When will be your “this is the last fucking time I’m voting for the ‘lesser of two evils’, then I don’t care after that, let this country burn to the ground”? For me, this is basically it. This is last election I’m going for that " lesser of two evils" bullshit. After that I’m done. It’s just pointless. Let’s hear it.
Uh, never? As an American I can easily recognize that we live in a 2-party political system in which you have 3 real options:
- Vote for the Democrats
- Vote for the Republicans
- Don’t vote / Waste your vote
American politics is a game of tug-of-war. You can spend as much time as you want lamenting that the rope isn’t exactly where you want it to be right now. But the fact is that one party is pulling the rope to the left and the other party is pulling it to the right. If you want the rope to move right you better join the people on the right, and if you want the rope to move to the left you better join the people on the left. And more to the point, if for whatever reason you don’t want to pull (maybe because it seems futile or maybe because you just don’t like the people on your team) then where can you expect it to move other than away from where you want it to be?
There is no politician on Earth who perfectly represents my politics, ideals or philosophy. If I wanted someone who perfectly represented exactly what I want I would get politically active and run for office myself. In lieu of that, what else can I hope for but to vote for the people who happen to be pulling in my direction, or at the very least pulling back against the mob of right-wing fascist criminals.
I don’t think Biden is perfect, but he’s certainly not evil. What’s more, I know exactly what we’re up against when it comes to Trump and the Republicans (who at best are spineless impotent political cowards, and at worst are fascist activists who want to strip people of rights, further rob the working class, deny climate change in the name of profit, destroy what little democracy we have, and weaponize the government against political enemies).
I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again for all takers, name any politician who you think would be making more progress on important issues (healthcare, climate, education, transportation, lgbtq rights, women’s rights, the economy, etc.) than Biden right now and I’ll give you at least 3 reasons why they wouldn’t. (Hint: the House, the Senate, the courts, state legislatures, inflation, unstable geopolitics, post-pandemic economic change, etc.) Bernie or Warren could be sitting in the Oval Office today, and we still wouldn’t have universal healthcare (because of Congress), we still wouldn’t have been able to wipe out student debt (because of the courts), we still would have to deal with wars and terrorism overseas (because of aggression from countries like Russia and Iran), and we still would be feeling the effects of inflation (because of decades of low interest rates coupled with pandemic supply chain fuckery).
So yeah, I’m not gonna stop voting for the better candidate of the two, because what the fuck else would any reasonable person do? Pull the rope towards where you want it to go. It’s not hard.
BTW: If you regret that we live within a political reality where we have limited choices and the risks of wasting your vote are high, then you should join the movement to implement more democratic voting systems like Ranked-Choice (aka Instant Runoff) or STAR, as well as reforms to political dark money.
Even still, many of these changes are more likely to happen at a state/local level before anything can happen federally. But that’s just one more good reason to be interested and involved in regional politics also.
also afaik (i’m not american but yknow; can’t escape the intricacies of US politics) changes at the state/local level can often effect federal elections directly… aren’t there some places that do ranked choice voting federally?
Great response!
I too will keep voting for the better choice.
What if one person pulls to the right and the other actively gives out more and more rope, telling bystanders he’s trying to “work with the other side to find a common middle ground”?
If you don’t pull you’re actively giving up more rope than anyone. That’s exactly the point.
IMO there’s no one to vote for in Presidential elections who pulls the rope to the left.
There’s one guy pulling it to the right and another one who wants to use the rope to strangle the referee.
Voting a third party is not throwing your vote away. It’s actually often the best way to make your vote matter.
Third parties in the US tend to run on smaller platforms pushing their key issues. Typically, these issues attract voters on one side of the spectrum more than the others: in other words, some third parties attract liberal voters while others attract conservative voters. This means that they compete with one of the major parties more strongly than the other for votes.
Votes for a major party typically do not have a huge effect on the presidential race unless you’re in a swing state. For example, the last time my state voted Republican was 35 years ago, and since then a Democrat has one by more than 10 percentage points. A million Biden voters could have switched their votes to a third party last election and he would have still won my state.
But a million votes for a third party would have been noticed by the Democrats, especially if similar numbers were posted across the US. The Democrats would have had to figure out why they were losing votes, and amend their platform in the future to win those lost voters back.
For example, major work reforms in the early 20th Century (including ending child labor, the 8 hour workday, and the 40 hour workweek) and the focus on the federal budget in the last 30 years have both been due to third parties pushing their pet issues into prominence and forcing the major parties into taking stances on them. A vote for a third party is a warning sign to the major parties that they need to amend their platforms in the future to avoid losing more votes, and that pushes change way faster than blindly voting a single party’s status quo.
Voting a third party is not throwing your vote away. It’s actually often the best way to make your vote matter.
I strongly disagree with this.
Elections are simply a case of math. If you abstain from voting, write in some random name, or otherwise vote for a candidate who is statistically incapable of winning, then there are only still only two outcomes for your vote:
- In the best case scenario, like you’re describing, your vote has no effect on the outcome and your 2nd place candidate happens to win anyway.
- In the worst case scenario, however, vote splitting leads to the well-documented phenomenon known as the spoiler effect. In which case the 3rd most popular candidate, who may not represent anything close to the will of the democratic plurality, will win.
Personally I always plan around the worst case scenario when making important decisions, and so I don’t believe in the concept of the “protest vote”. Especially since so little concrete information can be derived from “reading the tea leaves” of 3rd party votes. (A big part of your premise revolves around the idea that someone out there will somehow get whatever message you’re trying to send by voting for a 3rd party candidate. And that’s obviously a very indirect and abstract form of protest even in the best case scenario. )
Also I think it’s a strech to attribute easily 20th century work reforms to 3rd parties as they exist today considering two points: (1) there was a radical shift in political power, generally towards progressivism, at that time and (2) it can be argued that many of these reforms could be attributed more to labor unions in general than any one political party.
Vote how you want, or not at all, but we can’t escape math in the end. Statistically speaking, a protest vote is at best a benign waste of a vote and at worst the cause of undemocratic election outcomes via the spoiler effect. So I’ll continue to recommend against it, and recommend for more democratic voting systems that are less prone to manipulation and spoilage.
The simple math is that a +/- 500,000 votes for Joe Biden in 2020, who got 81,283,501 total, would have barely noticeable. However, +/- 500,000 votes for Jo Jorgenson, who got 1,865,535, or Howie Hawkins, who got 407,068, would have been much more noteworthy.
Your vote simply has a bigger impact when you’re voting for a smaller candidate.
And yes, third parties do pressure major parties to alter their platforms, and this is well documented. The clearest example is Ross Perot getting 19% of the vote in 1992 and pushing his pet issue (the federal budget) into every election since then, still persisting today over 30 years later.
I really feel sorry for people in the USA.
The worst thing that happened to your country since WW2 was fighting and winning the cold war. The outright rejection of anything even slightly left of centre as communism!!! has destroyed your democracy.
Add in non compulsory voting and I have no idea how you change it.
Being real, it wasn’t the cold war that fucked us. Jim Crow fucked us. Hundreds of years of slavery and racism ruined us. Everything post cold war you’re thinking of goes back to the divide that wants to keep black people down. The side that wants that also wants to keep the gays and women in their place too, but they want the blacks back in their fucking cotton fields first.
When the racists had a setback during the civil rights era, they hid. Everyone else thought they would die off and that was that. But then the southern strategy was enacted, and the fuckers started undoing things slow enough that it didn’t look as bad as it was. Between the racists hiding, and the oligarchs buying anyone they could off, we got to where we are now. In danger of civil war, and with no will on one side to fight it.
This is exactly what fucked us. You breathe next to some idiots and you’re a “communist”. What’s sad is that they don’t even know how to fucking define “communism” or whatever they call you. You ask for fair wages for workers? You’re a communist/socialist. You ask for free/affordable healthcare college? Fuck you you fucking communist. And so on. They just throw it around.
What an enlightening comment. It made me think. Thanks.
when the greater evil doesn’t want me dead just for existing and isn’t trying to destroy democracy
Never. Just vote. Be a grain of sand on the scales that keeps things from going to absolute shit. It costs you almost nothing, just a tiny amount of time.
It’s ok, you can stop voting, actually everyone should stop voting, that way there will be no “lesser of two evils”, it will just be the WORST evil taking over.
And you won’t even be allowed to have the free speech rights to get on the internet and bitch about it, because that’s how dictatorships in fascist countries work.
Maybe if Americans knew how good other countries have it, they might stand up and fight for a better nation and DEMAND changes in the laws that govern our elected officials, instead of constantly voting for idiots whose only agenda after getting elected is to destroy America and make it a fucked up theocracy.
You get the country you participate in.
[steps off soap box, turns off spotlight and leaves the building]If you choose not to vote, you’re only helping the greater of two evils.
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Exactly. No matter what, there’s always a worse option. Always vote against the worse option.
That then lets the least worse option have no actual policies, make zero substantive change while in office because they know you will always vote for them.
But that is more about FPTP voting and the two party system.
Biden has accomplished more legislation and gained more jobs than any POTUS since FDR. Not too bad.
I am glad you can keep the faith and keep voting but I also understand the OP’s (and a lot of other american’s) ennui.
When it seems the Dems biggest selling point is “Well, at least we are not the GOP” but have little or no actual policies to enrich the lives of the people who vote for them it must be very disheartening for millions of your average citizens when their options are terrible or more of the same with no real improvement.
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Possibly controversial opinion, the left needs a Fox News. A station that just unapologetically pushes liberal talking points and pays newsworthiness the same lip service that Fox does. Fuck this holier than thou bullshit we’ve got going on; fight propaganda with better propaganda.
Better question for the “lesser of two evils” crowd: What’s the endgame here? In my experience, the strategy is to try to hold together enough of a Democratic voting bloc by browbeating and berating leftists to keep the greater evil out of office, and the result is that politics has marched steadily to the right, Now we’re teetering on the edge of fascism, with a Democratic President supporting genocide in another country and breaking strikes like he was ol’ Ronnie. We can’t go on like this. It can’t work forever. Eventually, the threat of a fascist getting into office will be a reality; they only have to win once, and we have to win every time. It could very well be 2024 that they do it.
At what point do we attempt something better? As commentators like Thomas Pikkety have written, there are important issues that transcend the traditional left-right spectrum, that could peel away a lot of working-class voters who feel abandoned by the neo-liberal policies of the Democratic Party.
Do we just keep voting for the lesser evil in the hopes that we can do it long enough for some unforeseen, future political shift to just sort of happen before the lesser evil is also a fascist?
I suppose it’ll continue until enough people believe that it’s possible for a third party to win.
I think ranked choice voting would make it much simpler to foment that change. People need to be able to trust that breaking from the party line has a real chance of success, but that can’t happen without demonstrating support.
If we can’t have real ranked choice voting, a third party could build a website to let people coordinate votes according to ranked choice, and hopefully carry the result as a unified bloc to the polls. Have an agreement that if a certain threshold of participation is met, vote for the ranked choice result. Otherwise, lesser of 2 evils.
The first-past-the-post vote counting all but guarantees a two-party system, but the thing is, it doesn’t have to be the same two parties that we’re used to. If it did, we’d still have Whigs. If coordination of masses of people online works, we could just replace one of the two parties outright.
Perhaps. In theory, you’re definitely right. I just feel that this is something where building the momentum during a single election cycle isn’t feasible. The most likely result of voting for a third party without laying this groundwork would be splitting the vote and giving a landslide victory to the greater of the two evils.
Formally organising online would make it possible to demonstrate how much support each candidate actually has without giving an official vote to a candidate that the general public isn’t confident enough to vote for. Watching participation grow and third parties receive substantial semi-official support could build excitement and lead to a third party being trusted to have the sway to win.
I’d love to be proven wrong though. If we can organize enough support for a third party within a single election cycle that it’s reasonable to risk voting for that candidate, I’m open to it. I already have too much on my plate, but if no one has built this service by the time I have energy for it, I’ll definitely be thinking about it
I appreciate this comment so much
the way to change the system isn’t through the system… you’re not going to get a 3rd party in a US federal election the way it’s structured right now!
the way you get a 3rd party is to change the game: participate locally to change to ranked choice voting (etc), try and get the NPVIC passed (although that might be a pipe dream for now)
in the meantime, vote for the lesser of 2 evils because real important things are at stake
I remember when an outfit called The New Party tried it back in the 1990’s. They organized locally to push for electoral fusion (allowing candidates to run in on mutltiple party tickets) and alternative vote count systems.
The Democratic Party conspired with the Republican Party to shut down New Party reforms. The two entrenched powers are not about to let third parties become viable. I’m not sure that’s a viable tactic in states that don’t have direct-democracy mechanisms to get around them.
well, as far as the EC goes the democrats have a vested interested in removing it… the republicans would fight tooth and nail to keep it because there’s no way they’d win honestly, but that’d be the single biggest help the democrats could hope for
and as far as voting systems go, that’s why yoh start locally… afaik there are some places that use alternative voting systems to vote in the federal election… a big change is, you’re right, basically impossible… but small changes? who knows!
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You’re probably gonna continue reading doomer posts on the internet, getting grey hairs and high blood pressure
But the one chance you can do something to change things
You just won’t?
I’m just sick of it all.
That’s fair. I’m just trying to say, consider how you direct that resentment. It might be far healthier in the long run to limit how much you consume news media, rather than swearing off voting
Welcome to adulthood.
You’re going to be worse than sick of it all when through action or inaction, you allow a proven authoritarian to take power. Then, you will no longer HAVE a choice and you think the government sucks now? You’ve got a rude awakening on the horizon.
Maybe we NEED shit to get majorly worse so people can actually take action and make the change they need themselves? I feel like people are getting complacent with the Democrats’ bullshit argument of “hey, look at us, we are a teeny meeny bit better than the other guys. See? Aaaahhhh. Now stfu and vote for us and be thankful”. I feel like this is their way of not doing much, and doing very little to look better than the other fuckers.
You’re not making sense. You’re “sick of it all” so you want to make things catastrophically worse. It’s at best an ill-considered position, at worst one might think you are spreading a terrible idea on purpose.
I understand your position on what I’m saying. It’s fucked up, I know. Nothing in our politics makes shit of a sense either.
How does it change anything
Republicans took away Americans’ right to an abortion by voting for Trump. Is that nothing to you?
You could also say democrats didn’t do enough to protect abortion rights.
Protect abortion rights from what?
Not voting is voting for the greater of 2 evils.
I vote third party every time. I don’t care if they’re more likely to lose, the whole point of a democracy is that we vote honestly and that every voice actually serves as a voice which goes against the herd mentality. So I’ve never voted for the “lesser of two evils”, I’ve been voting for actual good people every time because they friggin’ earned it, not the people who have leveraged into victory based on the fact they have victory in the first place.
This would be perfectly fine with ranked choice voting.
Unfortunately, the US doesn’t have that so that’s the same as an empty vote. You get to take the “moral high ground” while still actively voting to let the country go to the dumps. Great job.
How is it voting to let the country go to the dumps when in the same logic it’s supposedly throwing said vote away? It’s neither; I didn’t vote for the country to go to the dumps, I voted for the third party candidate, in contrast to people who voted for one of the two main candidates based on peer pressure and more literally voted for the country to go to the dumps. That, I argue, is wasting your vote, because at that point it’s not even your own vote. The point of voting is that all votes are holons of the result, not drops in a nebulous mass.
Throughout history, it has been the inaction of those who could have acted; the indifference of those who should have known better; the silence of the voice of justice when it mattered most; that has made it possible for evil to triumph.
… your vote has power… inaction allows, or using your vote in a way that will never change an outcome is complicity
I mean the quote is kind of the driving aspect of my point. The quote is a commonly quoted WWII quote, it mentions we should speak up and act when necessary. I consider voting third party to be this, or if it isn’t, it’s still better than voting for someone based on their victory chances because that makes us fall into another WWII cliché, the one where we’re just “following orders” (and because it’s more of an effort than not showing up to the polls, it’s better than not trying).
i’m not talking about doing nothing, but point your effort where it can make change… voting 3rd party is a hopelessly ineffective way of making change… it’s a dream, and that’s it. it makes you feel good, and that’s it, but it’ll never EVER change anything… that is just the mathematics and sociology of how the voting system works
work towards changing from first past the post and removing the electoral college (there are effects to do both of these things that ARE making progress! some of them are even close!)
only THEN can you vote 3rd party and not have it a complete waste
but in the meantime, i beg you, vote for the party that isn’t actively campaigning to persecute minorities, who gave you at least a half way form of socialised healthcare, who’s at least trying with green energy, whose policies and positions are at least internally consistent for the most part
and most importantly, vote for the party that isn’t trying to make it harder to vote for anyone else, because you can be sure that gerrymandering, fucking with the supreme court, playing bullshit political games with voter ID all makes it harder to vote in a 3rd party candidate too
Change is what people make of it, is it not?
change has nothing to do with people until it does… change is just change. change when it comes to people and social systems is effective only when it effects the majority of people that are touched by an issue. voting 3rd party after not for some time is change of a kind, but i wouldn’t call it social change
social change comes when a large number of people decide something should be different, and the mathematics and sociology behind first past the post means that it’d take something so close to impossible that it’s not worth classing in the realms of possibility for a 3rd party to have any effect on the political system
the reality of the system is that the US is a 2 party system… the statistics of FPTP, and the game theory that leads to defensive voting, spoiler effect, and any number of other bad outcomes ensures that
within such a system, you just can’t hope to have an outcome other than 1 of the 2 parties having any real impact, thus you have to change 1 of the parties to be the way you want it to be, or you must change the system
you could argue that voting 3rd party forces the parties to change their positions, but historically that hasn’t really happened so i personally wouldn’t hold my breath
vote defensively, and work to change the system… because changing the system is incremental, achievable, and less subject to the whims of a few
, the whole point of a democracy is that we vote honestly
LOL, who told you that?
The dictionary. Democracy is, by definition, where every voice can be itself.
What kind of dictionary are you using??
An etymological one. It’s a combination of “demos” meaning “of each citizen” and “kratos” meaning “rule”. Demo-cracy.
That doesn’t support your earlier claims. And the etymology of a word isn’t its definition.
How so?
If you need the concept of a word having a definition explained to you, you need to be talking to sometime far more patient than me.
okay but that’s just screaming into the void… they gain nothing from your vote, you gain nothing from your vote… it doesn’t matter how worthy they are, it’s exactly the same in literally every way as not voting
They gain a vote from my vote (a vote like any other, and it’s not like one of the leading parties doesn’t someday naturally lose as well), and I gain the license to say I acted like a person in this democracy, not the kind of person who “just follows orders” just because the outcome of those who do is the most likely to succeed. I could always “not vote” but I might as well try. To try and fail is better to never try. And I will always vote based on my own genuine thoughts and nobody else’s, naturally this means not voting for the two candidates who are the embodiment of taking things for granted. Plus it’s not like nobody is tuning in.
okay but a vote doesn’t actually benefit anyone, and neither does being able to say you “acted like a person”
a vote is worthless on its own. a vote is only worthwhile when it has a chance of producing an outcome, and a vote for 3rd party has no chance of producing any outcome
you get to take some moral high ground, which is great that you can do that and risk very little… meanwhile, people’s lives are actually at risk
its a shit situation: nobody is denying that at all (well i’m sure some people are, but i sure ain’t!)… but realistically, the only way to make any difference is (as someone further up thread put it) to tug the tug of war rope on the direction you prefer, while working to change the game
That’s the thing. How do you define a chance of producing an outcome? You define it by people deciding to vote to make that difference. To go about it based on how others vote is to be a follower, and to make a difference is leading. I vote regardless of apparent voter outcome because I am devoted to contributing to said outcome. I’m trying to be the change I want in the world. The leading two people have always made it clear that choosing people based on what they have going for them is their game, a game I fight by doing exactly as I do. To be “realistic”, as you say, is to surrender.
okay, but now you’re fighting game theory and maths
that’s just not going to work out well
it’s irrelevant what you want at the end of the day… voting for some “best” option is only useful if it’s even remotely likely to happen… don’t get me wrong, if it’s a slim chance of a great outcome that’s one thing but the odds of everyone deciding to do the same thing at the same time are basically 0
sure, vote how you like, but you’re more likely to win the lottery than to have a 3rd party candidate elected and i think we can all agree you don’t buy lottery tickets because you think you might win
I just don’t think voting for the least useful candidate who happens to be the one up on stage is by definition more useful. It’s similar to upvoting/downvoting a Reddit comment when almost everyone else is going the opposite way. You could argue resistance is futile, but you’ll probably do it anyways.
okay, well if the republicans had their way i’d be tortured forever in conversion therapy, there’d be no movement at all on green energy, the solution to homelessness would probably boil down to if you’re going through a rough patch it’s execution time, christianity would be mandatory
both sides are NOT the same… 1 side is mostly inept, and the other side is actively trying to persecute people, to which i’d say
First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a socialist.Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a trade unionist.Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Jew.Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.
I gain the license to say I acted like a person in this democracy,
In other words, you get to indulge your vanity.
The alternative is having no sense of self at all.
If your sense of self only comes from voting, you have SERIOUS problems.
I didn’t say that, I meant in the context of voting.
In that case your problem is thinking that voting is about you and how it makes you feel. It’s not.
Wow, finally, a fucking sane comment. There is hope still then.
Never. That is a position for the naive.
Until it actually boils over or we get rid of first past the post (and you’ll need MASSIVE protests to do the latter.)
Fuck accelerationists. They’re either dumbfucks who think their Apocalypse Badass Man fantasies will come true (and contrary to popular belief this person absolutely exists on the left,) or yuppies who know they have an easy out in the form of either a work visa in somewhere like Canada or leeching from a developing country working remotely and not contributing to where they live at all (and so many of these yuppies are self-proclaimed collectivists.) The rest of us are getting out of here in a casket or a refugee boat if it boils over. So how about we take at least a modicum of effort to take care of our society. Voting is the bare minimum.
2016 was my year, and that election pretty much slapped me in the face for doing so.
Until the fascist part stops being fascists, I feel morally obligated to vote for the same party for the continued benefit (and rights) of the LGBT+ members of my family.
i, and i’m sure they, appreciate the heck out of that sentiment
