Never Trump. Never Biden. The Progressive Case for Voting Third Party or Boycotting the Election

[Ikari]

Are you planning to vote for Jorgensen?

Yes..

 

[Noodlegawd]

As the two main parties drift further toward the extremes, and the exiting third parties are even more extreme, it's a bit surprising that a highly attractive independent candidate, or a centrist third party has not cropped up to fill the gaping chasm. I could see a party with the following general platform, doing well:

Pro 2nd Amendment, but with registration-free UBCs and strong efforts to prosecute serious gun violators.
Pro Choice, but with no federal funding for abortions and late term issues being left to states, consistent with Roe and its progeny.
Right-sizing the military (maintain strength, but do we need to spend as much as the next 10 countries combined?)
Reducing foreign military intervention, with a goal toward ending it entirely except in the case of direct threats to our allies.
Lower federal taxes and less federal government intrusion into what are essentially state/local issues (e.g. healthcare, education).
Pro environment, with realistic solutions (e.g. next gen nuclear) for ending long term dependence on fossil fuel for most applications.
Strict but fair and compassionate immigration policy.
End the war on drugs, using the money saved to focus on fighting violent crime and better training and compensating our law enforcement (and then holding them to a higher standard).
Free international trade, while holding our trading partners to the same or similar standards we hold ourselves when it comes to environmental regulation and workers' rights.

 

[Jay59]

No 3P candidate will ever be anything unless and until Americans put in the generational legwork to stand up a third party up and down ticket with sufficient backing. That's why Green parties all over EU managed to get anywhere. Here, you 3P types just think you can start at the White House. Sorry, it's never worked that way anywhere.

The two party system is an unintended by product of our winner-takes-all election system.

We will never have a successful third party unless both major parties are badly fragmented. That has happened exactly once--1860. Democrats were divided slave vs free. Whigs were dying as a party. The third party won the election.

 

[Drawdown]

Is the Green candidate on all the ballots? The LP candidate is, so if you have to vote 3rd Party, vote Jo Jorgensen.

Not on all of them, but on many of them (23) ( See Ballot Access - www.gp.org ) . They have some ballot access lawsuits going on to try to get on some more arguing covid prevented them from collecting enough signatures in those states and have pending application in six states.

 

[Drawdown]

Yes, it will be your fault if you vote third party and Trump wins. There is no disagreement on this. You can pretend to hold the high ground, but this is a two candidate race for the win. Any dilution is simply dilution.

Sounds like the democrats are explaining their loss in advance. Good luck. I wouldn't vote before I would vote for Joe the Rapist.

 

[Drawdown]

They also have zero chance of winning any major offices.

Sounds like a win-win for me then.

 

[Questerr]

Sounds like a win-win for me then.

How is that a win?

 

[Drawdown]

How is that a win?

I get to help them continue to remain on the ballot in the future and I am not contributing to the disaster either of these two sex-offender candidates create in the next 4 years.

 

[Questerr]

I get to help them continue to remain on the ballot in the future and I am not contributing to the disaster either of these two sex-offender candidates create in the next 4 years.

What's the point in remaining on the ballot and never winning?

 

[PoS]

That of course, is an unfounded opinion. Try harder.

tu quoque fallacy. Everyone knows its true. You can deny it all you want, but the Dems screwed up by picking the worst candidate they could field, as usual.

I hope that libertarians take at least small comfort in the fact that a lot of other libertarians like Penn Jillette made up their minds in that direction a while ago. I guess Jillette does not feel pangs of conscience voting for a Democrat, or if he is, they must seem small compared to his apprehension over what Trump may do next term if he wins.

Well if he's going to vote dem then thats up to him, but I dont believe in putting aside one's own core set of codes, especially when the choices of two evils are equally bad. I dont respect anyone who makes exceptions. You vote for the candidate who represents your values and if they lose thats okay, you dont vote for some absurd notion of lesser of two evils and ****- that never works out in the long run.

 

[Drawdown]

What's the point in remaining on the ballot and never winning?

What is he point of calling yourself a Libertarian and supporting one of these two candidates? I don't expect to win. Winning is not the end all and be all of politics.

 

[Questerr]

What is he point of calling yourself a Libertarian and supporting one of these two candidates? I don't expect to win. Winning is not the end all and be all of politics.

I don't support either candidate. They are both garbage. But one of the two of them will win. Period. Do not pass go, do not collect $200. Either Trump or Biden will win, no third party candidate even has a 1% chance. Therefore, I am voting against Trump by voting for the only other viable candidate.

It's nice that you have the privilege to not be affected by a Trump second term, but enough of my friends will be directly affected by a continuation of his policies, I cannot throw my vote in the garbage based on principle.

 

[Mr Person]

I smell you and Mr. Person as not reading the article.

Gee, what gave away our contempt for the thread? Was it that we showed contempt for the thread?


No, I'm not going to bother wasting my time reading an article presented by a Trumpist telling me that other people on the left supposedly want me to not vote for Biden, thereby helping Trump in this largely binary political system.

 

[chuckiechan]

Nice try attempting to peel off progressive votes for Biden and have those voters throw their votes away on someone who can't win.

Note: The person from whom I copied this attributes it to Sean Freeder, a PhD in Political Science at UC Berkeley. I have no independent verification of this attribution. His other writing is on the blog site Medium, if you want to compare style.
BUT IT'S THE MESSAGE THAT'S IMPORTANT!
——————
"My position: You should vote Biden/Harris, no matter where you live. Do not vote green party. Do not vote libertarian party. Do not vote any other party. Do not write-in someone's name. Do not abstain.
A short list of arguments in favor of this position:
1) Duverger's Law: Third parties can't win in the United States. This is not me being dour. This is me stating empirical fact. Multiparty systems require multi-member districts, or at the very least proportional non-winner-takes-all voting. We don't have that. The countries that have proportional votes have more than two parties, and the countries that do not, with very few and idiosyncratic exceptions, have two parties. Only a Democrat or Republican can win. This will be true in a thousand years if we make no changes to our system. Your "maybe this time will be different" has you looking like Lloyd Christmas from Dumb & Dumber.
2) No, seriously, third parties can't win: They don't have any money (Stein raised $4m in 2016, compared to Hillary's $1.4b). They don't have any experience (the green and libertarian parties have never won a congressional seat, never even coming close. In the history of the country, there have been zero state reps from the green party, and five from the libertarians). Their major candidates have no experience, other than losing even minor local elections. They have no name recognition. Having faith that somehow things will be different this year has the same statistical validity as thinking that the sun will not rise tomorrow.
3) Democrats are too moderate, in part, BECAUSE the left won't vote for them: the quickest way to get the progressive politics that you want to dominate the party is to takeover the party. You can't do this if you're throwing your time, money, and hopes at another party. Sanders, who represents this wing of the party, has almost won two times now. He lost both times because younger, more left-leaning voters don't show up in sufficient numbers to support his politics. The DNC knows this. The DNC wants to win elections, and everything else is secondary. If they think the key to winning elections is keeping a progressive base happy, the party will become left-friendly in due time. If they see that the left abandons them every election, they'll have no choice but to keep playing risk-averse politics and supporting candidates like Biden.
4) Biden is way more to the left than you think: He's no Sanders, and he's no Warren, but based on his current slate of policy proposals, Biden is unambiguously the furthest left-leaning candidate that the Democrats have ever fielded.
...
SHORTENED TO COMPLY WITH THE 5K LIMIT RULE

The way a "third" party works is you take over an existing one, while still remaining at "two" - Democrat and Republican. It is what motivates the party that changes. IOW, it is what the progressives are doing with the democrats now. They are trying to take over the party and make it their own. That is how it is supposed to work. The republicans have become the party of the working man. They were once a democrat stronghold, but now the democrats are morphing into the progressive party of the DNC. They know they will most likely lose, as evidenced by Kamela Harris. The last thing they wanted as VP is another moderate because today, there is not enough distance between democrat moderates and the Republicans.

Every mid year challenger knows they are going to lose unless lighting strikes. Yes, they are playing to win, but they understand and accept that they are going to lose. Harris was put on the ballot* to test the strength of the progressive movement so as to position themselves (triangulate) for 2024. The democrats are having a hard time gauging the strength of their party because it's so fractured. They need to find the demographics who will create the majority that will buy what they are selling. Who these supporters who will actually mark their support on a ballot? That is always the big question.

*Harris is from true blue California and brings California street cred, but offers no political advantage. California is in the bag. Why not a progressive from a swing state? Answer: The democrats bench was decimated and they are trying to rebuild from the ashes.

So the system is working as it was designed to work by the FF's. We ain't Italy yet.

 

[chuckiechan]

Gee, what gave away our contempt for the thread? Was it that we showed contempt for the thread?


No, I'm not going to bother wasting my time reading an article presented by a Trumpist telling me that other people on the left supposedly want me to not vote for Biden, thereby helping Trump in this largely binary political system.

No it just shows no respect for other opinions, and so it morphs into a thread crap bully instead.

 

[MTAtech]

I don't support either candidate. They are both garbage. But one of the two of them will win. Period. Do not pass go, do not collect $200. Either Trump or Biden will win, no third party candidate even has a 1% chance. Therefore, I am voting against Trump by voting for the only other viable candidate.

It's nice that you have the privilege to not be affected by a Trump second term, but enough of my friends will be directly affected by a continuation of his policies, I cannot throw my vote in the garbage based on principle.

That’s the answer in a nutshell. It’s a binary choice and if you are a progressive and vote 3rd Party, you increase the chances that Trump will win — exactly the opposite of what you want.

 

[Vadinho]

Like it or not, we have a two party system. A vote for the third party is a wasted vote or a vote for the side you least like.

 

[Questerr]

Like it or not, we have a two party system. A vote for the third party is a wasted vote or a vote for the side you least like.

For Federal offices anyways. Third parties are competitive for certain local, county, and state offices.

 

[Vadinho]

For Federal offices anyways. Third parties are competitive for certain local, county, and state offices.

thats true. I guess the best way to grow the third party is locally.

 

[Questerr]

Just a reminder to folks in this thread:

The greatest third party turnout in American history occurred in 1992 with Ross Perot. He won millions more votes than any third party candidate before or since.

He won a whopping ZERO electoral college votes.

 

[Visbek]

You would be speaking from extensive experience.

lol... No, actually, I don't waste a lot of my time giving Republicans advice. The very few times I've done anything of the sort, it's pretty much what some Republicans are already telling the rest of the party. Oh, and unlike Rasmussen, I don't fudge numbers or make crap up.

Never took economics? Increasing the number of jobs or the number of hours worked, increasing the speed of money flow, increase trade, favor durable over consumable, etc.

LOL.... Yes, I've taken econ classes. Quite a few, in fact.

You can't increase the number of jobs unless demand is already outstripping supply.

Federal governments can hire lots of people. However, during good times that won't spark growth, because most people who want a job will already have a job. It's also pretty expensive and inefficient if those jobs aren't genuinely useful. That's why government hiring is typically reserved for recessions.

Increasing hours means an increase in productivity.

With the velocity (not "speed") of money, you have the causation backwards. Bad economic times tends to slow the velocity of money, mostly because no one wants to lend it. Velocity tends to increase in good times for the converse reason. Higher velocity is also linked to higher inflation, and if that gets too high, then real growth can suffer.

"Increased trade?" Don't you mean "increase exports and decrease imports?" After all, "increased imports" also qualifies as "increased trade."

"Favoring durable goods?" What fresh nonsense is this? Why would you think that would increase growth?

By the way, I didn't pull the "growth from productivity and population" thing out of thin air. E.g.:
How Demographics Drive the Economy

Here you hit one of the major problems. Often they use services but do not pay taxes.

Hello? We're talking legal immigrants. They pay income taxes, payroll taxes, property taxes (directly or via rent), sales taxes, and so on. (Undocumented immigrants also pay many taxes, btw.)

Are the businesses legal? There are a lot of smugglers in this mix.

Hello? Again, we're talking legal immigrants. Oh, and there are a lot of native-born criminals too. More than migrants.

This is pure conjecture.

No, it isn't. I could literally be here all day linking to research that examines the economic benefits of immigration. This is just a taste:
MIGRATION AND
THE ECONOMY: Economic Realities, Social Impacts & Political Choices (Oxford and Citibank report)

The Impact of Immigration on Wages, Internal Migration, and Welfare (Oxford / Review of Economic Studies)

CBO: The Economic Impact of S. 744, the Border Security, Economic Opportunity, and Immigration Modernization Act (That's the proposed immigration reform bill from 2013)

You are welcome to deny the research, but again, I didn't pull it out of thin air. Also, when I speculate, I say things like "I guess" or "it is possible that" or "I'm speculating here, but..."

Texas and Arizona have had significant issues with COVID cases crossing the border illegally.

No, they haven't. "Immigrants cause disease" is a racist trope dating back over a century in the US alone.

Yata, yata. Forget the trolling....

Your abject inability to address any of those points is noted.

 

[Questerr]

thats true. I guess the best way to grow the third party is locally.

Unfortunately, that is where they will permanently stay until the Electoral College is abolished.

 

[VanceMack]

I'm not thrilled about it, but that's pretty much the only viable choice.

See? You DO understand most Trump voters.

When given a choice between piece of **** leftists and Trump, most voters vote against the ****heads that have already destroyed every major city in the country and are committed to doing in on a nationwide scale. Those people vote because they value the country. You...just hate Trump and are a committed leftist that would vote for any piece of **** with a D next to their name REGARDLESS of who they were running against.

 

[Vadinho]

Unfortunately, that is where they will permanently stay until the Electoral College is abolished.

Spoken like a person who grasps the essential issue, thank you.

 

[Vadinho]

See? You DO understand most Trump voters.

When given a choice between piece of **** leftists and Trump, most voters vote against the ****heads that have already destroyed every major city in the country and are committed to doing in on a nationwide scale. Those people vote because they value the country. You...just hate Trump and are a committed leftist that would vote for any piece of **** with a D next to their name REGARDLESS of who they were running against.

I wonder when you think all those cities you now call disasters ever lived up to the perfect city you think is possible. Could it be that cities are far more complex then anything one mayor or government can fix locally? Nah, that would not fit your narrative, its too complex, demands understanding of the issues and history, requires acknowledgement of institutional racism going back over 100 years. Nah, its just too easy to call them disasters when in fact, by any real measure, our cities are in better shape now then they have ever been.