Welcome to the discussion of US Politics!
Rules:
Links must be to the original source, not an aggregator like Google Amp, MSN, or Yahoo.
Example:
We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.
All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.
That's all the rules!
Civic Links
• Congressional Awards Program
• Library of Congress Legislative Resources
• U.S. House of Representatives
Partnered Communities:
• News
This is why Bernie always runs in Dem primaries.
It's impossible for a 3rd party candidate to win. They'll just split the vote.
We need to fix our electoral system, but the two main parties aren't going to just give up the power they've accumulated.
So progressives need to take control of the Dem party before there's even a chance of fixing it.
My best case scenario for the parties (assuming we keep the two party system and don't get something like Ranked Choice or Approval Voting in place) is that the Republican party vanishes. Then, the Democrats can split into Progressives and Centrists.
Progressives and Liberals. Centrists are just conservatives.
By "do so well," they mean 19% of the vote.
That is the best a third party candidate has done in over a century.
So good luck, everyone who thinks your third party vote will make a shred of difference to anything.
Just continue voting for the two parties guys!! They'll change their ways, I promise. Any day they will pass laws making third parties more viable, trust me bro. Just keep voting for them
At the local level third party candidates are viable and that is where you will be able to create voting system change, which is what is needed to make third parties on a national scale viable. On the federal level the only thing voting for a third party does is takes votes away from the lesser of two evils.
Not necessarily. Any party that receives 5% of the national popular vote gains access to government funding to the tune of like $100M+. Dems and Repubs don't use it as there are some caveats to how you manage your campaign finances of you use it and it's a drop in the bucket compared to what they normally use. Depending on where you live, this could be a much easier to stomach option than the two evils. Consider states like California or Wyoming. A Republican isn't winning president in California nor a Democrat in Wyoming. So Republicans in California could vote third party and Dems in Wyoming could do the same. If they get that 5% threshold, they get new funding.
I can't find this 5% requirement. According to the FEC, the Electorial college, Ballotopedia, and Yale you need a minimum of 5000 dollars raised in at least 20 states to register a party who can access the public funding of 20mil + COLA, roughly 84 mil in 2020.
That was for primary elections. Further down the page is general elections. The grant was worth about $103.7M in 2020.
Hey thank you. I have been reading up on all of this stuff surrounding making, promoting, and running a party.
neither Democrats nor Republicans own the votes: voters own their votes, and any candidate must earn it. voting for a so-called third party doesn't take votes away from anyone: it adds votes to the candidate the voter wants to win
Trump thanks you for getting out of the way.
i'm voting against him.
But not really tho.
Cornel west is running against him.
Yep, I agree with you 100%.
But voting is also a rational choice you're making. If you throw your vote to a third party and then your second choice candidate loses to your bottom choice candidate, you done fucked up bad.
Voters need to be strategic and rational. In a closely-contested election between an actual fascist and a kind of milquetoast but surprisingly effective progressive, for example, voting for the third party would be a lot like consenting to fascism.
A third party vote can be a very effective way to send a message. But the third party candidates are also frequently weapons and tools used by a power-hungry minority to divide the opinions and values of the majority in order to unfairly win an election.
Most of the people who really advocate hard for voting third party seem to have just completely forgotten that primaries exist.
Cornel West isn't running in a democrat primary
you're framing the options as though Biden or Trump would be my second or bottom choice. I would not choose them.
I mean, if you don't think someone like Trump beating someone like Biden is a worse outcome than the alternative, than it truly doesn't matter what you do with your vote I suppose. I think I'm just as happy with folks who think that way wasting their votes or not voting at all.
I maintain that throwing away a vote in a contested election like this is consenting to fascism though. You can justify it any way you want, but I'll see you that way.
if you don’t think someone like Trump beating someone like Biden is a worse outcome than the alternative,
i didn't say that. i said i wouldn't choose either of them. and i have an alternative: voting for someone i do want to win.
I maintain that throwing away a vote in a contested election like this is consenting to fascism though.
i maintain voting for joe biden is ENDORSING genocide, not merely consenting to it.
A vote is not an endorsement. It's capital. It can be spent to try and affect some outcome. There's no saving it for later, though.
You spend it knowing it will change nothing and possibly result in a slightly worse outcome for everyone. That's selfish and pathetic. As usual, leftists so far up their own assholes they refuse to allow progress to happen because they value their purity tests more highly than saving the world.
Bet you didn't vote in the primary either.
I'm against genocide. That's not a purity test.
you didn't vote in the primary either.
this is purely a personal attack. it's speculative. it has nothing to do with whether I'm right.
4 replies to the same comment. This is unhinged-behavior.
this is a personal attack. what I say is true regardless of whether your characterization is favorable.
you're buying genocide
I'm against genocide. That's not a purity test.
Democrats ignore primary voters
Democrats ignore general election voters too, once they get power it's back to the status quo and all the populous rhetoric they spoke while campaigning gets filed away until next election
I thought that went without saying.
Ballot access has a big impact on local and state elections. If you're not in a contested state there's good reason to vote third party.
Get hold of your green/libertarian party and run for state house some time. File the paperwork that says you're not going to spend on your campaign and enjoy a little bit of fun. Definitely don't forget to file that paperwork or they try to make you testify in the capitol and then issue a warrant then give up, fine you, and steal your state returns for a few years. Not that I have personal experience.
I believe more people have negative views on billionaires now.
Ross Perot is the reason I started voting.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
He also opposed the bipartisan establishment’s position on trade (saying if NAFTA were approved, it would lead to a “giant sucking sound” of American jobs going to Mexico) and foreign policy (arguing that the Gulf War was in part the US’s fault).
He made gaffes on hot-button social issues, saying he wouldn’t appoint any gay Cabinet officials (before reversing himself), and referring to Black Americans as “you people” at an NAACP meeting.
But he was a populist billionaire businessman who didn’t talk like a traditional politician, acted erratically, was condemned as a potential authoritarian threat, ran on a “drain the swamp” campaign, and questioned the bipartisan consensus on trade and foreign policy.
During the George W. Bush administration, there was much finger-pointing from liberals at people who voted for Ralph Nader rather than Al Gore in 2000, and this experience likely suppressed third-party energy on the left for some time.
Like Perot, Kennedy is making a populist pitch to voters disenchanted with both parties, he has a rhetorical mode that’s very different from the typical politician, and he has a penchant for conspiracy theories.
Many have speculated that these numbers are inflated by respondents who don’t know much about him but do like the last name — and that, as the stakes of a Trump-Biden general election and Kennedy’s own kookiness become clearer, voters will line up behind one of the major-party contenders accordingly.
The original article contains 2,189 words, the summary contains 234 words. Saved 89%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!