That’s not what they said in 2012 (a year when Bush wasn’t even on the ballot, by the way). I’ve been alive for ten presidential cycles, and I’ve never seen it this bad before. I’ve never seen a candidate with such blatant disregard for democracy, or voters who are so blithe about tossing away their voting rights.

But even if they said it then, it doesn’t preclude it from being true now. Things can get worse over time. A threat narrowly defeated in one year doesn’t prevent that threat from gaining power and causing more problems a decade later, and the GOP has undoubtedly gotten worse over the last thirty years.

Ad hominem nonsense aside, your comment would’ve sounded somewhat reasonable in 1996, but in 2023 I don’t think it is. If you see the danger but run the other way, aren’t you treating the many more lives that would be lost as a result of a second Trump presidency with the same clinical disconnection that the Democrats are treating the Palestinian lives lost with each shipment of arms?

It’s literally the trolley problem. You want to not be the one pulling the lever. That’s fine. But the point of the trolley problem is that there’s not a morally correct answer. It’s a terrible situation, and there’s no right way to respond; but lambasting others on the internet for their choice is definitely the wrong way.

Thinking that abstaining to vote washes your hands of association is not correct. Your abstention counts as a vote for the winning party, whether you like it or not.

Choosing to continue to participate in the social fabric is supporting the choices made much the same as casting a vote. You’re paying taxes, you’re collecting incentives, you’re participating in the economy, you’re enabling the growth of GDP.

By your own logic, assuming you’re an American citizen and not just a troll, you’re also a genocide apologist who’s enabling whatever party wins.

I will vote for a candidate that has a platform I can support and nothing else.

And in doing so you’ll waste your vote, allowing the worst possible option (Trump) to get voted in.

The dems continue to get elected because of the Two party system. They aren’t going to change it.

Establishment democrats won’t let it happen, but they can’t do shit if they don’t get elected, and actually good candidates get elected instead.

Which means all levels of government are involved. And this issue needs to be fought in the primaries as well.

You vote blue you will still have red on your hands.

There will be red on everyone’s hands no matter what. No matter who we choose, our tax dollars are going to genocide.

The least we can do, the bare fucking minimum is to reduce the amount of red.

You’ll have just as much red on your hands as I do. But the difference is that you’re willing to let it be more red.

The GOP also continues to get elected because of the two party system. There’s a much better shot at taking over the Democratic party to force reform through than will ever happen with the GOP. I want to vote third party, but I’m not going to pretend that it’s safe to do so yet at the level of president.

Oh get the fuck outta here, that’s not the only issue at stake

The presidential race is the LAST place you should be making your stand. It’s like you want to skip all the early levels of the game (local and state elections) and jump straight to the final boss without realising you won’t win this game by doing that.

If everyone did that we would have a solution.

The reality is that with the current balance of power that will never happen.

It not that I don’t wish for it to happen, but even if two people here agree there’s no way we are going to take 70 million votes away from each party equally to guarantee neither can beat the third party.

We have one path: get more young people who aren’t batshit crazy into both the Senate and the House until we can force campaign finance reform, ban all of the should-be-illegal lobbying, force a voting system chance, and ban gerrymandering. Nothing else is going to beat the corporate government.

Not all of us live in ImaginationLand, unfortunately.

My problem what? Hint: It’s spelled ‘you’re’ in the context you’re using it. ‘Your’ is the possessive. ‘You’re’ is a contraction for you are.

And the actual point you’re making here? It’s not correct. Here’s why.

The GOP is the Authoritarian home. It’s the place for people who think that our problem as a nation is that other people are doing what they want in defiance of what the Authoritarians want. There is no vote splitting here. The jerks are lined up and HARD behind Trump, and the outcome of this election, without hyperbole, will be world-changing. Trump has already said that he will imprison a long list of people that includes people like you, and compared them to rats, roaches, and lice in a comparison frequently made by the kinds of people who have body counts in the millions after it’s all said and done. You’re not poaching any of those votes for your third party.

The only votes you’re poaching are Leftie Democratic Party votes. Who wins the election where 51 people vote for the Left Parties and 49 people vote for the Right Party? The Left, right? Wrong. It all depends on the breakdown of the votes. If 48 people vote for Blue and 3 vote for Green, while 49 vote for Red, it doesn’t matter than the 3 Green voters are closer aligned to Blue than Red. Red wins and all 51 people who voted against Red lose. Simple FPTP rules. Anyone that claims Green can remake the Left is either naive to the point of absurdity given everything that has happened over the past 23 years, or a plant from Team Red trying to get us to split our vote so they can steal the election.

You need to read up on Project 2025. If Team Red wins, that’s what’s in store for us. It’s bad. It’ll be bad for Gays. It’ll be bad for Minorities. It’ll be bad for the environment. It’ll be bad for Liberals. Exercising your protest vote will hurt a long list of people and priorities the Greens say they are behind.

It’ll be bad for Ukraine, and bad for the Russian people because Trump will crawl in bed with Putin and Kim and Xi to reshape the world away from the Western Liberal Order to an authoritarian order dominated by a Fascist USA, Russia, China, and North Korea. They have not hidden their desire to make the 21st Century a century of Authoritarianism. Team Red here in the USA is fully behind that, and their voters are looking forward to putting the boots on our faces. And there’s no argument you nor Team Green can make to sway them away from that goal. But they’ll sure back you in peeling votes away from Team blue, because they know 49 beats 48 every time and you’ll never get 50. You literally have no chance of overcoming Team Red, but you have all the chance to draw support from Team Blue to the point that both Blue AND Green lose, and Red tears down everything you ever (said you) cared about.

That’s why we are so dismissive of you. The only thing you’ll accomplish is ensure Red wins, then the game is over. Our only question is are you so stupid and uninformed that you’re doing this on accident, or are you one of them and are doing this on purpose.

Not sure if this is enlightened centrism or not but avoiding voting all together doesn’t solve anything either because one of the 2 will be elected regardless.

In the US there are only 2 possible winners, a democrat or a republican. Not voting or voting 3rd party is the same as throwing your vote in the trash because of the way the US system works.

So your choice if you want to change something is to vote for the one that has the highest chance of working towards your goals, and that is a democrat, even if almost everything they currently do is awful. Because if a republican wins, your concerns aren’t even going to get into ear reach of them.

Either participate and vote to try to change something or accept that you’re discarding your already limited political power by taking this moral stance, and in the process also making the problems you’re concerned about worse.

By voting for either of them you support both parties.

Voting for one of them is our only choice if we wish to influence the course of our country.

This will be my 7th Presidential, and I have voted in every eligible local/state election.

You offer harsh criticism but no actual solutions, like you’re still 20 years old and thinking the world will change if you just talk about it enough.

Republicans will always lie cheat and steal with zero concern for ethics or scrupulous moral considerations when it comes to undermining principles of democracy if it increases their wealth and power projections. Always.

Democrats will also do that, sometimes, but not always. Don’t vote for evil, but don’t let guaranteed evil ever get unfettered control of a flawed constitutional system built where evil cannot be stopped other than by extreme means involving violence and bloodshed. See slavery and what we had to go thru to ultimately eliminate it.

These two groups have a stranglehold on our politics and no amount of bullshitting is going to work around it. If people weren’t smart enough to pick Sanders over Clinton in 2016, if people were’nt cognizant enough of the idea behind not supporting Clinton in the primary simply based on not allowing a few ‘royal’ styled families to maintain a grasp on the reigns of power, if We the People aren’t rioting in the streets to maintain an open, independent, liberal democracy, why would you expect people be smart enough to engage a third party candidate?

You have to plan ahead instead of yelling about it the last goddamn minute (in terms of election timing, this is the last minute) if you ever plan to side step D vs R, you have to look ahead 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 12 years and laser focus on all elections on all positions including packing the court with ethical judges that aren’t beholden to ludicrous legal think tank fronts acting as formal legal society clubs. But nobody has time for that much less the will to create a set of policies that will garner support of a large enough swath of voters that it could affect the sweeping change you want so bad (and yes, that we all probably need).

At this point, unfortunately, you’re a chump for thinking things will change by playing into the same trap of voting third party against the two parties holding all the cards.

The greater of two evils won in 2016. If you saw no difference between the Trump and Biden presidency, you’re a privileged person with the luxury to worry about genocide in another country more than what will happen to you.

It’s because of people like you letting them get away with being the lesser of the evils. If Dems were an overwhelming majority they couldn’t campaign on how close they are to losing everything.

I was a Republican and have voted the same number of times you have. Republicans fucking joke about people like you allowing them to win.