What will it take for staunch Democrats to vote third party?
What will it take for staunch Democrats to vote third party?
With the dust is settling from their defeat on Tuesday, it's becoming clearer that there was some incredible malpractice going on in the Democratic party. As shown in the tweet I linked, Biden delayed dropping out even though his team knew it was going to be a complete blowout for Trump. Then, we have Harris's campaign spending over a billion dollars and still losing all of the swing states she needed to win.
For all the Democrats who would never vote Republican and would have never voted third party, are you now considering voting third party in future elections? If not, what would it take?
Electoralism will never be the answer, and never has been, for getting what is necessary.
I tend to agree, but the people I'm asking aren't ready to consider anything but electoralism.
That doesn't change much, all that means is that it's important to show why Electoralism is not the answer.
- the staunch never change.
- the staunch is the minority. Bigger returns can be had with the non staunch
- gotta get first past the post replaced with ranked choice. The problem is convincing those in power to take that chance.
I could see maybe getting it implemented outside the federal level, but in all honesty the slow change in culture that would develop from a new voting method wouldn't be nearly enough to make the gigantic changes required, even if we are talking about keeping America capitalist.
If there were larger organizing efforts, much like that required to get ranked choice implemented, which had ranked choice as one of the demands, then yeah I could see big changes happen.
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I plan to vote third party after voting Democrat for "harm reduction" my whole life and never reducing much harm. After this, I hope enough people vote third party for it to start the snowball rolling.
If not, what would it take?
A change in the US election system to something like STAR, Approval, or RCV.
Without that, I can go ahead and predict the next US presidential election right now. It'll be the Dem or Rep nominee. Quote me on it.
Disclaimer: I am a registered Democrat, but do not consider myself one. Where I live the Democratic primaries are the election. I've never had the opportunity to cast a nonprimary vote for a candidate that represents me.
For me to vote for a 3rd party candidate for the presidency would require that there be a leftist third party willing to build power from the ground up. Local->County->State->Federal until that happens there really isn't a point.
Sanders understood this, that's why he ran through the Dem's primary system.
That's why Jill Stein isn't a serious 3rd party candidate: there is no party.
The Green party is less relevant power wise than the first time she ran. It's a vanity candidacy. Organizing is not glamorous work. It's hard. It's slow. It's frustrating. Stein hasn't shown any interest in doing that work.
In recent history, Ross Peort and the Reform party probably did the most in this direction, but he had billions of dollars to pay other to do the hard work for him.
We tend to over-mythologize voting in this country. It's a tool. It's not sacred. You use it to try to build the best future you can with the parts you have to work with.
I am personally not a fan of the Green Party, but as a point of fact they are more than just Jill Stein. My ballot had Green Party candidates running in three races.
Yeah, of course I know it's not just one person. But 174, and maybe more, is not much in a country of 346 million+ people. Hell, that's not even half of the number of reps in the US house. They hold no federal offices. They hold no state offices.
They may be the 4th largest US political party by registration, but the DSA has a fraction of that registration and I see them doing so work on the ground than I have ever seen from the Green party.
I would love to be able to vote for a viable leftist 3rd party presidential candidate. Viable. We're not there.
I’m not defending the party establishment—I think they’ve been a malignant force on both policy and campaign strategy since at least the Clinton era—but I think this year’s failings are more on Biden and Harris as individuals. (Biden wasn’t doing the party any favors by hanging on as long as he did, and the Harris’s campaign’s weaknesses were consistent with her whole career since first running for local office.)
Okay, but the party permitted Biden to campaign for reelection and then decided to run Kamala without a real primary.