Really you don’t need to read more than one chart:
If you vote for anyone other than Harris, you’re voting for Trump:
Using Third Way as a source? The same organization that helped push the entire party and country to the right? Bill Clinton and Third Way started the shift to the right and Harris finalized that transition to become the dominant conservative party.
I have other sites with the same stats, but this article makes the dangers of third paries easiest to understand.
Use those other sites. Third Way is a large contributor to why the Democrats are continually threatened by third parties. Their whole idea is that Democrats can and should go as hard toward the right as possible because the left flank of the party is (a) bad for their financial backers and (b) has to vote Democratic. You can’t promote that position and then act like a shocked Pikachu when your own philosophy ends up creating the problem you now want to warn against.
Plus all those godforsaken inaccurate pie charts other people pointed out.
Oh wow, thirdway.org says you can’t have an alternative to two candidates who don’t represent you and have to choose between the candidates offered to you no matter your politics!
You don’t say!
In case any reader of this post isn’t aware: thirdway.org is the website for people associated with the Third Way which is described as a triangulation between communism and capitalism but ends up still being capitalism somehow.
Triangulation was a middle ground between Democrat and Republican ideology developed by Bill Clinton, Third Way, and the DLC. And has helped shift the entire party to the right. It has nothing to do with communism.
Garbage like this article and Third Way is self serving
Third way politics were common in Europe and there they were explicitly anticommunist. I think they were even promoted by state department cutouts. I didn’t want to make it solely about the us third way even though that website is the us third way clintonite psychos.
Whomst are absolutely anticommunist as well.
I’m just astounded that a person would post an article from the third way to make the case against third parties.
Why do other countries get more than two choices but we cant?
Voters convinced via gaslighting and propaganda they have no other choice.
TIL that “scientifically being able to prove the FPTP system the US uses will always devolve into a two-party system and make third-party candidates nothing more than spoilers” is “gaslighting” and “third-parties who do fuck-all for four years and curiously only show up to run for president instead of GOTV pushes and trying to win elections at local levels to build support for their party” is propaganda.
Who knew? Well, aside from everyone who knows how the US system is set up and isn’t arguing in bad faith, that is.
Largely it has to do with the form of government. Countries with many (too many?) choices are Parliamentary forms of government:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parliamentary_system
The US is a Presidential system, not a Parliamentary one.
No most of them started out as monarchies so they cant have parliaments. That would be a change in how the government functions, and that’s impossible.
Constitutional Monarchies are still a parliamentary form of government. See England as a prime example.
No most of them started out as monarchies so they cant have parliaments. That would be a change in how the government functions, and that’s impossible
Well that’s not true at all. Parliamentary monarchies are absolutely a thing, the UK being one.
That is just bullshit. While your president is powerful, a lot of the power of government resides within the parliament itself.
As long as US media calls candidates of other parties as “independents” your political system stais a fucked up mono party system.
To change the Satus quo, laws must put in place, like in other countries that force media to represent all parties.
In addition you have to stop with this excessive money dependent political campaigns.
Those are gatekeeping tactics designed to keep the power in the hands of the two major parties.
There is no reason why your system could not work with more competitors.
edit: also, using a voting mechanism that was good in times before telegraph, telephone and internet makes it nearly impossible for smaller parties to get anything out of an election.
There is no reason not to use the popular vote. None!
The Electoral College system blocks using the popular vote. Changing that means changing the Constitution.
There are lots of competitors in US elections, but most are eliminated during the primaries.
When you have more than two candidates in the final round, the winner may not represent the will of the people. You can end up with a majority preferring A to B, a majority preferring B to C, and a majority preferring C to A. No matter who wins, the majority can identify a preferable candidate.
In fact, Kenneth Arrow mathematically proved that multiparty elections will always produce paradoxical results like that. That’s why the winners of multiparty elections are often decided by elite kingmakers, eg Macron.
Because many poeple have decided to uphold the notion America is somehow more complex than other first world nations that magically figured out things like multiple parties, universal healthcare, automatic tax forms, minimum wage that is enough to live on, and state protected maternity leave.
I don’t live in a swing state, I get to vote for whoever I want. Lets not pretend like the election doesnt boil down to half a million voters in like 4 or 5 different states. This is as much a reality as anything you’ve said, probably more.
Outside of a swing state, you’re right… right up until the National Popular Vote movement is in effect in enough states to get 270 Electoral College votes:
https://www.nationalpopularvote.com/state-status
"&As of April 15, 2024, the National Popular Vote bill has been enacted into law in 18 jurisdictions possessing 209 electoral votes, including
6 small jurisdictions (District of Columbia, Delaware, Hawaii, Maine, Rhode Island, Vermont),
9 medium-sized states (Colorado, Connecticut, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Jersey, New Mexico, Oregon, Washington), and
3 big states (California, Illinois, New York).
The National Popular Vote bill will take effect when enacted into law by states possessing 270 electoral votes (a majority of the 538 electoral votes). The bill will take effect when enacted by states possessing an additional 61 electoral votes."
I dunno, I saw some stats the other day indicating that if all the non-voters in supposedly solid red states actually went and voted, then they might be able to swing the state.
Yeah and if all the people who dislike both parties voted for the same third party they’d win, but that’s not going to happen either.
Why should it? Why should anyone vote for a candidate with no political administration experience? Regardless of their stated positions, what evidence do voters have that any of the third party candidates have the skills necessary to execute the duties of the office effectively? Without progressives in Congress, how exactly is a progressive administration supposed to navigate gridlock better than the neo liberals?
If you live in a swing state or any state that is up for grabs, then yeah don’t vote for third party. If your in a deep blue/red state, I’m talking > 15 percent swing, vote for whoever you want in the presidential, your votes just going to get collapsed into the state vote for the electoral college any way. Should still vote for the two parties or whoever’s competitive in state and local elections because your vote can have an effect.
If the electoral college says my vote effectively doesn’t matter in deciding the next president since I’m in California, then at least let me use my vote to send some sort of message.
