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Real Nazis
(lemmy.sdf.org)
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this post was submitted on 10 Feb 2026
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They didn't have a better chance though - they lost to a historically bad candidate. Multiple times.
The Democrats are a problem precisely because they occupy the line of resistance to the GOP. You want to stop the GOP, you've got to stop their enablers first.
Well yeah, you do. The problem is that takes a lot of time, and will take massive voting reform, which no one in power has a vested interest in doing.
But we're not talking about future plans, we're talking about what happened in the past. Since there wasn't that voting reform in the past, there was no way for a third party candidate to win.
And again, you're pretending that the Democrats didn't lose as well. If there was no way for a third party candidate to win (because they didn't) there was also no way for the Democrats to win with how they ran.
Way to miss my point but ok.
You're point is you want to claim people that don't vote for the Democrats are stupid, because you think that's the best way to stop the GOP.
The problem is the whole Vote Blew No Matter Hoo strategy has been failing for 25 years. It's what brought you here, and yet you don't want to accept that.
I'm not accepting it, but what I am accepting is that it's going to take changes in phases to work. We're going to have to do local voting reform, make ranked choice the standard, push for third party candidates, get rid of gerrymandering, etc.
I'm also accepting the facts of how things were, and are now, before those reforms. Those changes we need to make to fix this haven't been implemented yet. They certainly didn't exist in the last election.
Would it have been rad if everyone voted third party last election out of nowhere? Yeah. Might've even worked if there was a way to get everyone on board for that.
But we don't live in the might've world, we live in the world of what is.
So yeah, until the system is fixed, it sucks, but the Democrats are what we have to work with to fight the Republicans. I don't like it, but they are the ones who have that leverage, much more than the green party or whatever.
Yes, and the current world - with an unrestrained GOP bringing open fascism without resistance from the supposed opposition party - is exactly the product of the strategy you're advocating continuing. That's the issue. This didn't come out of nowhere.
So your strategy last election was to, what, not vote for Kamala? How'd that work out?
Considering I'm registered in NY, my vote for De La Cruz was the best possible use of it.
Weird, that's not the president.
Look, the system is fucked up but also you gotta do the good you can even in a broken system.
Yup. So my vote showed that I wouldn't vote for genocide and Republican policies. Yours for Kamala showed you would, and Trump won regardless.
Like I said, mine was the best possible use of my vote.
Yeah you sure showed him. He's sad in the oval office over it. Good job, you helped get him elected.
Please explain to me how my vote for De La Cruz in NY (which went for Kamala) helped Trump get elected?
Show your work, because apparently you don't understand how elections work.
Look, I hate the whole blue no matter who bullshit, too. And yeah, maybe your specific vote, for someone who didn't win, didn't change history. But you gotta admit that the system as it was, and is, does not favor splitting the the vote, since it's winner takes all. Since we have only two parties powerful enough to potentially win on the national level, if you don't like Republicans, you're stuck with Democrats. If you don't like Democrats, you're stuck with Republicans. With the system as it is now, on a national level, that's what we're working with.
I want to fix that. We should fix that. I'd like to see the Republicans and Democrats ousted. I want to see ranked choice voting. I think you feel the same and I'm not even sure why you're arguing with me at this point.
But if we want to have meaningful impact, we have to still work with this broken car we're riding in while working on changing it for something better.
So yeah, vote third party at local levels and work our way up, push for voter reform and build a system that is more equitable, but also vote strategically. We no longer vote for, we vote against.
So you're rejecting all political influence you would have in the Democratic party.
And the problem is this isn't reciprocal. Look at the NY Mayoral election for a recent example. Vote Blue No Matter Who and prioritizing the lesser evil is ONLY ever applied one way.
There's a great article from 2020 where the NY Times says the quiet part loud - several articles about how Democratic party insiders were "willing to risk party damage to stop Sanders". https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/27/us/politics/democratic-superdelegates.html. Reminder this was during an election they claimed was existential for the US. Like the one in 2024, where they pushed, without a real primary, a candidate who had never won a single delegate.
All this would be one thing if the centrists with their stranglehold on the party actually won. But they don't. The GOP is firmly in control of the US - and yet the same broken party leadership remains, precisely because your logic empowers them.
You want to make accusations that I'm electing Trump? No. It's your unquestioning support of Democratic failure that enabled today.
Dude if you think I've got "unquestioning support of Democratic failures" you really haven't read a single thing I've written.
I have. And you've said you'll vote for the Democrats be cause you think that votes against the GOP.
I don't think it does, but regardless, they don't care why you vote for them. You've made it clear they have your vote no matter what, and so your questions don't matter.
You say they don't care why you vote for them but said you voted third party to send a message or whatever. Seems like you feel that they care about how you vote but not anyone else.
You haven't really convinced me your strategy will be effective.
That's not what I said. I said they don't care about why you vote for them if you do.
They might very much care about why you don't vote for them. That's why the Democrats always tack to the right, btw - the most marginal voter controls the platform, and Democratic leadership believes that the imaginary moderate Republican is more marginal than the left.
And that's why voting third party is a much more effective thing than not voting (as plenty of people did not in 2024). Voting for a non-Democratic candidate shows exactly what they're losing and why. It's quantifiable and can't be argued.
Democratic loyalists often want to claim that third party voters lose elections for them. They don't - but if they actually do, then the answer to that problem becomes obvious. Per Duverger's law, how it's worked since the collapse of the whigs, is that the party needs to either adopt those positions, or die.
I feel that wasn't an effective tactic I'm the last election and is something that can be worked towards, but the amount of support third parties get isn't substantial enough to make an impact on democratic policy as things are now.
That's why I feel it's imperative to focus on ranked choice (or something similar) from local and up, because of the aforementioned Duverger's law. This could eliminate both establishment parties. Until we fix that, people know that third parties don't win elections, especially not national ones, and you can't do anything unless you actually get into a position of power.
Why would the Democrats ever support ranked choice voting?
Local governments are much more likely to listen to constituents and it's a lot easier to get stuff on the ballot for local issues than State and national elections. Making that the norm locally can influence the state, and three federal elections are run state by state instead of nationally.
Between the Democrats and the Republicans, who do you think is more likely to? If your city was in Republican control, the party that's notorious for trying to take away voting rights, do you think they would actually let that through? At least with Democrats pretending to care about people, it's a platform they can run on, and on the individual level means they are more likely to get elected/reelected.
Look at the 2016 primary. It's mainly due to the McGovern 72 campaign, but the GOP has actually less top down control than the Democratic currently. It's why the Dem leadership was able to stop Bernie twice, while the GOP couldn't with Trump.
The Democratic Party has likewise been involved in many more legal efforts to get especially the Greens removed from ballot lines than the GOP.
So while neither of the major parties is going to support ranked choice (why would they?), the Democrats are more active in their currently opposition.
You're kidding right? Republicans are trying to make it so anyone who changes their name, even married women, can't vote. They've historically fought against black and poor people from voting for decades. Just the policies flying around now are nuts. I haven't heard of armed Democrats hassling people in line to vote.
Either way the strategy I put forward stands.
You're conflating general voting rights with access to ballot lines and closed primaries.
These are very different things, and the Democratic Party (and GOP) have different goals with each of them.
The Democratic Party has led numerous lawsuits to remove 3rd party, especially Green, candidates from the ballot line. The greens even have a list here - https://www.gp.org/third_party_suppression_a_problem
The Democratic leadership strategy falls apart with a challenge from the left. They're able to keep leadership and candidates that are far to the right of what their base and voters are and want because, while they're inept at attacking right, they make very sure to deal with any threat to their left as the existential threat to them it is. If there's a block to their left that doesn't subscribe to VBNMW, then they can't continue that grift and pretend the left has nowhere else to go.
Man put it together. It's relevant because I'm talking about a situation where citizens try to start voting reform, and saying that Republicans in charge would be much worse for trying to get that passed. They are clearly worse for that movement than the Democrats. Because they pulled some bullshit to get third parties off the ballot doesn't mean they are some golden child who's going to let ranked choice in, but that's less bad than the stuff Republicans do. Figure it out
Do you not understand how primaries work?
It really seems you don't.
I'm not even sure if you understand how voting works. You obviously have the data but managed to figure out the most ineffective and incorrect way to solve the problems we both agree exist.
It's obvious we're not convincing each other of anything and no one else is reading this, I suggest we just part ways here.
Buddy, you're the one advocating voting for people you claim to oppose. Think about that real hard
Any port in a storm man. At least I'm not advocating for something useless.
useless would be an improvement to what you're advocating
K