave strategically but rather vote for their "honest favorite". Indeed you can observe this phenomenon in plurality and alternative voting system simulations: http://electionscience.github.io/vse-sim/VSE/
I personally don't consider the Libertarians to be much better than the Republicans, if at all. However much better they are on keeping us out of places we shouldn't be, they're still worse than...
This was not a discussion about the viability of third party candidates, it was about hypocritically characterizing them as whackos when our two major parties are guilty of much, much worse things, things that have resulted in tremendous loss of human life around the globe.
I personally don't consider the Libertarians to be much better than the Republicans, if at all. However much better they are on keeping us out of places we shouldn't be, they're still worse than the Democrats on things like the climate and foreign policy; I went to look at their platform and they don't say much on foreign policy besides stopping military interventions and foreign aid. I think the best foreign policy is to use soft power and be open to working with other countries as equals, but the Libertarians don't strike me as the people to want to do that.
I don't really disagree with your second paragraph; I absolutely think there's more to making the country a better place than voting every four years. I said as much in the comment you replied to. I do think people and the media sometimes pay too much attention to what Trump tweets, although sometimes it's merited. I know there are people who don't care about Yemen, although I see people bring up Obama's drone and surveillance policies as negatives on r/politics, r/news, etc. fairly regularly.
I'm not being hypocritical by calling third-party candidates whackos because I criticize Biden and Trump plenty. I've been pretty vocal about what I stand for on Tildes I think. And the only reason Libertarians don't have as much blood on their hands as Republicans and Democrats is because they've never had power. Their domestic policies are just as bad as Republicans' and while they're more isolationist than the major parties, their refusal to work with other countries on actually good things would count against them too. I actually think most of the Greens' policies are good, but no Democratic candidate for president has said something as dumb as wi-fi being harmful to kids. It's not much of a leap from that to the 5G causing covid craziness going on.
I've noticed that a lot of people seem to look for any reason they can find to dismiss any candidate outside of team red or team blue, but I really don't get the logic behind it. People would...
I've noticed that a lot of people seem to look for any reason they can find to dismiss any candidate outside of team red or team blue, but I really don't get the logic behind it. People would never outright say that a party's position on GMOs or something like the Aleppo faux pas is more important than whether or not we kill tens of thousands of people a year in foreign wars, but in reality most people seem to be able to compartmentalize well enough to justify voting for war hawks while making fun of and outright rejecting the third parties for far less dire concerns.
You're not kidding. Spoiler effect aside, maybe I'd also be more amenable to having third parties on the debate stage if our third parties weren't all hot garbage.
You're not kidding. Spoiler effect aside, maybe I'd also be more amenable to having third parties on the debate stage if our third parties weren't all hot garbage.
As long as FPTP exists, there will be no sane or viable third parties. If you're a pragmatic politician whose views don't neatly align with one of the two major parties, it still makes sense to...
As long as FPTP exists, there will be no sane or viable third parties. If you're a pragmatic politician whose views don't neatly align with one of the two major parties, it still makes sense to join them, if you want a shot at winning elections. That way, you can enact your desired policy changes from within the proverbial "belly of the beast". You see this happen a lot with politicians that represent a constituency that is markedly different from the national norms in terms of demographics and/or political motivations. A very liberal college town might elect an ultraprogressive running as a Democrat, but who might as well have been a member of the Green Party. Similarly, a constituency somewhere in the snake-handling boondocks might elect a Republican who is basically a batshit insane Constitution Partyesque paleocon in disguise.
If you're not a pragmatic politician, or someone who Wants To Make A Point, or a loonie, or all three at the same time, you join one of the third parties. That's just the way things are under FPTP. The only real way this would ever change, is if the US adopted a radically different proportional representation electoral system (unlikely, given the extreme lack of momentum in US politics).
It's not just FPTP, I think the other thing that cuts down on US third parties (which you brushed on) is that we don't have a Westminster-like party system, where not voting with the party gets...
It's not just FPTP, I think the other thing that cuts down on US third parties (which you brushed on) is that we don't have a Westminster-like party system, where not voting with the party gets you kicked out of the party. Instead our main parties are (traditionally) big tents that act more as permanent coalitions of different wings with different voting patterns, so movements that might, in another system, have formed their own party (like the DSA), instead join up with the most closely aligned major party and influence it from within, leaving only the real dregs for third parties. In countries without big tent political parties, even with FPTP you get healthier and more viable third parties than ours; i.e. the Liberal Democrats or SNP in the UK, but it starts fucking with your elections in a big way.
The third parties are garbage partly because they’re non-viable. Anyone who is serious about political issues is going to figure out how to get involved in ways that make a concrete impact. People...
The third parties are garbage partly because they’re non-viable. Anyone who is serious about political issues is going to figure out how to get involved in ways that make a concrete impact. People who aren’t concerned about that stuff will gravitate towards these kinds of hacky grandstanding instead.
I'm waiting for the presence of an audience to become another point of contention. By October who knows where we'll be with the pandemic, but I guarantee Trump wants an audience to play to.
I'm waiting for the presence of an audience to become another point of contention. By October who knows where we'll be with the pandemic, but I guarantee Trump wants an audience to play to.
I hadn't even thought about that, but now that you mention it I feel that it almost guaranteed that Trump will throw a hissyfit about that too. I wonder if he'll use a possible lack of an audience...
I hadn't even thought about that, but now that you mention it I feel that it almost guaranteed that Trump will throw a hissyfit about that too. I wonder if he'll use a possible lack of an audience as "proof" that the CPD are in bed with "overreacting Democrats"?
I mean, to be fair, you could play Mad Libs with that and probably be accurate a way more reasonable fraction of the time than should be possible in a sane universe.
I mean, to be fair, you could play Mad Libs with that and probably be accurate a way more reasonable fraction of the time than should be possible in a sane universe.
Trump will use ____ as proof that ____ are part of the [MSM/antifa/Democrat/deepstate] conspiracy against him.
President Donald Trump’s reelection campaign has tapped former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani to spearhead a campaign to press for more debates this fall, starting earlier than usual and to have a say in choosing the moderators.
The changes sought by the Trump campaign amount to a major reversal. Trump last year threatened to boycott the debates; now he wants more one-on-one encounters with presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden, which advisers think will sow doubts about the former vice president’s stamina for the job.
I guess he thinks more of Biden can only be a bad thing. It's kind of sad. With both Biden and Trump we're slowly heading to a point at which the president is controlled by their party. Biden and...
I guess he thinks more of Biden can only be a bad thing.
It's kind of sad. With both Biden and Trump we're slowly heading to a point at which the president is controlled by their party. Biden and Trump are steps on the path. (Trump admittedly doing out of line idiot things) Term limits only work when the candidates are independent. Political parties can live forever.
Edit: I shouldn't have brought up the second paragraph. It wasn't related to the article in question. I just liked the 'Political parties live forever' quote that I needed to find a way to use it.
How is Trump an example of a President controlled by his party? Everything I've seen over his term is the Party twisting itself in knots to conform to his desires.
How is Trump an example of a President controlled by his party? Everything I've seen over his term is the Party twisting itself in knots to conform to his desires.
It's not as obvious from the headlines, but the Republican party is managing to push in a lot of low level legislature that they want. I'm not very familiar with it, but I've asked people I know...
It's not as obvious from the headlines, but the Republican party is managing to push in a lot of low level legislature that they want. I'm not very familiar with it, but I've asked people I know why they voted Trump, and they start listing small change after small change made. Democrats use katanas. Republicans are death by a thousand paper cuts. Of course, they wish Trump wasn't a loose cannon, but he apparently signs off on all the small legislature without a second thought.
I'm not sure what you mean by "small legislature?" Trump's only role for passing new laws would be to sign or veto legislation passed by both the Senate and House. Do you mean executive orders?...
I'm not sure what you mean by "small legislature?" Trump's only role for passing new laws would be to sign or veto legislation passed by both the Senate and House.
Do you mean executive orders? Judicial appointments?
Committee appointments. I'll admit he's out of control, but there's a reason the republicans were so nearly unanimous in defending him after the impeachment. They could have had Pence. Edit: I'm...
Committee appointments. I'll admit he's out of control, but there's a reason the republicans were so nearly unanimous in defending him after the impeachment. They could have had Pence.
Edit: I'm not an expert. This is just what I've got from knowledgeable republican friends. I feel like it's dangerous to underestimate the republican party, especially since they are winning a minority. It feels like they bumble their way to power.
I guess he means either: Trump basically just panders to Republican voters given conspiracy theorism, authoritarianism and social conservatism have been pretty standard Republican stuff for at...
I guess he means either:
Trump basically just panders to Republican voters given conspiracy theorism, authoritarianism and social conservatism have been pretty standard Republican stuff for at least a decade.
Trump has accomplished very few of his campaign promises in his presidency, which has mostly just been democratic backsliding and corruption.
Scatter brained though he may be, Biden has clearly demonstrated the discipline to know when to shut up. His entire primary campaign revolved around sitting back and letting his opponents stumble...
I guess he thinks more of Biden can only be a bad thing.
Scatter brained though he may be, Biden has clearly demonstrated the discipline to know when to shut up. His entire primary campaign revolved around sitting back and letting his opponents stumble over their own dicks. And most of them were much better politicians than Trump is.
I don't think further conversation here will get us anywhere. I am in a very red area, and I'm reporting what I heard. You apparently heard differently. I'd be willing to talk more, but it would...
I don't think further conversation here will get us anywhere. I am in a very red area, and I'm reporting what I heard. You apparently heard differently. I'd be willing to talk more, but it would be better if this were longer, through an IM or something. I've never successfully talked about politics online though. I like discussion, and I'd be willing to hear more of your opinions and perceptions if you're interested.
Now let the candidates from the Libertarian, Green and Constitution parties join the debates so that everyone can see some actual contenders beyond the 2 terrible options that are Biden and Trump.
Frankly, I don't see what the point of that would be. None of them has any chance of winning, both because the FPTP voting system makes that enormously unlikely, and because I don't think any of the American third parties are even interested in it. You don't build a viable political movement by making a moonshot presidential run every four years while holding approximately zero other elected offices and then fading back into the woodwork for the next four years when you don't win; the American third parties consist largely of useful idiots funded by one major party to spoil elections for the other. The only thing having them on stage would do is waste time and up the odds of having a president opposed by the majority eke out a win from the spoiler effect.
While I dislike the two party system as well, the way to get rid of it is not putting third parties in presidential debates, it's reforming our voting system to something like IRV to take the spoiler effect out of play.
Also, as a side note, the prominent American third parties don't even bring anything to the table that's not already represented in one of the main parties. The Libertarian and Constitution parties are literally just Republicans by another name, and the Green party are just progressive Democrats with higher odds of woo.
You don't gain any viability by never being part of the debate. Nobody knows who these people are or their position on anything even if they do align similarly with the other major parties. Some of these people even run under the Dem or Rep ticket for lower offices because that's what gets them elected, much like Sanders calling himself an Independent and running as a Democrat. The differences can still be quite huge, where a Libertarian might respond to fiscal issues like a Rep but respond to human rights like a Dem. Their presence at a debate might also change the stance of a Dem or Rep on a particular issue similar to Biden adopting a policy change that Bernie and Warren were running on.
It also paves the way for more people to notice the party, join it, run for office under it and expand their platform. You can't expect a movement to grow by being sidelined by the status quo forever and you aren't going to reform the voting system by continually voting the same 2 party tickets that don't want it to be reformed.
Sanders does not run as a Democrat for his Senate seat though. There's a precedent and a path for independents and third party candidates in lower level federal and state offices that these third parties could take, but they don't. If they want to become better known, they should focus on actually winning some offices in districts or states small enough for competent campaigning to have enough of an impact, rather than hoping for some trickle down effect from participating in a debate wherein they're functionally a sideshow. And furthermore, it's by pursuing these offices that third parties could actually start pushes for voting reform, as voting laws are almost entirely handled at the state and local level, and again, there's precedent for changing the voting system. Maine uses IRV for its congressional elections.
As another aside, I also think there's less air between the Libertarians and Republicans on human rights than that. Libertarians are all about freedom in the context of property rights; they couldn't care less about oppression as long as it's privatized oppression.
The viability of a third party is not a national concern. That’s their own problem. The point of debates is to help voters decide which realistic choice to make of the ones they have available. These things are too important just to let some grandstanding hack have their “Rudy” moment by getting on the field in the big leagues.
That's like having a scientist and a creationist debate global warming. 2016's Libertarian candidate got booed at his own party's debate for suggesting driver's licenses were maybe not a bad thing, 2016's Green party candidate suggested that wi-fi is harmful to children, and the Constitution party are theocrats.
I don't think we should be involved in Yemen either, but voting Green or Libertarian isn't going to fix that. I have moral qualms about voting for Biden, same as I did for HRC in 2016 and Obama in 2012. But the alternative is four more years of Donald Trump, which means the Supreme Court is conservative for another generation, LGBT rights will be further eroded, the gap between the haves and the have-nots will continue to grow in the form of tax breaks and defunding of public services, and white supremacists have support from the highest office in the land, among other things.
If you want third parties to be viable, those parties need to focus on lower-level positions which require fewer resources to be won and our national electoral system needs to be reformed. As long as you can only vote for one person for president and an elector in the Electoral College can only vote for one person, there will never be more than two viable parties long term. If one side split into two, they would lose every election to the other side that's still united. If there were two liberal parties and two conservative parties, whichever side had both parties lose would see one of those parties gain people from the other until they won again and then you're back in the three-party situation again, which goes back to two parties. It's better to get 60% of what you want and have a 50% chance of winning than get 95% of what you want and have a 0% chance of winning.
You want a parliamentary democracy in which a Prime Minister runs the executive branch and preferably either get rid of single-representative districts entirely or do a mixed-proportional system, because otherwise you still run into the spoiler effect like we saw in the last UK election: the Tories got less than 40% of the vote but a solid majority in Parliament because votes opposing them were often split between Labour, the Lib Dems, and the SNP.
In all three of Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania, Jill Stein got more votes than the margin between HRC and Trump. If those people who voted for Stein had voted for HRC instead, she would have won those three states and the election. We wouldn't have a regime that lies about things as meaningless as the crowd size at an inauguration, that has an attorney general that covers up its blatant crimes, that is almost entirely unaccountable due to unconditional backing from the Senate. I guarantee you there would be significantly less than 120,000 people dead from coronavirus right now if Hillary Clinton was president. She wouldn't be talking about a third term or making friends with Xi, Putin, Duterte, and Kim, or encouraging violence against her political opponents.
The moral of this story is that there will ever only be two viable candidates for president unless our electoral system is changed and you have an obligation to vote for the least bad one. You voting for a third party candidate gives a boost to the viable candidate that you like the least since you could have voted for their viable opponent, and you don't get to complain about what the winning candidate does when they're president because you threw your vote away. If Trump wins in the fall and you voted third party even though you don't like him, that's on you as much as much as it is on people who voted for him. When my rights and the rights of women and people of color are inevitably taken away further, when some report comes out about how the regime has stolen a bunch of that $500 billion of stimulus money that's unaccounted for, when we learn just how much the regime's 4 or 8 or more years of not just inaction but going backwards on fighting climate change has cost us, I hope you realize you make more of a difference by voting for the lesser of two evils than by voting for someone who's better (but still very flawed given recent third-party candidates) and giving that person one percent of the vote.
If Biden wins, I'm not gonna pretend everything is suddenly better. I want Democrats to have control of the House and Senate and progressive judges in the courts. I want Democrats in control of every governorship and state legislature and mayor's office, and I'm going to hold them accountable. I'm going to push for universal healthcare, zero emissions by 2035, a system of policing and community safety that doesn't result in unaccountable violent officers murdering us, for workers to have equity in the companies they work for, better access to all levels of education for everyone, and everything else that I think would make a better country. I and a lot of people who plan on voting for Biden are never going to tell you that he hasn't done or will not do anything that's morally reprehensible.
And for @viridian: Don't accuse me of blindly voting Democrat. I know what I'm about. I'm not a libertarian, I never will be, and I would clown on the Democrats' candidate if they didn't know what Aleppo was either. Foreign policy is a huge part of being president and if you don't know something as basic as Aleppo is a city in Syria, which is where one of the big conflicts right now is going on, then you're going to be completely out of your element. For all their faults, HRC and now Biden both have a handle on foreign policy in a way that neither Johnson nor Stein do.
Saying wi-fi hurts children is more than acting weird, it's harmful almost on the same level as being against vaccinations. In addition, I don't think she was ever a good faith candidate. I saw her take potshots at HRC but none at Trump, and I don't want anyone who's friendly with Vladimir Putin to be president. I'm a socialist, but even if the Green party was viable I would have voted for HRC over Stein in 2016.
I'm not accusing anyone of blindly voting for X major party, the claim is that folks bend over backwards to dismiss minor parties over issues far more trivial than the worst baggage either party is sitting on; even more trivial than the worst baggage the minor party itself is sitting on. It strikes me as a way to sweep inconvenient alternative parties under the rug without engaging them on a policy level, in pursuit of narrowing a window of discussion. Use of these memes (in the selfish gene sense) are a rhetorical tactic that has the effect, intended or otherwise, of lowering the level of discourse by reducing the target to an easily dismiss-able sound byte.
People, parties, organizations, and ideas can not be accurately represented by the single smallest, easiest to swallow sliver that makes up the whole. You can't reasonably sum up the democratic party as "If you have a problem figuring out whether you're for me or Trump, then you ain't black", or GOP as "very fine people on both sides", so why should we essentialize minor parties down to their worst gaffes?
A major party candidate has more leeway because the alternative is usually worse. It's not fair, but it's the way things are until we change our electoral system (which I'm in favor of). Biden is prone to saying dumb shit, but I'm not sure any of it is as harmful or dumb as believing that wi-fi is harmful.
Also, I think a decent amount of the anti-capitalists on Tildes are still voting for Biden, so at least here we're not limiting the range of conversation. I won't speak for anywhere else though.
Dismissing minor parties is probably the smartest thing to do in a "First Past The Post" plurality voting system. Minor parties will always spoil your second favorite candidate; that's how the mathematics of voting works out.
This isn't just a "meme" but a cold hard reality of how our voting system works. Indeed our system does create an inbred duopoly of two bad choices. But if you want to change that, you need to change the voting system.
Therefore it's in mine and society's best interest to criticize and de-legitimize third parties. The appropriate way for extremist candidates to compete is to compete within the Democratic and Republican primary system. That for example is exactly what people like Ron Paul, Bernie Sanders, Alexandria Occasio Cortez, etc etc have successfully done. These Libertarians and Socialists have obtained substantially more power within the primary system than the Green or Libertarian candidate ever has. That for example is exactly what the typical strategy the Democratic Socialists of America do to get their people elected into office - challenging Democrats in the Democratic primaries.
It's in my strategic interest therefore to make fun of third parties, to emphasize their gaffs, and to ensure that you don't vote third party, and convert you to a straight-party Democrat or Republican. The appropriate avenue for you to challenge the party is with primary challenges.
Indeed our system has idiotic foibles. One important component of plurality elections is that these elections are extremely manipulable to political strategy. For example, the typical layman might not understand viable voting strategies and indeed may waste their vote. If you don't like the way things are, what you need to advocate for is fundamental electoral reform into:
But until the necessary reforms are put into place, a vote for a third party will always spoil your second favorite, causing your most hated option to win. That's how the math will work out. Plurality systems do not work correctly when voters do not behave strategically but rather vote for their "honest favorite". Indeed you can observe this phenomenon in plurality and alternative voting system simulations: http://electionscience.github.io/vse-sim/VSE/
I personally don't consider the Libertarians to be much better than the Republicans, if at all. However much better they are on keeping us out of places we shouldn't be, they're still worse than the Democrats on things like the climate and foreign policy; I went to look at their platform and they don't say much on foreign policy besides stopping military interventions and foreign aid. I think the best foreign policy is to use soft power and be open to working with other countries as equals, but the Libertarians don't strike me as the people to want to do that.
I don't really disagree with your second paragraph; I absolutely think there's more to making the country a better place than voting every four years. I said as much in the comment you replied to. I do think people and the media sometimes pay too much attention to what Trump tweets, although sometimes it's merited. I know there are people who don't care about Yemen, although I see people bring up Obama's drone and surveillance policies as negatives on r/politics, r/news, etc. fairly regularly.
I'm not being hypocritical by calling third-party candidates whackos because I criticize Biden and Trump plenty. I've been pretty vocal about what I stand for on Tildes I think. And the only reason Libertarians don't have as much blood on their hands as Republicans and Democrats is because they've never had power. Their domestic policies are just as bad as Republicans' and while they're more isolationist than the major parties, their refusal to work with other countries on actually good things would count against them too. I actually think most of the Greens' policies are good, but no Democratic candidate for president has said something as dumb as wi-fi being harmful to kids. It's not much of a leap from that to the 5G causing covid craziness going on.
I've noticed that a lot of people seem to look for any reason they can find to dismiss any candidate outside of team red or team blue, but I really don't get the logic behind it. People would never outright say that a party's position on GMOs or something like the Aleppo faux pas is more important than whether or not we kill tens of thousands of people a year in foreign wars, but in reality most people seem to be able to compartmentalize well enough to justify voting for war hawks while making fun of and outright rejecting the third parties for far less dire concerns.
You're not kidding. Spoiler effect aside, maybe I'd also be more amenable to having third parties on the debate stage if our third parties weren't all hot garbage.
As long as FPTP exists, there will be no sane or viable third parties. If you're a pragmatic politician whose views don't neatly align with one of the two major parties, it still makes sense to join them, if you want a shot at winning elections. That way, you can enact your desired policy changes from within the proverbial "belly of the beast". You see this happen a lot with politicians that represent a constituency that is markedly different from the national norms in terms of demographics and/or political motivations. A very liberal college town might elect an ultraprogressive running as a Democrat, but who might as well have been a member of the Green Party. Similarly, a constituency somewhere in the snake-handling boondocks might elect a Republican who is basically a batshit insane Constitution Partyesque paleocon in disguise.
If you're not a pragmatic politician, or someone who Wants To Make A Point, or a loonie, or all three at the same time, you join one of the third parties. That's just the way things are under FPTP. The only real way this would ever change, is if the US adopted a radically different proportional representation electoral system (unlikely, given the extreme lack of momentum in US politics).
It's not just FPTP, I think the other thing that cuts down on US third parties (which you brushed on) is that we don't have a Westminster-like party system, where not voting with the party gets you kicked out of the party. Instead our main parties are (traditionally) big tents that act more as permanent coalitions of different wings with different voting patterns, so movements that might, in another system, have formed their own party (like the DSA), instead join up with the most closely aligned major party and influence it from within, leaving only the real dregs for third parties. In countries without big tent political parties, even with FPTP you get healthier and more viable third parties than ours; i.e. the Liberal Democrats or SNP in the UK, but it starts fucking with your elections in a big way.
The third parties are garbage partly because they’re non-viable. Anyone who is serious about political issues is going to figure out how to get involved in ways that make a concrete impact. People who aren’t concerned about that stuff will gravitate towards these kinds of hacky grandstanding instead.
I'm waiting for the presence of an audience to become another point of contention. By October who knows where we'll be with the pandemic, but I guarantee Trump wants an audience to play to.
I hadn't even thought about that, but now that you mention it I feel that it almost guaranteed that Trump will throw a hissyfit about that too. I wonder if he'll use a possible lack of an audience as "proof" that the CPD are in bed with "overreacting Democrats"?
I mean, to be fair, you could play Mad Libs with that and probably be accurate a way more reasonable fraction of the time than should be possible in a sane universe.
I guess he thinks more of Biden can only be a bad thing.
It's kind of sad. With both Biden and Trump we're slowly heading to a point at which the president is controlled by their party. Biden and Trump are steps on the path. (Trump admittedly doing out of line idiot things) Term limits only work when the candidates are independent. Political parties can live forever.
Edit: I shouldn't have brought up the second paragraph. It wasn't related to the article in question. I just liked the 'Political parties live forever' quote that I needed to find a way to use it.
How is Trump an example of a President controlled by his party? Everything I've seen over his term is the Party twisting itself in knots to conform to his desires.
It's not as obvious from the headlines, but the Republican party is managing to push in a lot of low level legislature that they want. I'm not very familiar with it, but I've asked people I know why they voted Trump, and they start listing small change after small change made. Democrats use katanas. Republicans are death by a thousand paper cuts. Of course, they wish Trump wasn't a loose cannon, but he apparently signs off on all the small legislature without a second thought.
I'm not sure what you mean by "small legislature?" Trump's only role for passing new laws would be to sign or veto legislation passed by both the Senate and House.
Do you mean executive orders? Judicial appointments?
Committee appointments. I'll admit he's out of control, but there's a reason the republicans were so nearly unanimous in defending him after the impeachment. They could have had Pence.
Edit: I'm not an expert. This is just what I've got from knowledgeable republican friends. I feel like it's dangerous to underestimate the republican party, especially since they are winning a minority. It feels like they bumble their way to power.
I guess he means either:
Trump basically just panders to Republican voters given conspiracy theorism, authoritarianism and social conservatism have been pretty standard Republican stuff for at least a decade.
Trump has accomplished very few of his campaign promises in his presidency, which has mostly just been democratic backsliding and corruption.
Scatter brained though he may be, Biden has clearly demonstrated the discipline to know when to shut up. His entire primary campaign revolved around sitting back and letting his opponents stumble over their own dicks. And most of them were much better politicians than Trump is.
Hillary was supposed to be a guaranteed win too...
No she wasn’t. And nobody said she was. The media wrung their hands endlessly about her liabilities and she routinely polled below “generic Democrat.”
I don't think further conversation here will get us anywhere. I am in a very red area, and I'm reporting what I heard. You apparently heard differently. I'd be willing to talk more, but it would be better if this were longer, through an IM or something. I've never successfully talked about politics online though. I like discussion, and I'd be willing to hear more of your opinions and perceptions if you're interested.