Comment by SanctimoniousApe@lemmings.world on What will it take for staunch Democrats to vote third party?

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.crimedad.work/post/151111

With the dust is settling from their defeat on Tuesday, it’s becoming clearer that there was some incredible malpractice going on in the Democratic party. As shown in the tweet I linked, Biden delayed dropping out even though his team knew it was going to be a complete blowout for Trump. Then, we have Harris’s campaign spending over a billion dollars and still losing all of the swing states she needed to win.

For all the Democrats who would never vote Republican and would have never voted third party, are you now considering voting third party in future elections? If not, what would it take?

A truly progressive third party that also actually has a prayer of winning. They would need a groundswell of individual small donors making up much of their campaign funding because mainstream ain’t gonna fund them, so good luck with that.

Despite a billion dollars in funding, the Democrats campaign didn’t have a prayer either. And I have a hard time calling their platform progressive at all. Anyone who liked it more than that of the Greens or the PSL would have just voted Republican.

This is like survivor bias.

I’m not sure what you mean. We’re looking at the wreckage.

We’re looking at the wreckage.

If you knew what survivorship bias was, and the example usually given for where it came from, you might see the irony in what you just said.

It’s the opposite though? By phrasing it this way it implies the data comes from downed fighters/bombers, aka the exact data you want to avoid that.

Yup. In the context of the election, survivorship bias would be Democratic strategists looking at the Trump campaign and saying “we gotta get more racist”. Considering at their position on immigration, that’s apparently what they did.

You’re ignoring the “prayer of winning” part. Until then, I’m voting against the bigger asshole.

Yes, but as it turned out, Harris didn’t have a prayer either. If you weren’t voting for Trump (I assume you consider him to be the bigger asshole) it didn’t matter if you voted for Harris or any other candidate. So unless the Democrats make big changes to their platform and the people running their campaigns… well, it’s insanity to expect a different result. There’s got to be a point where progressive Democrats decide that they might as well vote with some dignity for third party candidates.

Until I have good reason to believe that my vote stands a good chance of actually mattering should I do such a thing, no. There’s no way of knowing the result beforehand, so I’d rather play it safer and spend it on trying to prevent the worst possible outcome. Might not always work, but then again it might.

In a FPTP race with a large electorate, it’s a pretty safe bet that your individual vote will not matter to the outcome. That’s not even considering the effect of the Electoral College.

So, the green party. Good thing a bunch of far right idiots didn’t spend the last 8 years implying a licensed medical doctor at the head of the party was a Russian spy.

I wrote her off many years ago for reasons I don’t remember, but know had nothing to do with that. Also, COVID proved being a licensed MD isn’t a reliable yardstick.

You could run a modern campaign with nothing but social media memes and volunteers.

Bernie Sanders did that, and it did great. It wasn’t enough to win, partly because the Democrats fucked him.

At this point, you’ll have to contend with massive social-media operations which are working against and shaping the narratives that most of the country use as a substitute for news, to understand what’s happening in the world. I think the time to be able to do it has passed, for a little while, without on-the-ground anti-electoral organizing on a massive scale.

See who you can find in your area. It’s about to get real, I think.

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