I've been debating to myself whether or not voting for a third party candidate (Either PSL's de la Cruz or Green's West, regardless of my criticisms for both) would be the most "effective" use of my time in election season this year. The argument for "not" is that maybe voting at all is bad because it legitimizes this system, even if a third party candidate getting a record turnout would grab more attention (and piss off Blue MAGA cultists) than simply not going since it's not like abysmal turnouts, even by this country's historical standards, are newsworthy at this point. So I guess I have to ask how you people rationalize voting or not this year?
I fully understand that this is more symbolic than anything else and won't materially affect change for a while but it's still something to think about.
We see elections primarily as a vehicle for driving our other organizing work and building more party members and non-member allies. The presidential election is the biggest platform by far to do that. We do run in local elections occasionally, but it's still with the same motivation as above. We don't see holding a single city council seat as doing much to win power.
Now, I do think after this year, we'll be in a much stronger position to seriously contest many more local elections and would expect to see PSL candidates, especially in small progressive cities, winning seats more frequently.