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Why Senate Dems are prepared to swallow a border policy compromise
(www.politico.com)
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this post was submitted on 29 Nov 2023
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United States | News & Politics
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No, that's only somewhat true if it's a tight election. If your area leans heavily to one side or the other, your vote for a third party signals that neither major party candidate is acceptable. If those votes get high enough to start impacting elections, they'll change their policies/candidates to attract new voters.
AFAIK, most people live in areas where one party is expected to win. So if that describes you, vote your conscience. If you live in an area with tight races, you may want to choose the less bad among the two major candidates. In both cases, push for voting reform, ideally something like Approval or STAR voting. That way you can vote your conscience and fall back to the major party candidate you prefer.
No 3rd party candidate has ever influenced the major parties to date. And likely never will. Sanders, an independent ran as a Democrat, and nearly won the nomination. Democrats took notice, and moved left in some material ways. Giving Sanders power in the party via committee membership/leadership. Something no 3rd party candidate will ever achieve.
Stop splitting the vote. Run as democrats till the neoliberals are all but purged. Then we can work to amend our elections and voting so third parties can make sense.
You can do both.
Let's be honest, "signals" mean exactly two things. Jack and shit. A viable progressive is just not gonna appear on thoughts and prayers because someone signals hard enough. The only way to move the needle is by choosing the viable party that doesn't actively campaign on the notion of eradicating "vermin".
In a functional society, we would have options like ranked choice, but functional is not a great word to explain the current situation in the U.S. So you bite the bullet, and make the less evil choice. Then you do it over and over again until the party that is actively trying to destroy democracy no longer exists, and you can potentially make effective voting reform.
There are two ways to fix this, slowly with every election over potentially decades, or quickly. And doing it quickly almost certainly involves people in the streets and ugliness on a scale you really cannot comprehend. But no amount of "signaling" is gonna work because honestly close to half the electorate just doesn't fucking care.
Only if it actually matters. If the election will go to the same party every year, then it literally doesn't matter if you vote for or against them, so you might as well vote for a candidate you actually like. Every position on my ballot has a 20%+ spread, with some >30%, so there's no benefit to voting for the minority party over a third party.
So I change my party affiliation to the dominant party every election so I can vote in the only primaries that matter, then I vote for whatever candidate I actually like in the general election. If third parties get enough percentage of the vote, they get reliable ballot access, and that helps give them more visibility. If a particularly good candidate polls well enough, they'll be invited to debate. That's the dream, and I'm hopeful electoral reform would be a key part of such a debate. If you have a strong third party candidate in the debates, maybe that'll get the public to care.
That isn't how that works. Both major parties thinks the other is actively trying to destroy democracy, so they're very likely to retain their base.
The solution, IMO, is a grassroots movement where a bunch of candidates all run on the same platform, and pair that with peaceful protests. That's how you get visibility into issues like electoral reform (again, ideally Approval or STAR, not ranked choice; I think ranked choice would still result in a 2-party system). Ideally run those candidates within the two-party system, but running them as third parties is better than nothing IMO, they'll still get some visibility.
Honestly, I don't even really believe that'll happen-- but that won't stop me. I've come to the regrettable conclusion that the Democrats will never be anything more than the velvet liner covering the iron gauntlet that is the Republican party; and the things it'd take to disabuse me of that notion, the CIA has killed people for attempting before.