Oh I agree, but that’s was a whole other can of worms I wasn’t trying to get into at the moment since I’ve got a busy and long work day that’s still not over unfortunately lol

I didn't ignore what you said. My retort to

No. If 5% of my voting base sits out over a single issue, I’m going to lose my interest in trying to triangulate their support and move in another direction to identify a more persuadable bloc of voters. That goes more if the abandonment is repetitive, and if the issues constantly change, or if the issue is something I can’t bend on for electoral reasons. If one bloc of voters is easier to please than another, then I’m moving in their direction, even if it’s rightward. Unfortunately it’s winner-take-all, and you’re either in power or you’re not. There are no half-wins.

Was that if it's a clear issue like the genocide Israel is carrying out that has a lot of strong opposition to the Democrats current position it really isn't all that hard to triangulate what the cause is.

It's been known it's THE issue the democrats are losing support for given the coverage of the non committed movement. As for how tough it is to It's literally not support a genocide that's how you please that group. It's literally following our current laws to not supply and fund a country committing a genocide.

the importance of Gaza

Literally from your own link "though some questioned whether it would push them not to vote at all." In a thread where people are complaining about a small amount of people voting third party could lose the election for democrats in swing states I guess it is an important issue if it's driving even some people in swing states to not vote.

Also when the non committed movement has more support in some states than the margin of victory in 2020 I would say it's pretty important.

the “ease” of withdrawing support

So genocide is alright as long as they're an enemy of Iran, that's your argument? Israel is literally the one escalating the situation in the area, pulling their support or at least threatening to do so until the genocide is stopped would actually deescalate the situation in the region.

how much Democrats have moved rightward

I don't disagree they've moved left on most social issues when looking at at that long of a time span that's in the article you linked. I'm talking this election cycle Kamala has clearly shifted right from the policies she ran on in 2016.

how many centrist Republicans vote for Democrats.

In 1 election, that's the sample size. That's not a trend and it's against Trump who is an historically awful candidate for moderates to try and stomach. They'll be back voting R once he's gone so it's not a good long term strategy when you're alienating what should be your base to the point their considering not voting or voting third party.

Moreover, you seem to be valuing the strongly-held opinions of voters in non-swing states (what you’re calling “deep blue states” or “areas that effectively don’t matter”) more highly than the maybe-less-strongly held opinions of voters in swing states. If 5% of Democratic voters in California want sushi, and 5% of Democratic voters in Pennsylvania want steak, I’m picking steak and telling the California voters to take a hike. Their opinion doesn’t even register on my radar thanks to the electoral consequences of pissing off the Pennsylvanians who wanted steak.

You completely misunderstood what my example was trying to get across. I'm not valuing non swing state voters opinions more than swing state voters.

I understand that the swing state voters are going to have an outsized role in what each party pushes. Tactically I would be saying the voters in swing states especially should be witholding their vote unless the democrats stop supporting Israel's genocide since it would be more leverage but obviously trump getting elected isn't a great alternative which is why I didn't mention that since that's a risk.

What I was saying is that given that non swing states you can safely vote third party to show your displeasure in the genocide we're supporting and possibly shed light that it's got a large amount of importance to voters.

Edit: formatting since I’m on mobile and at work.

Not funding and supplying a genocide seems to be a pretty clear and easy issue to change especially when 60%+ of democrats are in favor of it. We’re already violating our own laws by continuing to do so.

The democrats are already moving to the right even with the left continuing to vote for them. They think they can win over some centrists republicans (even though they can’t in a meaningful number) by adopting right wing policies while not losing the left because at the moment they know votes are guaranteed because “republicans worse”.

Having voters in areas that effectively don’t matter this cycle show there displeasure in the genocide we’re enabling is the least we can do to counter it.

You’re looking at things through there lens of 1 election cycle.

If a third party that’s against the genocide Israel is carrying out gets say 5% of voters in deep blue or deep red states would that not be a signal to the democrats that they should change their stance before the next election?

It definitely isn’t the only time I care about third parties. Continued direct action in the community is the most important way to affect change. The election is just a useful event for publicity and gaining support for groups.

There’s 0% chance my comment is going to convince enough people this election cycle that it effects a non swing states election. It’s about slowly building support for groups.

But at the same time why vote for a party that won't win?

Building support for change has to start somewhere, while they won’t win this election the more support they get the more visibility socialism gets as well as showing that people aren’t willing to vote for genocide. At the very least it shows the amount of people unhappy the democrats aren’t taking a harder stance on Israel.

As for the PSL specifically, they’re the best option on the ballot in my state. Thank you for the link though I’ll take a deeper look when I have a chance.

If enough people are voting third party that it’s a threat then maybe the other parties should take notice and change to support the popular policies and win back support.

Also we can do more than 1 thing at a time. We should be pushing things like ranked choice voting while also showing our displeasure with the current parties where it makes sense to do so.

Giving support to third parties gives them and the issues they’re promoting more visibility to the general public.

If you live outside the ~5 swing states that decide the election you can go ahead and ignore stuff like this saying you can’t vote third party.

Shoutout PSL

I think having this post isn't a great idea because you are just assuming the websites bias are legit. At the very least there needs to be a lot of warnings in the bots post about the websites biases and the methodology they use so the reader can come to their own conclusion.

Just looking over the methodlogy it's clear that it has it's own biases:

American Bias

The website itself says it’s distinctions of left and right are US based which is very skewed from the rest of the world. There should be a disclaimer or it shouldn't be used in any world news communities.

Centrist Bias

The website follows the idea of “enlightened centrism” since if it determines a website has a left/right lean (again arbitrary) it affects the factual ratings of the sources.

Examples of this are: FAIR only getting the 2nd highest rating despite never having failed a fact check.

The Intercept getting only a “mostly factual” rating (3rd highest) despite their admittance it has never failed a fact check.

Despite my personal opinions on the pointlessness of using a US based left/right bias criteria I'd feel better if it was at least kept it it's own section but when you allow it to affect the factual rating of the source it's just outright wrong. The factual accuracy of the website should be the sole thing that affects this rating.

Questionable Fact Checking

Even just checking some of their ratings raises doubts on the websites credibility.

The ADL is rated as high (2nd highest) and wasn’t found to fail any fact checks.

The ADL was found to be so unreliable on it's reporting of the Israel-Palestine conflict it is considered an unreliable source by Wikipedia.

“Wikipedia’s editors declared that the Anti-Defamation League cannot be trusted to give reliable information on the Israel-Palestine conflict, and they overwhelmingly said the ADL is an unreliable source on antisemitism.”

Maybe Wikipedia editors are a good arbiter of truth and maybe they aren’t but as people can see there isn’t a consensus and so by choosing Media Bias/Fact Check you’re explicitly choosing to align your “truth” with this websites biases.

For anyone like myself that was interested in 2020:

Found it here (Although the data source is shown on the chart)

In one video, which has 30,000 views on TikTok, a young woman becomes increasingly exasperated as she attempts to convince the AI that she wants a caramel ice cream, only for it to add multiple stacks of butter to her order. 

Lmao didn’t even know you could add butter to something at McDonald’s. If you can’t then it’s even funnier it decided that’s a thing.

Voting List for Anyone Interested

Fuck everyone that continues to support this genocide.