this post was submitted on 25 Jun 2024
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A Boring Dystopia
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Oh man I'd love to, but with the current voting system and the two parties, it's between a shit sandwich and a shit sandwich with razors in it.
King Log (does nothing) and King Heron (eats all the frogs, id est, the constituency).
This is an old problem.
Third parties really don't matter. You have one vote which is against the guy who will do his part for Project 2025 (end democracy -- and Democrats -- and install a one-party autocratic state, who doesn't even have to pretend to care what you think). And you do that by voting for the other popular guy, the Democrat.
If you vote for a third party or you don't vote, then you do nothing to stop the rise of autocracy. Obviously, a vote for the Republican is a vote to accelerate the one-party autocracy process. So those are your options.
Third parties only act as spoilers in FPTP elections, and the campaign machines for both major parties regard and will regard them as such.
Ross Perot ran for President as an independent as a third party candidate getting 18% of the vote and none of the EC, and is the record holder for the largest share by a third-party presidential candidate.
Okay, if you don't care which of the two guys gets elected (Democrat or Republican) then sure, vote for the third party of your choice. That said, we don't know if Perot was a successful spoiler. If Perot pulled (approximately) two GOP voters for every one Democrat, then yes, he was a successful spoiler (the math is even more sophisticates, since this would have to be calculated for each swing state and then summed up) but we don't know.
But in 2024, every Republican voted into office advances the effort towards turning the US into a one party autocracy. This means you have to vote tactically based on if you want that process sped up, slowed down or don't care. Unless you're close enough to a billionaire to get the fuck out of dodge (e.g. leave the US for extended leave) then a Trump presidency is going to lead to a lot of Trumpgrets, and a risky venture through the gravity well of a purge and holocaust.
I can't speak for you guys, but I don't want to risk dying in a concentration camp, and I can't emphasize enough how much that is totally not hyperbole.
The answer is it's all up in the air.
I expect there's a massive GOP movement to suppress votes and gerrymander other votes. I suspect there are efforts to defraud the election in some counties or even in some whole states. But I don't know how successful they will be.
I expect there will be an attempted coup d'etat if Biden wins the election, but I don't presume it's going to overthrow the US. We may break out into civil war, but then if the Republican party takes power, the US is going to be really hazardous anyway. I'm no expert, but by my understanding civil war is going to be inevitable so long as we can't get relief from the mass precarity and enough election reform to empower the public. And since the Democratic party still treats its progressive wing as red-haired stepchildren who have to dine at their own table, we can expect only table scraps.
Biden staying in the White House means I probably have longer before I'm collected to be processed as an undesirable. It could make a difference of months or decades.
That said, I'm pissed off, too, the degree to which the US is responsible for the Palestinian genocide, though the way I've been following it, Biden has been doing a lot more than the neo-liberal norm to quietly slow down Netanyahu's offensive into Gaza. Not as much as I'd like, by far, but more than I'd expect from an establishment Democrat. Biden's been slow-walking aid to Israel, whereas we expect the Republican party is glad to facilitate massacring Palestinians while simultaneously cutting off support to Ukraine so Russia can take over.
Assuming you are a voter, it's up to you, and maybe it's more important to you to symbolically support Palestine by not voting against the Republican party. But doing so might have material effects that make things worse in Gaza, hence I'm going to vote tactically.
Okay.
I live in a rural area and all options are basically the same. The only real difference is Republicans usually going hard on the maga shit. Policy wise there's not a ton of difference. Sometimes we'll get a libertarian.
I wouldn't even know where to begin. Between my job and everything else I have going on I don't have the free time or mental energy for that level of political activism.
The good ol us of a
Write in candidates to defeat the two party system and FPTP voting. Brilliant.
Maybe, but not the way you think.
If the democratic party gave a fuck about what their party thinks they would have moved further left to scoop up the Bernie supporters. Instead they keep moving right.
can we vote for imaginary politicians now?
I don't believe there is a single politician out there who mean more than 2% of what they say.
I definitely lean left in almost any category... the problem is that even if a politician or party directly promise, word for word, exactly what I want. There is zero chance they will even try to implement it when they get to power; worse, there is not even a way to keep them accountable except "not voting for them again".
I live in Canada and I voted for Trudeau in great part for electoral reform which was directly promised and then completely 180d. Trudeau did a couple of OK things but for the most part has been mediocre (not the cause of all our problems as the opposition claims). However, I find myself now in the spot where I either vote for Trudeau again to keep on the mediocrity train, or vote for PP who stands for nothing, has accomplished nothing in over 20 years of being a public employee leech and has all but promised he will run the country off a cliff to own the libs
PP is short for Pierre Poilievre who is the head of the Conservative Party (our version of USA's Republicans) and likely to win the next election in 2025
The closest we get here is the NDP (New Democratic Party) who are left leaning... but they are in shambles here
I live in Oklahoma. Often, I don’t even get to vote for a position, because the only candidate that runs is a Republican.
And having volunteered on several Dem campaigns, that’s because Oklahoman republicans are allowed to terrorize and harass Dems into not running at all.
Does this also apply to primaries? My ruby red state has an open primary, and our democrat ran unopposed, so I voted for the less "trumpy" republican for state positions. Excited that my state will have the PSL candidate on the ticket this November though.