I have high hopes but my logical side says they can just be pandering like any of the other politicians: they know people support it, they know it will fail. They look good for backing it even tho they aren’t worried about changing the status quo either
Lemmy is such a fickle place. Just a few days ago people were clamoring for Democrats to make a purely performative abortion vote that would be doomed to fail, merely because it would send an important signal to voters. Now people are skeptical that performative signal votes are sincere because they won’t go anywhere. Not saying you, specifically, but the whiplash is really frustrating.
Second, sure, it’s a low risk bill because they know it won’t go anywhere, but damn isn’t it good news that somebody is putting their money where their mouth is? Maybe we just need to primary in more Dems who will sign on and help push it through?
My point (i.e. the “high hopes” part) is that this sounds legit and awesome. I do my best to be an optimist, but I have been burned way to many times to not concede that there may be ulterior motivation afoot.
Why wouldn’t Democrats want ranked choice?
Right wing people tend to be subservient and just fall in line and vote Republican. People on the left tend to be less pragmatic and can be enticed to vote for Green or whatever even when it’s obvious they won’t win “because of my principles!” Someone voting Green or whatever will be very likely to choose the Democrat candidate down the list of choice before the GOP candidate. When the votes are tallied they will end up with more votes with a ranked choice system than they’d have with the current system.
The real reason why this won’t happen is if the GOP have a majority since it is very much against their interests.
The DNC exists to protect incumbents. Don’t be fooled, the Dems (elected officials, not voters) don’t want ranked choice.
Right wing people tend to be subservient and just fall in line and vote Republican. People on the left tend to be less pragmatic
People are always saying this, but is there actually evidence that it’s true? The Libertarian Party regularly gets more votes than the Greens, so if anything it seems like the opposite is true. Ross Perot got the most votes of any third party candidate in history, and in both the elections he ran in, Bill Clinton won. In 2016, Trump refused to rule out the possibility of a third party run if he didn’t get the nomination, and it appeared to be a serious possibility.
So is this claim just based on vibes or what?
It’s been a long time since Ross Perot.
I’m basing it on trends. We saw with RFK being offered whatever he wanted as soon as it looked like he was going to take more votes from Trump than Harris. He dropped out and backed Trump. While not all of his supporters might not automatically go vote for Trump (just as not all Libertarians won’t pick R for their second choice) it probably helped.
The Libertarians got what? 1/3 of the votes in 2020 than they did in 2016? Seems like they’re on the decline to me.
We’re seeing more of a push by various internet influencers (who knows who’s paying them, LOL) to push people on the left towards voting third party. And maybe I’ve spent too much time on lemmy, but it seems to be working. People want to vote for Cornel West or Jill Stein.
It’s probably exhausting for campaign workers to have to constantly explain they shouldn’t vote third party as it might result in Trump getting in. It would be far easier to say “sure I kinda like [Third Party Candidate] too, but I like [Democratic Candidate] more because blah blah blah, but the most important thing is you go out and vote!” and be fairly confident that vote will cascade down to their candidate. The whole “don’t vote third party” schtick that’s going on now may just result in that person not voting at all.
A lot of emphasis now is in getting turnout. If a third party candidate can energize some turnout whose votes will cascade down to the Dem candidate, that means the third parties are helping them instead of hurting them. And what people think now about how voting third party will push the Dems more towards that position would actually be true. Right now it’s not true but the internet is teaching them otherwise.
