Actually they are designed to make people vote third party. Critical voter mass moving to third party is the only option to end the duopoly political system that literally everybody agrees is bad and undemocratic.

Gas lighting people into believing there is only 2 choices when there isnt is how this corrupt system maintains its power.

But what if I don't want a typical Democrat in office either?

I watched this standup special (Chad Daniels) and I found myself getting annoyed at the premise of most of his jokes.

The premise is that there is a far left and a far right and both sides are bad and need to move closer to the middle.

A joke he made, for instance, boiled down to far right were racists while the far left is overly compassionate to living things. See, both sides are bad!

First, his far right example was not an exaggeration. That is literally how people on the far right think. The far left example was a funny exaggeration that almost nobody on the left believes.

Second, even with his exaggeration, the 2 extremes are in no way equivalently extreme. The far right needs to come over significantly before it is equally extreme as the far left.

Anyway, I felt like this whole special was an example of what is wrong with the way society talks about the right and left.

I made a graph:

FL—-——|M|—————————————-FR

Both sides are bad. But vote anyway.

"If you want things to improve you are literally a fascist" - A neoliberal guide to democracy

Just remember, people: the US is always one election away from sudden, irrevocable demise. But if you elect the conservative with a D next to their name, then America gets to continue its slow, but inexorable socioeconomic decline as the executive and legislative representatives continue to ignore the policies of the progressives who held their nose to keep them in power. Asking for anything more is both foolish and, even worse, selfish.

As a conservative democrat myself, who will never be forced to compromise any of my ideological positions because the status quo of every election being "too important to lose" is at this point part of the core design of our two party political system, I can say with confidence that if I were ever faced with the choice of voting between an outright fascist and a socialist candidate, that I would definitely vote the only way that made sense to preserve the corporate oligarchy on which the fragile veneer of American democracy rests. Which is to say that I would vote for the fascist, obviously.

If you want to actually vote for progressive candidates, then you are free to move to Mexico and start farming avocados for the cartels.

If you don't see how people are unable to vote for a Democratic party that is shamelessly supporting genocide you have a problem.

Regardless of whether or not you are ok with actively voting for a staunch genocide supporter, you should be able to intellectually understand why people can't approve the Democratic party's unconditional genocide support.

Plus they cherry-pick items, take them out of context, distort them, then bombard social media with it in a way that tries to push as many visceral buttons as they can.

All the while actively ignoring any and all information that might challenge the narrative they are cynically pushing, of course.

It's probably damn near impossible to fully disentangle oneself from this addictive web, we all have fallen prey to weaponized disinformation at some level or other, and different disinformation campaigns target different segments of the population.

antisemitic tankies in the comments losing their tiny minds

That's an hyper-simplist take, self-serving if the author is a Democrat tribalist.

A Biden victory will have two effects:

• It solves the Trump problem for the next 4 years.
• It makes the DNC conclude that even outright support by their sitting President and Candidate with weapons and ammunition for a Fascist regime committing Genocide along ethnic lines is not an impediment for lefties to vote for a DNC nominated Democrat Presidential Candidate as long as the other side's candidate is worse. This means that in the next election the next Democrat candidate is unlikelly to be better and will possibly be worse. It also doesn't solve the problem of a somebody-like-Trump or, worse, an intelligent version of Trump, being a candidate with a chance of winning in subsequent elections.

So what's at stake is a Trump victory now (what Trump might or not do once in power is mainly speculation, and the more extreme theories being pitched by people who stand to gain if their candidate wins instead of Trump, have to be taken with a pinch because they'se self-serving political propaganda) versus what will happen in subsequent elections.

(The whole "what might Trump do" uncertainty is what actually makes the whole thing a complex and trully fucked up choice: if one knew with absolute certainty that Trump would end even the flawed thing that passes for Democracy in America, the choice would be an obvious "vote Biden" even at the risk of there only be even worse choices in subsequent elections, because if Trump won now there would be no subsequent elections).

Frankly I don't see any scenario were post-Trump the Republicans become less Fascist and hence the DNC becoming less evil because their upper evilness limit which is "the other guy" gets pushed down, and suspect that who the Republicans will put forward next is a more intelligent version of Trump.

That being so, the only way to push the DNC to in the future put forward less evil candidates (or to not intervene in the Primaries to stop such candidates, like they did to stop Sanders) is to make them fear that they will lose the leftwing vote and hence never again win Presidential elections, and that means Biden has to lose and Trump has to win.

It's a fucking tough choice. (Sorry for the expeletive, but it's what better reflects the trully, utterly fucked up nature of the whole "choice")

I'm happy I'm not an American and am not forced into such Hobson's Choice and can thus just intellectually analyse the whole thing without an associated rollercoaster of emotions.

I'm going to vote for the democrat this November but I think most folks who talk about this issue are not disingenuous. Voting in the presidential election is a bare minimum, minimally effective political action. For me and most of the people I know it matters almost not at all because I don't live in a swing state. My local elections matter a hell of a lot more.

There are limits to the effectiveness of electoralism that are worth understanding. I think a lot of folks who talk about the Democrat's failures are advocating for political action beyond voting. Direct action is a far more effective form of political action that people should be putting their energies into.

Union organizing, renter's orgs, housing activism, talking to your neighbors, local politics, and lots more are much more effective ways to assert power in your life. Voting makes me feel helpless. We need to act as well. The primary thing preventing positive political change is the belief that we can't do anything to bring that change about.

Eliminating the First Past the Post voting system would enable people to vote for third-party candidates without the risk of a spoiler effect. This change would foster competition in the electoral process, enhancing the quality of candidates for all voters. Additionally, it would likely increase voter turnout and political engagement.

Electoral reform is possible at the state level, Alaska and Maine have already passed electoral reform so it is possible to get this done.

Republicans have already made moves to protect First Past the Post voting. Florida recently made Ranked Choice voting illegal. Fortunately there are many alternatives to FPTP, so the ban still isn't in the way of passing electoral reform.

So the question remains, why do Blue states still use FPTP voting? Why would you want to use the voting system republicans prefer? There are no republicans stopping these reforms in states that democrats control.

It is clear that democrats understand the flaws of FPTP voting, just talk about voting third party in nearly any social media and you will get a entire flock of Democrats lecturing you on how a vote not for a democrat is a vote for a republican. How can you admit the voting system is flawed and then not make any moves to rectify the situation is beyond me. You don't get to lecture people on the flaws of FPTP voting and then do nothing to fix the issue.

Republicans have argued, under oath, that high voter turnout is unfair for their electoral chances.

Hey France has a lesson for you: 2 years ago the liberals called the left to vote for them in order to prevent the far right from getting elected.

For 2 years the liberals governed with the leaning to far right - right. The far right applauded many of their policies.

This Sunday the far right went first in the European election, because the left was a bunch of clowns and everyone hates the liberal government.

1h after the results, the Liberal president Macron disbanded the parliament. Now there are 3 weeks to elect a new parliament. He also opted for a vote that favors the biggest, so the far right is favoured, and there's no time for a campaign and barely enough time for the left to unite. The president is also still saying on TV that the left is just as bad and as extreme as the far right.

We didn't see it coming, but the liberal who pretended he would fight the far right is the first accelerationist in France. It is chaos right now, and the far right has never been so close from being in power in France since 1944. The 5th Republic is almost a presidential regime btw, so if the far right has the power, it'll be very dirty.

Trust the liberals they said, it's better than the far right...

I just want one election in my life where it's not the end of the goddamn world if Democrats lose, so I'm allowed to vote for someone I actually like.

Just one fucking election.

Oh, they see the connection. They just want Republicans in office. They don't give a fuck about the suffering of minorities, they just want the worst possible option in power so they can feel smug about "not supporting the system".

Yeah, liberals... keep pretending that your superficial pearl-clutching when it comes to US-sponsored genocide makes you all that different than your (so-called) "conservative" cousins.