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John Fetterman says he'll 'never understand' progressives who refuse to support Joe Biden
(www.businessinsider.com)
this post was submitted on 13 Sep 2023
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politics
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I'm still soured by how the primary shook out in 2020. Before any votes were cast, all everyone said about all the candidates were that anyone could beat Trump. Bernie won the first 3 races, and the Democratic establishment fought anyway they could to kill the movement, including pressuring flailing campaigns to back out. Biden finally won and the only message is for the left wing of the party to get in line. Kind of a hard pill to swallow when the Democrats claimed to be the party of the youth, but the youth voted 80%+ for Bernie in the primary. Ended up voting Green in 2020. Will I do so again in '24? Who knows, but at this point it isn't looking good. I don't like that the right wing of the Democrats (center-right overall) expects the left to follow along no matter what they do.
I'm not sure I buy this whole "third party votes are wasted votes" or "third party votes are a vote for the opposition". The US system heavily heavily biases towards having a two party system, but third parties exist, and just because Democrats and Republicans are the two major parties right now, doesn't mean they will be in the future. The Whigs were one of the two major parties for 25 years of US history, even winning the Presidency a few times, but now they're not. It took people not willing to accept the party line and jumping ship to change that, which again the system biases against, but it still happened. Democrats aren't the end-all-be-all of lefty politics. The next left wing party won't be the end-all-be-all either. Democrats have no incentive to change the current system. By continuing to vote for them, whether you believe it or not, you're approving and perpetuating the behavior. It isn't a useful method of change to say "I don't agree with anything the Democrats say, but that's the world we're in". That's how you end up in a situation where 70% of the country supports universal healthcare, but only 5-6 members of Congress do. Voting for a further left party than the Democrats will cause the Democrats to wise up to what their traditional base wants.
Politics in Democracy is not a passive system. Passivity leads to what we have now, two parties that write the rules for the states and the governments that represent the interests of almost no one, but have convinced us that they're the only and best options. There are agents of the Democrats currently in jail for breaking election law in their efforts to keep the Greens off the ballot. I'm sure the same is true for Republicans. Don't tell them its okay by giving them your vote. Don't give in to the political version of the Paradox of Thrift.
Whether you buy it or not, at least for the presidency, the US is realistically a two party system. A vote for 3rd party is a wasted vote, because you certainly must have a preference in which of the two real options you'd rather have.
Voting 3rd party is selfish. You're willing to let the worse option win because you want to make a "statement"
And your statement translates to "we can easily manipulate these 3rd party voters away from our rival by back channel funding our oppositions redheaded step child"
Even more than that, if you don't vote the way your state is going, you're wasting your vote. For example, if I'm a Dem in a Red state, I have to vote Red, otherwise, you know, I'm wasting my vote! You may think you're making a "statement", but it's just a failure to accept reality.
That's not how it works. At all.
A few percentage movement to the underdog side in a solid state indicates there's potential for a swing in future elections, which means the underdog party may funnel more money and campaign tour time to said State.
But sure, keep justifying wasting your vote, and not doing the one very easy thing you can do to fight fascism.
Edit - I want to make something clear. By all means, support your independent / 3rd party candidates on the local level, where they actually have a chance. Support their continued attempts to rise. We need to break the 2 party system, eventually.
But don't waste your vote on the battle line. President, senate, congress. We need every last vote in the preferred 2 party candidate. These fucking matter.
Until you get a real 3rd party candidate making governor, senator, congress, there's literally zero chance they can win a major election.
LOL. You people are just so predictably. You know, history shows that the more people vote, the more left things lean. But go on yelling from the top of your plastic soap box that people who don't vote the "right" way are throwing their vote away. You'd do far more good trying to get people to vote.
I'll keep winning no matter what, while you are the true vote waster!
Three issues: There is almost no state so red or blue that it couldn't swing with ~10% shift to the other party.
There are plenty of local elections that will not go the same direction as the state, and they have more effect locally than the president.
Your vote is "wasted" by voting for who's going to win. Voting for the winner, against your judgment, doesn't make your vote more valuable. If anything, it makes it less valuable. The only time your vote really matters (intellectually) is when it's used to swing a vote opposite of expectation.
You do you. I just support more people voting. I'm too old now to continue walking the precincts to try to get the vote out every election. You seem to have a flexible judgment of when a vote counts and when it doesn't. Pretty fucked up way of looking at things. In my humble opinion at least.
I don't think it's fucked up. I think it's realistic. We need to change the way representation works in the US, but it's built and manufactured to support the status quo, so that's the way it works.
Actions outside of voting though, there are plenty available. Expecting voting to be the thing to make things work is probably faulty.
I also expect the republican party to come crashing down soon. My expectation is that the democratic party takes the place of the right wing party and something else takes the left. At that point, things will change. Right now though, status quo is the voting options.
Who gives a fuck about (intellectually)?
Because that's the only way a vote is wasted. It is probably least valuable voting for who is expected to win, but second least used voting for who doesn't stand a chance.
Anything other than a vote for one of the two leading parties in a swing state is a waste
Yeah, pretty much. There are other means to do things in favor of other groups, but for voting it's only between the two (in most elections).
And this is definitely why we haven't needed any parties but the federalists and the anti-federalists.
The parties only change when one of them just totally shits the bed. Then they're usually replaced by a party that kind of does the same things but doesn't seem to stink as much as the last one. Sometimes their opposition moves toward the center enough that the new party springs from their base instead.
At this point, the Democrats shitting the bed is very realistically the end of democracy, so instead of getting a shakeup and a New Left we'll just end up with increasingly restrictive rules on who gets to participate in elections and increasingly questionable vote counting. But if you want to shake things up by just completely destroying the Republicans and hoping the Democrats (who are kind of suckers for "converting" Republicans) become the new conservative party, that I can get behind. The Republicans are already in shaky territory as they get more and more repulsive while dwindling in number. They're dangerous because of that, but they legitimately could fall apart if they keep getting destroyed in elections while the diehards refuse to believe they need to change.
Maybe after like a decade, after losing a few presidencies in a row.
But we don't have time for that. The Republicans plan to effectively end democracy if they win the House.
First Past the Post is the unfortunate reality, and yes it's fucking us hard.
This is always what Democrats say.
Um, ok.
Is there an aspect that you think is untrue?
"We don't have time for that" is what they always say to stop us voting for another party or something demanding am more progressive candidate in the general election.
The party just continues to move rightward
Yes. But have you seen the Republicans
You proved my point.. It's "vote for us because they're even worse"
Which is true.
So I don't really understand your point I guess.
The Green Party received a quarter of 1 percent of total votes in 2020. The third best showing they’ve ever had. Four years prior Jill Stein received an entire 1% higher than that against probably the two least liked candidates of all time. They ain’t it.
LOL all that and you're still voting Green party? You know, the ones that got us trump in 2016 and are Russian schills ? Get lost bro
Very well said. And this method of strategically protesting the status quo has awarded better outcomes in NYC and got NY, Minnesota, Alaska and some othera to have ranked choice. But we can't just do that from nothing on the federal scale. We're gonna get ranked choice voting federally by leveraging third party State reps. And Senators to change the constitution.
That's not true. The numbers show otherwise. When it came to primaries there just wasn't the turnout Bernie supporters needed to get his name on the ticket. You can't have it both ways.
Oh no, don't you remember? They fucked the Iowa caucus to make sure he didn't win, handing a victory to the nobody Buttigieg instead.