when will be your last time to vote for the "lesser of two evils"?
When will be your “this is the last fucking time I’m voting for the ‘lesser of two evils’, then I don’t care after that, let this country burn to the ground”? For me, this is basically it. This is last election I’m going for that " lesser of two evils" bullshit. After that I’m done. It’s just pointless. Let’s hear it.
2016 was my year, and that election pretty much slapped me in the face for doing so.
Until the fascist part stops being fascists, I feel morally obligated to vote for the same party for the continued benefit (and rights) of the LGBT+ members of my family.
Better question for the “lesser of two evils” crowd: What’s the endgame here? In my experience, the strategy is to try to hold together enough of a Democratic voting bloc by browbeating and berating leftists to keep the greater evil out of office, and the result is that politics has marched steadily to the right, Now we’re teetering on the edge of fascism, with a Democratic President supporting genocide in another country and breaking strikes like he was ol’ Ronnie. We can’t go on like this. It can’t work forever. Eventually, the threat of a fascist getting into office will be a reality; they only have to win once, and we have to win every time. It could very well be 2024 that they do it.
At what point do we attempt something better? As commentators like Thomas Pikkety have written, there are important issues that transcend the traditional left-right spectrum, that could peel away a lot of working-class voters who feel abandoned by the neo-liberal policies of the Democratic Party.
Do we just keep voting for the lesser evil in the hopes that we can do it long enough for some unforeseen, future political shift to just sort of happen before the lesser evil is also a fascist?
I suppose it’ll continue until enough people believe that it’s possible for a third party to win.
I think ranked choice voting would make it much simpler to foment that change. People need to be able to trust that breaking from the party line has a real chance of success, but that can’t happen without demonstrating support.
If we can’t have real ranked choice voting, a third party could build a website to let people coordinate votes according to ranked choice, and hopefully carry the result as a unified bloc to the polls. Have an agreement that if a certain threshold of participation is met, vote for the ranked choice result. Otherwise, lesser of 2 evils.
The first-past-the-post vote counting all but guarantees a two-party system, but the thing is, it doesn’t have to be the same two parties that we’re used to. If it did, we’d still have Whigs. If coordination of masses of people online works, we could just replace one of the two parties outright.
Perhaps. In theory, you’re definitely right. I just feel that this is something where building the momentum during a single election cycle isn’t feasible. The most likely result of voting for a third party without laying this groundwork would be splitting the vote and giving a landslide victory to the greater of the two evils.
Formally organising online would make it possible to demonstrate how much support each candidate actually has without giving an official vote to a candidate that the general public isn’t confident enough to vote for. Watching participation grow and third parties receive substantial semi-official support could build excitement and lead to a third party being trusted to have the sway to win.
I’d love to be proven wrong though. If we can organize enough support for a third party within a single election cycle that it’s reasonable to risk voting for that candidate, I’m open to it. I already have too much on my plate, but if no one has built this service by the time I have energy for it, I’ll definitely be thinking about it
the way to change the system isn’t through the system… you’re not going to get a 3rd party in a US federal election the way it’s structured right now!
the way you get a 3rd party is to change the game: participate locally to change to ranked choice voting (etc), try and get the NPVIC passed (although that might be a pipe dream for now)
in the meantime, vote for the lesser of 2 evils because real important things are at stake
I remember when an outfit called The New Party tried it back in the 1990’s. They organized locally to push for electoral fusion (allowing candidates to run in on mutltiple party tickets) and alternative vote count systems.
The Democratic Party conspired with the Republican Party to shut down New Party reforms. The two entrenched powers are not about to let third parties become viable. I’m not sure that’s a viable tactic in states that don’t have direct-democracy mechanisms to get around them.
well, as far as the EC goes the democrats have a vested interested in removing it… the republicans would fight tooth and nail to keep it because there’s no way they’d win honestly, but that’d be the single biggest help the democrats could hope for
and as far as voting systems go, that’s why yoh start locally… afaik there are some places that use alternative voting systems to vote in the federal election… a big change is, you’re right, basically impossible… but small changes? who knows!
In the primaries, I tend to vote for the person I want to see in office. In the general election, I tend to vote against the person I don't want in office.
I'm saying "tend to" because sometimes I engage in strategic voting. I run through all the poll numbers I can find before the election. If there's any chance that my preferred "person who has a realistic chance of getting into office" might lose my district/state, then I'll vote for my preferred person.
But if there's no realistic chance that they'll lose my state - like, say I was a Democrat in California, then my vote for the president essentially doesn't matter. I mean, if Biden(Clinton/Obama/whoever) lost California, then there's realistically no way they'd have enough Electoral College votes to become president. So I can vote for whoever I want to for president - and I do.
Sometimes I do it for the money. The FEC has a thing where if a party/candidate gets 5% of the vote, they become eligible for federal matching funds the next election. Realistically, only the Democrats and Republicans benefit at the moment, but I'd like to see the pool expand so sometimes I vote in hopes that a group or person will qualify for matching funds.
And sometimes I do it to send a message. The parties spend a lot of money collecting and parsing data. So say I'm that Californian Democrat voting in 2020, where my vote will make absolutely no difference in who gets elected president, because California (as a voting bloc) is very Democratic. Since in that particular case, it doesn't make a difference in who I vote for for president, I can use my vote to send a pointed message to the Democrats: Hey, look, even in the general election, I voted for (and sometimes wrote in) this other candidate who is very into worker's rights and the environment. These are issues that are important to me, and you should keep that in mind when you're deciding policy.
Again, I don't do that sort of thing when there's even a chance my vote will make a difference. But if my vote isn't going to make a difference, then I'll try to make it count in some other way. I just wish all the people who refuse to vote because "my vote will never make a difference" would also go and vote. Maybe we'd actually get a semi-viable third party, or more influence over party platforms.
2020 was the last time. I’m abstaining until either party can put out a candidate who will actually help me or the American “experiment” reaches its natural conclusion. I really don’t care anymore.
Voting the lesser evil is a downward spiral of evil. If no candidates can meet the minimum standard, abstain on that race and fill out the rest of the ballot. It sucks, but it sucks a lot less than enabling whichever monster can be slightly less monstrous for the ten months before the election.
Uh, never? As an American I can easily recognize that we live in a 2-party political system in which you have 3 real options:
Vote for the Democrats
Vote for the Republicans
Don't vote / Waste your vote
American politics is a game of tug-of-war. You can spend as much time as you want lamenting that the rope isn't exactly where you want it to be right now. But the fact is that one party is pulling the rope to the left and the other party is pulling it to the right. If you want the rope to move right you better join the people on the right, and if you want the rope to move to the left you better join the people on the left. And more to the point, if for whatever reason you don't want to pull (maybe because it seems futile or maybe because you just don't like the people on your team) then where can you expect it to move other than away from where you want it to be?
There is no politician on Earth who perfectly represents my politics, ideals or philosophy. If I wanted someone who perfectly represented exactly what I want I would get politically active and run for office myself. In lieu of that, what else can I hope for but to vote for the people who happen to be pulling in my direction, or at the very least pulling back against the mob of right-wing fascist criminals.
I don't think Biden is perfect, but he's certainly not evil. What's more, I know exactly what we're up against when it comes to Trump and the Republicans (who at best are spineless impotent political cowards, and at worst are fascist activists who want to strip people of rights, further rob the working class, deny climate change in the name of profit, destroy what little democracy we have, and weaponize the government against political enemies).
I've said this before and I'll say it again for all takers, name any politician who you think would be making more progress on important issues (healthcare, climate, education, transportation, lgbtq rights, women's rights, the economy, etc.) than Biden right now and I'll give you at least 3 reasons why they wouldn't. (Hint: the House, the Senate, the courts, state legislatures, inflation, unstable geopolitics, post-pandemic economic change, etc.) Bernie or Warren could be sitting in the Oval Office today, and we still wouldn't have universal healthcare (because of Congress), we still wouldn't have been able to wipe out student debt (because of the courts), we still would have to deal with wars and terrorism overseas (because of aggression from countries like Russia and Iran), and we still would be feeling the effects of inflation (because of decades of low interest rates coupled with pandemic supply chain fuckery).
So yeah, I'm not gonna stop voting for the better candidate of the two, because what the fuck else would any reasonable person do? Pull the rope towards where you want it to go. It's not hard.
BTW: If you regret that we live within a political reality where we have limited choices and the risks of wasting your vote are high, then you should join the movement to implement more democratic voting systems like Ranked-Choice (aka Instant Runoff) or STAR, as well as reforms to political dark money.
Even still, many of these changes are more likely to happen at a state/local level before anything can happen federally. But that's just one more good reason to be interested and involved in regional politics also.
also afaik (i’m not american but yknow; can’t escape the intricacies of US politics) changes at the state/local level can often effect federal elections directly… aren’t there some places that do ranked choice voting federally?
What if one person pulls to the right and the other actively gives out more and more rope, telling bystanders he’s trying to “work with the other side to find a common middle ground”?
IMO there’s no one to vote for in Presidential elections who pulls the rope to the left.
There’s one guy pulling it to the right and another one who wants to use the rope to strangle the referee.
I think you're confusing Biden for Hamas or Netanyahu, both of which have advocated for genocide of the other.
Biden's stance on Israel has been no different than Bernie's. And that's probably because the situation in the Levant is more nuanced than you understand.
And that’s probably because the situation in the Levant is more nuanced than you understand.
How I know you’re a settler unfit for dialogue on this topic. It’s not ‘nuanced’; it’s been a genocide since 1948-- and the only people with an investment in portraying it any other way are colonizers. Biden has sent the colonizers material aid, has sent them money and care packages, hasn’t disavowed them, and has made no real inroads to a ceasefire. He is complicit. So are you for trying to cape for it.
Realistically, the US Government is going to continue supporting Israel no matter what happens until the US has meaningful voting reform. Israel is an entrenched interest due to the amount of money changing hands in Washington. (defense contracts, etc.) This is not helped by the social stigma of the average American not differentiating between Israel as a political entity and Jewish people as a demographic. It's one of those "broken by design" social constructs.
The logical fallacy that I largely see in play is the assumption that the Republicans would have handled this any differently. While I agree that Biden's stance is noteworthy, as a reminder that the parties are more alike than they are different on certain topics, it doesn't change the landscape of the two leading presidential candidates. One of them is in bed with Putin and appears to have a vested interest in entrenching himself as a leader who can never lose an election. (i.e. an aspiring president for life) The other candidate is still flawed, but doesn't represent an existential threat to the political institution itself.
I'd much rather have an option other than Trump or Biden, but until more states enact voting reform at a local level we're stuck with a choice of which decrepit old man is least likely to be disruptive to the entire system of government. The Republican party needs to continue its losing streak until it decides the populist authoritarian movement is a failed strategy.
“buh buh buh you gotta pick one genocidal bastard settler or the other you can’t just abstain” trick watch me. If the maintenance of any state, the one in which I live, or an ally of it mandates that I support a genocidal settler bastard, then I believe that state deserves to die. I don’t believe in “maintaining the losing streak”-- in fact, I’m convinced it’s a matter of one hand washing the other. The GOP deadlocks so the DNC can shrug, go “eto, bleh; guess we can’t change anything” and the can gets kicked down the road for another four years. Fuck outta here.
"buh buh buh the government deserves to die and everyone living in the country must suffer because my feelings are hurt"
Yeah, I know you have a lot more to say than that, but the caustic and reductionist debating angle cuts in both directions. A very merry fuck you as well, sir.
If you want my support, maybe don’t support genocidal settler-colonials. You don’t get to reframe the grievance when you and yours have always been the ones in wrong. It’s especially funny to me that you argue your point in support of somehow cajoling me to return to propping up the settler-colonial empire, when from my perspective, the death of the settler-colonial empire is likely the only way the rest of the people of this earth get to survive the impending climate disaster we continue to court.
tl;dr I am most emphatically not on your side, and never will be, regardless of whether or not I get to escape this hellscape before what has been sewn gets reaped.
Voting a third party is not throwing your vote away. It’s actually often the best way to make your vote matter.
Third parties in the US tend to run on smaller platforms pushing their key issues. Typically, these issues attract voters on one side of the spectrum more than the others: in other words, some third parties attract liberal voters while others attract conservative voters. This means that they compete with one of the major parties more strongly than the other for votes.
Votes for a major party typically do not have a huge effect on the presidential race unless you’re in a swing state. For example, the last time my state voted Republican was 35 years ago, and since then a Democrat has one by more than 10 percentage points. A million Biden voters could have switched their votes to a third party last election and he would have still won my state.
But a million votes for a third party would have been noticed by the Democrats, especially if similar numbers were posted across the US. The Democrats would have had to figure out why they were losing votes, and amend their platform in the future to win those lost voters back.
For example, major work reforms in the early 20th Century (including ending child labor, the 8 hour workday, and the 40 hour workweek) and the focus on the federal budget in the last 30 years have both been due to third parties pushing their pet issues into prominence and forcing the major parties into taking stances on them. A vote for a third party is a warning sign to the major parties that they need to amend their platforms in the future to avoid losing more votes, and that pushes change way faster than blindly voting a single party’s status quo.
Voting a third party is not throwing your vote away. It’s actually often the best way to make your vote matter.
I strongly disagree with this.
Elections are simply a case of math. If you abstain from voting, write in some random name, or otherwise vote for a candidate who is statistically incapable of winning, then there are only still only two outcomes for your vote:
In the best case scenario, like you're describing, your vote has no effect on the outcome and your 2nd place candidate happens to win anyway.
In the worst case scenario, however, vote splitting leads to the well-documented phenomenon known as the spoiler effect. In which case the 3rd most popular candidate, who may not represent anything close to the will of the democratic plurality, will win.
Personally I always plan around the worst case scenario when making important decisions, and so I don't believe in the concept of the "protest vote". Especially since so little concrete information can be derived from "reading the tea leaves" of 3rd party votes. (A big part of your premise revolves around the idea that someone out there will somehow get whatever message you're trying to send by voting for a 3rd party candidate. And that's obviously a very indirect and abstract form of protest even in the best case scenario. )
Also I think it's a strech to attribute easily 20th century work reforms to 3rd parties as they exist today considering two points: (1) there was a radical shift in political power, generally towards progressivism, at that time and (2) it can be argued that many of these reforms could be attributed more to labor unions in general than any one political party.
Vote how you want, or not at all, but we can't escape math in the end. Statistically speaking, a protest vote is at best a benign waste of a vote and at worst the cause of undemocratic election outcomes via the spoiler effect. So I'll continue to recommend against it, and recommend for more democratic voting systems that are less prone to manipulation and spoilage.
The simple math is that a +/- 500,000 votes for Joe Biden in 2020, who got 81,283,501 total, would have barely noticeable. However, +/- 500,000 votes for Jo Jorgenson, who got 1,865,535, or Howie Hawkins, who got 407,068, would have been much more noteworthy.
Your vote simply has a bigger impact when you’re voting for a smaller candidate.
And yes, third parties do pressure major parties to alter their platforms, and this is well documented. The clearest example is Ross Perot getting 19% of the vote in 1992 and pushing his pet issue (the federal budget) into every election since then, still persisting today over 30 years later.
During the Iraq War, Kurt Vonnegut was asked about the anti-war protests.. His response was that, during Vietnam, he was part of anti-war protests firing on all cylinders and laser-focused and going to stop that war. He said it was ultimately about as effective as climbing to the top of a ladder and tossing a pie on the ground. This time will be no different.
So I don't know what you're hoping to gain. The 'Ima take my ball and go home' approach didn't work out so well in 2016. Threatening not to vote isn't going to phase anyone in a country where more than half the population doesn't vote anyway. Maybe instead of threats you should work with other people trying to help the people you want elected get elected.
That assumes that there are any viable candidates running that we actually like. That’s becoming more and more a pipe dream, haven’t seen one since Obama.
Since you're talking specifically about the presidential election, I actually am helping my candidate, since if I and others can get 1% of the popular vote for someone, then they can get easier access to ballots, debates, and federal funding next time.
No, you’re not helping your candidate, your candidate is beyond help. They’re going to lose. Either Biden is going to win, or Trump is going to win, and if you vote for anyone but Biden, you’re complicit in helping Trump.
And? Ever since he left office it’s been one piece of shit after another. It shouldn’t be too much to ask for a presidential candidate to be something besides “less terrible than the other guy”.
Continued complacency by people bitching about candidates not being good enough is how we're on the knifes edge of destroying our democracy here in the states.
I don't like the people I vote for, but I sure as fuck would rather live in our current neolib hellscape than the psuedotheocratic bullshit the loudest voices in the GOP so clearly want. Sitting on your ass enables exactly that
The chances of your vote being the one to change the outcome of a large election are extremely small, so it doesn’t really matter that much what you do with your ballot. However, if you have the means to influence other people’s votes, that might count for something. Therefore, I think it’s good to discourage people from voting for the apparent lesser of two evils. If you vote, try to vote as best as you can for your class interests. (Chances are that you belong to the working class.) Don’t feel bad about abstaining if the candidates to choose from represent class interests that are counter to yours to the extent that you can barely tell them apart.
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