• 22 Posts
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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 19th, 2023

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  • You said “if anecdote isn’t enough, they’re both well-studied”, so I thought some research actually existed about it.

    I’m not saying third party campaigns are useless or always spoilers, I just don’t think they can actually force a change since it seems they can successfully be ignored with no repercussions. Sure, major parties can pick up bits from their programs if they want to, but they’re definitely not in a situation where they have to or else they’ll risk the election.

    Even now for example, I think every non-major candidate except Kennedy is against funding Israel. But despite that, and despite (I think?) the majority of Americans being against it as well, both Biden and Trump are running with it. Because they know it’s not an issue that actually “matters” to the campaign, since there’s no viable alternative that doesn’t support it.



  • What I’m saying is, how did those studies reach the conclusion that said third parties were actually a factor in those changes, and didn’t just happen at the same time?

    Because again, considering the statistics for recent years’ elections, third parties haven’t been a threat to the major two for over 50 years. I’m interested in why would they care about the relatively small voter base of those parties when they wouldn’t have changed any recent American election.


  • I’ll admit I’m not that well-informed on those elections, but would’ve they really been capable of being more than a spoiler candidate, had they not been “listened to”?

    Looking at the data, every election in the past 200 years has been won with more than 50% of the electoral college. Latest one where a state has been won by a third party is ‘68. If those phenomena have been studied I’m interested, because it really doesn’t seem like they did anything looking at the results at a surface level.









  • So instead of just you know, arguing with people on a platform I’m already on, I should sign up on a different site, search for posts from 4+ years ago and go harass random people that might’ve already regretted their decision. Definitely requires the same effort.

    Why don’t you take your own advice and, instead of telling leftists what to do on Lemmy, you go on Facebook and do that yourself? You could also go directly for conservatives since they’re basically the root of the whole problem.




  • Where am I contradicting myself exactly? He has a public image to keep, so he can’t openly say that. But he very much can act accordingly anyway, and that’s what he’s doing. Because he knows we have no viable alternative and anyone who seriously cares about minimizing casualties (so apparently not you) will not risk Trump getting reelected over some moral superiority that means nothing. He’s never going to lose over his support for genocide because you literally can’t vote against it. That’s how two-party systems work, period. The only reasons he can possibly lose over are differences between his agenda and his opponent’s, and genocide is unfortunately not one of those.

    You’re the one trying to avoid guilt so that when a genocide-enabling candidate inevitably gets elected you can say to yourself “well at least I didn’t vote for them!”.


  • If we were actually fucking united on this issue he would fold like wet cardboard! If his rallies were filled with protesters instead of blue-no-matter-whos chanting “four more years!” he would understand. He’s not a demon. He’s a politician.

    This is just naive. Protesting against Biden’s Middle East policies is basically kids threatening to run away from home if their parents don’t buy them what they want.

    Of course Biden is never going to say this because, again, he’s a politician and has a public image to keep, but he could literally reply to said protestors “Or else? You gonna let Trump win and do worse? Yeah right, now shut up and vote for me”, and they would have absolutely nothing to answer.

    That’s how two-party systems work. You identify the worse outcome and vote for the other one. The only way to force the second-worst party to get better is to force the actual worst one to do it first.