Reckless

3rd party voters didn't swing a single swing state. That is a demonstrable fact. It's time to stop punching down.
- People will, in a single breath, tell people to exercise their right to vote in democracy and also that voting for the person/party that best represents them is wrong if it's not a Big Party.
  
  The issue in the US is that it IS against your political interests to vote for anyone but the least bad option.
  The first past the post system simply doesn't allow for a diverse political landscape.
  
  Usually in a democracy the people are represented by parties which they align most with. In my country I can vote for one of seven, which get proportionally represented by a number of seats in parliament. The winning party rarely has more than 50% of the vote, if they do, all the losing parties will become the opposition, and if they don't they have to combine with another party to have at least 50% of the votes. This assures that the winning party or coalition still has to negotiate their position and decisions every single day. If one party would want the power the current administration in the US has they would probably need 80 or 90% of the votes.
  Is it complicated? Yes. Does it make sure the people are represented? Also yes.
  In the US if a state votes 51% one way, 100% of the electoral votes go to that party, causing a reality where a party could get less than a majority vote and still win. This alone is proof that the people are not fairly represented and isn't a fair democracy. In local elections you'll have a much more nuanced choice but at a federal level it's antiquated to say the least.
  I will say that in a fair democracy, you should vote for your representative, in the US you have no such choice. Be it by living in one state counts as more than another, or the fact that a third party has little to no representation post election.
  
  Yeah, that's right. You have the freedom to make bad choices and the government can't stop you. But other people can still make fun of you. People calling you dumb because of your bad decisions isn't a violation of your rights.
- The liberal deer will never be mature enough for that reality.
- In 2000 they 100% did and we're still paying for that shit.
  
  Not true, Gore won Florida in 2000 but it was stolen by the supreme Court in favor of Bush https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brooks_Brothers_riot
  
  The problem isn't that people voted for Jill Stein. The problem is not enough people voted for Jill Stein.
  The left is so broken in this country that we can't even get a candidate to 5%! And yet, we're supposed to stop Trump?
  
  That was my first presidential election. Naive year 2000 me thought "Oh wow this is a huge obvious problem, and Australia already fixed it! It'll be a part of the Democratic platform by 2004."
  To this day, I vote for any Democrat who supports ranked choice voting (or any clone-independent voting system).
- Rofl, victim complex much? "Punching down" like you're some repressed minority for having shitty prioritization skills. Jfc
  
  Third party voters are in fact a repressed minority
  They are the minority
  And their beliefs are repressed with constant anti-third party voting sentiments
  
  How long will y'all keep posting these counter-factual loser memes?
  
  Dont you know?
  The people who say they dont want to support genocide but actively choose the worst of the genocide-related options are the real victims here.

Its so hilarious how this ridiculously toxic culture around blaming third party was developed, worked on for months, and then when it came time, the impact of third parties was so utterly irrelevant as to be laughable.
- There's gotta be some way to blame the left for Trump winning. Look harder!
- doesn't that mean it worked?
  
  No, it was just part of a broader culture of infantalism demonstrated by Democratic apologists. There was no there there. Just people desperate for something to blame for their incompetence.
- The real beef was with stay home single EDIT issue folks who would otherwise be Dem voters.
  Edit for clarity: the above group are historical, nominally Dem voters, who stayed home abnormally this election.
  3rd party "voices" were annoying because they only punched at Dems, never at republicans. Interestingly, a few of them migrated to libertarian and conservative instances now
  
  Don't blame the people staying home. Blame the Democrats for doing nothing to earn those votes but say "Orange Man Bad". They did the exact same thing in 2016. Democrats ran on maintaining the status quo at a time when no one is happy with the status quo.
  The Harris campaign should have campaigned on issues that would attract progressives and others on the left. Instead they tried to get conservatives to leave their cult by touting the endorsement of Dick fucking Cheney and his incredibly unpopular daughter and saying they'll close the borders and continue funding Netanyahu's genocide. It's like Harris didn't want to win.
  If Democrats want to win they need to stop being Republicans.
  
  This is all just the same toxic projection that I've been pointing out in this thread.
  You want to blame third parties but there is basically 0, practically negative evidence for it.
  
  None of us would "otherwise be dem voters". What part of "I'm not voting for you because I don't support your policies" did you not understand?
  
  Turnout in 2024 was about the same as 2020. It wasn't Democrats staying home. Trump simply swayed more voters.

Well election is over, the time to start building up a third party is NOW
- No. The time is to push the Democrats further right to gain Republican voters. Stop trying to get third parties to happen.
  
  I almost thought this wasn't sarcastic, close one
- Didn't Trump basically promise "no more elections if I win"?
  Oh yeah, he did. A few times, even.
  https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/jul/30/donald-trump-wont-have-to-vote-anymore-fox-interview
  
  People letting him do it is what's gonna make it come true.
  
  Then stop complaining about third parties forevermore. If you honestly believed that was our last election, then focus on direct action.
  
  Oh, yeah, you're right. Let's give up, then.

Oh I'm sure the comments on this post will be nice and calm

The last panel should be the deer bumming around on the couch instead of voting, with some kind of line like "the trees just don't excite me'.

I'll never understand why people refuse to blame the powerful rich people running the Democrats for not drawing people in with good leftist policy.
- First mistake is believing Democrats are leftist. They're also right of moderate, but not quite as right as Republicans. Libertarians are also not really on the spectrum as we know it either. We have no liberal parties that are capable of making a difference.
  
  "Libertarians" are absolutely on a simple right/left scale, and it's the right.
- Because they're not here arguing with us.
- Because leftist policy doesn't bring anyone to the polls other than the right. Only 30% of eligible voters bothered to show up to polls and vote for a black/Indian woman over a Hitler wannabe. That means that a full 70% of eligible voters said they were fine with, or were actively choosing, a child raping felon, who outright said he wanted to execute anyone who ever opposed him and praised Hitler's generals.
  You can god damn well bet that the people running the Democratic party learned a lesson, and that lesson is that so called liberals will always come up with an excuse not to vote no matter how dire the situation, but conservatives will show up even for made up shit that has been repeatedly proven to be wrong.
  And if you thought the Dems were conservative before... well just wait and see how much farther right they are going to go now chasing the only votes that bother to show up to vote.

I don't understand why the USA doesn't use preferential voting like Australia does: https://www.chickennation.com/voting/
Instead of just picking one candidate/party, you number them based on your preferences. First all the #1 votes are counted. If no party gets the majority (over 50%) of votes, the party with the least number of votes is removed, and for everyone that voted for them, their #2 votes are used. Repeat until someone wins.
Independents (what you call "third-party" in the USA) can win, and any party that gets over 4% of the #1 votes gets election funding from the government (a fixed amount per vote).
- Because both of the major parties benefit from excluding the competition.
  It's kind of like, if your car won't start, you need to take it to a mechanic, but because it won't start, you can't drive it to the mechanic. We need to change how our elections work because FPTP prevents us from implementing the policies we want, but it's precisely because it prevents us from implementing the policies we want that we're unable to change it. It's a catch-22.
- We're too corrupt to allow the competition :)
- There's a movement for that, but it's been moving very slow.
- No party should ever have over 50% of power. Hell, no party should have more than 30%. Different parties should work together always to ensure one single party can never project it's power over those that don't want it
- IRV, or RCV as it's being sold here, has a lot of problems.
  It's the only voting system in existence where ranking someone higher on the ballot can cause them to lose the election.
  Australia gets around most of the problems of IRV by just not telling people any information about the vote except the winners.
  Also you only use straight IRV for a single part of your government.
  The US would use it for every part of our government. It would be a shit show.
  Which is why RCV has been banned in half a dozen states.
  Now, there are better voting systems. Systems that live up to the hype.
  STAR is the single best voting system designed to date.
  As a cardinal voting system, it's actually immune to the Spoiler Effect.
  
  It's the only voting system in existence where ranking someone higher on the ballot can cause them to lose the election.
  Interesting... Do you have an example of this?

What if the deer lives in one of the 43 states that do not matter?
- Supposedly if every single liberal-leaning person were to vote Democrat, they (edit: some of them) would have become swing states.
  But I think it's more that people just want an easy target to punch, which makes people feel more in control. Like, it's not our glorious leader(TM)'s fault, it's "those" people, over there. And the number of Internet searches for what happened to Joe Biden on the very morning of the election should legit be worrisome to us all imho...
  Ngl, I was kinda impressed by storing told about Kamala's campaigning and dedication. (Or was that simply part of the spin machine?) Maybe she could - no, surely she could have done better? But she also gave it as much as "the establishment" would allow, and came up short.
  So now we can either roll up our sleeves and try to fix things... oh who is anyone kidding we'll just take whatever handouts we are given, as always.

Is this why coffee is often served as molten lava? Because all yall blow on your coffee before every sip? I despise all of you. I just want to drink coffee like any other drink
- This is one of my favorite things about using an Aeropress. I use half the water to brew the concentrate, which will be just off boil, but then the water I use to dilute to final strength can be any temp I want, so it is immediately drinkable. There are many other advantages, especially if you like to experiment, but this one to me is huge.

So the implication of this meme is to starting shooting minorities, so they get back in line with voting for the party.
If that is the kind of "jokes" the "progressive" center makes, it is no wonder, that the fascists win the election. Seems like it does not matter, whether there is a D or an R next to the presidents name. The US will build concentration camps either way.