All meaningful progress happens at the local level. You'll never get support for your federal party if your 3rd party candidate doesn't have a municipal and state foundation of like minded people working towards a common goal.
this post was submitted on 01 Oct 2024
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Been saying this every time the subject it brought up. The Green Party is nowhere to be found three years of every four, and even in the election year- they seem to offer a lot of shit with no clear path to actually make it happen.
I think we’re finding out that they’ve always been a spoiler party. They were never meant to actually get elected. Just divide and distract.
And the did this VERY effectively. Just look at lemmy if you want a microcosm of how that shit works.
See this interview Jill Stein did that's viral right now of her refusing to call Putin a war criminal despite easily saying it about netenhayu (5:30 start)
https://youtu.be/h1JUMeWaBVg?si=TbuHDikEtN0HGVHb
She's not allowed to or her dark money dries up.
There a dinner where she's at the table with him.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/guess-who-came-dinner-flynn-putin-n742696
Yeah. Leftists are in as much denial of their hero’s corruption as MAGA is. There’s no getting through to them at all.
When did Bernie get corrupted?
Most of the people still supporting Stein are calling Bernie a sellout because he's telling people to vote for Democrats.
Taking about Shill Stein.
I think Nader truly wanted to drive change. But since he’s been gone the party hasn’t done much of anything to be taken seriously.
Exactly. And what is super annoying about this, is that to most people, it’s painfully obvious what they’re up to.
MAGA exists to round up all the full-blown idiots and the Green Party exists to round up all the would-be idiots still on the fence. It’s so incredibly obvious!
And yet there are so many people that think people like Shill Stein have their best interests in mind.
They have the same mindset as maga assuming this person who has never actually done anything to help them has their best interests at heart. So frustrating to see that level of cognitive dissonance. Literally impossible to have a conversation with either of those groups.
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If they were wanting to make a real difference, we'd see them on local ballots advocating for alternative voting systems like STAR or ranked-choice voting. Like, that should be their #1 priority.
A comment so nice you made it five times!
Doh!
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Might be nice if most of those third parties ran for lower offices once in a while too rather just go for the highest rung on the ladder.
You don't see too many Greens running for state legislature... or even city council. Sure, one or two here or there, but no collective effort. The Libertarians barely have their shit together and yet they still constantly field candidates up and down the ballot.
The Green Party does run candidates in more left-leaning areas... Not that they do a whole lot better in those races, but they do try more than just POTUS
Those candidates would probably do better as independent, for all the party support they don’t get because people like jill stein blow it all on a useless presidential bid.
And let’s say, hypothetically, a miracle does happen and she wins the election. She has zero support from congress, a congress that more or less hates her. There’s not a lot she’s going to be able to do, considering.
You're right that Stein would have very little support in Congress if she won, but that's not in the realm of possibility, but to say that lower office runs would do better as independents misses some of the peculiarities of the American electoral system:
- Elections in the United States are longer, more burdened with minutiae and uniquely expensive compared to other democracies. Without the organizational support of a 3rd party (mostly libertarian and green parties in the US as others lack numbers and resources), candidates struggle to even get ballot access for lack of money and volunteers getting signatures and clearing regulatory steps
- Speaking of regulatory hurdles, running a presidential candidate every four years in enough states maintains ballot access for down-ticket races
So you're right that independent runs wouldn't have the baggage that comes with third party association, but you're missing that there are very real benefits to that association.
Of course, if we had public campaign financing and rank choice voting, working class voters could unite and not be divided against one another... Almost like it's that way by design 🤷♂️
What... benefits....?
how much funding has down-ballot candidates ever gotten from the green party? Go ahead. Publish the numbers.
how much campaigning does Jill or other national green leaders do for the state office candidates? (none?)
Green party candidates are basically independents who align with a certain je ne sais quoi. they build their own campaign, source their own funds, and generally have extremely limited party support. If there's party help at all, it's strictly at the local level, with multiple people helping each other out.
The national Green Party does extremely little to help down ballot.
I don't know about the other parties, but to my knowledge the only third party that has "significant" support down ballot are the libertarians, and even that is... dubious. yes. Elections are way more expensive than they should be.
But again, you're missing my point: Bernie Sanders, as an independent, has done entire orders of magnitude more good runing for senator than Jill Stein has ever accomplished. He should be the model for how to get 3rd party influence at the federal level, not someone who has yet to win any election anywhere.
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If your third party doesn’t run candidates in local or state elections, it’s not a real political party.
Any third party that's really serious should be building candidates from the ground up, running in local elections where they could win the small seats and have an influence on policies which reflect their goals. That would not only gain experience for those individuals, it would build awareness of the party itself. Those candidates could then run for nonpartisan state offices, again building awareness and acceptance as well as their experience. Nobody should just be jumping into the Presidential election from some idiotic unrelated background like real estate or reality show hosting or stealing from cancer children or bankrupting their own casino... Oops, my brain went off the rails there, good thing I'm not responsible for anything important.
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I'm all about ranked choice voting. Don't advocate spoiler voting, spend the next four year term working on getting ranked choice voting initiatives off the ground. Also Jill Stein really seems like a Russian plant anyway based on the photo that's been circulating around so even if we had RCV I wouldn't be voting for her...
RCV still has spoilers, it's just they happen differently. Mostly commonly in three-way competitive races, but they can technically happen under any number of candidates greater than two with any level of support.
Cardinal methods don't have mathematical spoilers, though a new candidate can change voter behavior. But, that's possible under any system.
More reading:
Honestly, third parties are a hard thing to discuss considering the two biggest ones in the US are fundamentally unserious. I still keep an eye on the Working Class Party locally.
Become the change you want to see. Organize. Get some elected to a school board or city council.
There are nearly 5 months unaccounted for in this meme.
It takes him a while to change expressions.
LMFAO
B-B-B-But Dems bad!1! (/s)
My big wish is multi-winner STAR where possible.
Doesn't just make viable 3rd parties a reality, but makes it incredibly likely for them to get a leg into the race a lot sooner.
Instituting it at the congressional level can also eliminate the traditional stresses of coalition building that affect other multi-partisan democracies, because now when the government experiences a no confidence vote and the leader has to resign, we don't need new elections and new coalition talks, just go back to the original coalition vote results and promote the next guy in charge into the officer position that was vacated, voilà, new governing coalition ready to go.
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They're using the third party for what they were intended for, to run interference on the winning side.
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