"Progressives should not make the same mistake that Ernst Thälmann made in 1932. The leader of the German Communist Party, Thälmann saw mainstream liberals as his enemies, and so the center and left never joined forces against the Nazis. Thälmann famously said that ‘some Nazi trees must not be allowed to overshadow a forest’ of social democrats, whom he sneeringly called ‘social fascists.’
After Adolf Hitler gained power in 1933, Thälmann was arrested. He was shot on Hitler’s orders in Buchenwald concentration camp in 1944."
in order to make it easier to track all this, i’ve got a spoiler block with links to the posts you referenced and my responses to them. it’s at the bottom of this post. there’s four, two of them were replies made to people other than me and one was a top level comment. the fourth and biggest one is a conversation i’m in, responding to the other person and engaging with what they say in good faith.
so no, i’m not ignoring everyone who’s responded to me, and i’m not ignoring you.
in order to keep this from descending into minutae, i’ve recognized a few broad responses to “i’m voting third party”:
“You can’t win and winning is all that matters.”
“You can’t have any effect.”
“You’re gonna spoil it.”
the first is false, the second and third contradict each other and are also false.
If you think there’s a broad type of argument against voting third party that i missed, let me know.
since i never got to actually break this one out: if the democrats want my vote, they can adopt the policies i want.
I think people who claim “a vote for x is a vote for trump” are just trying to shame me into voting for their candidate using manipulation and falsehood. they usually don’t respond or give up that tack when i say “no, that’s not how it works”, so i don’t know what they actually mean because i never get to really dive into it. feel free to dive into it.
you wrote about spoiler effects using popular vote, but we’re talking about the electoral college, so that’s pretty moot. seems like its hard to blame candidates losing on the spoiler effect rather than the electoral college being fundamentally undemocratic.
spoiler
Local elections is where most of the current people in power got started. Anyone voting for third party in the presidential race missed the boat. was you replying to someone other than me so i never saw it.
We desperately need more real third-party participation in politics, but voting for third parties in presidential elections doesn’t make that happen—the US voting system isn’t a business that adapts its products to meet consumer demand. was a top level comment that i never saw or didn’t think was interesting if i did.
Here’s everything from “PSL and De La Cruz” all the way to the link about the '68 election. it’s split up in several responses in that comment chain, but i think that’s that whole section.
I did not ignore anything that user said. they ended up trying to claim that perot had no effect, which is a pretty bad place to paint oneself into.
This does not work in a FPTP system. Every vote you peel off the Democrats just enables the Republicans and sets reform back even farther. The only way telling people to vote 3rd party is helpful is if they were going to vote for the GOP. Peeling votes away from Democrats HURTS the chances of other parties to be viable in the future. was not a reply to me and i never saw it.
I think all the rest is a unique comment by you, but let me know if i missed something.
