15million people that voted Biden last time couldn't be bothered putting in a protest vote for something.
If Americans actually did this it would scare the fuck out of the two parties to see a third, fourth and fifth candidate with millions of votes.
Instead they resign themselves to apathy and "it's wasted anyway". When actually getting up and doing that shit directly empowered things like the UK leaving the EU.
If the 15million missing voters were on other parties instead of just being absent the Dems would have to reckon with "we need to be more like this third party to get those votes". But instead what we're seeing is "we need to be more like Republicans to get those votes"
What is it with americans and simply not voting or recognising political power exists within votes outside the two parties?
Maybe so. But I think addressing the culture of non-voting instead of protest-voting is a valid one. It's sucking out political power that exists and could be genuinely powerful if put to use but because people are convinced it's pointless they simply do not bother. A huge amount of power is sitting right there and americans are just culturally propagandised into not using it.
It's the electoral college. There's no point in voting if you don't live in a swing state. Republicans only won the popular vote 2 times since 1992 and it doesn't mean much as far as US electoral politics is concerned. It's literally just trivia to make libs feel better whenever they eat shit.
I've always thought a better way for US third parties to approach this is to form a regional party that caters to a particular state or region. They probably still wouldn't win, but they could get to a point where they could outmuscle one of the parties. I think somewhere like Vermont could be a good place, a solid blue state that's taken for granted as a solid blue state by the DNC.
Before Sanders joined Congress, he actually was in a good spot as mayor of Burlington. Sanders should've tried building a third party or more seriously help a preexisting third party that's centered around Vermont. If done right, this party could've gone to the point where city counsel and mayors throughout Vermont are either members of that party or have to pay political tribute to that party. They probably won't be anywhere close to electing a governor or earning an electoral vote, but the Republicans don't exactly have a serious presence in Vermont either. They just need to have a larger state presence within Vermont than the Republicans.
Browsing through Wikipedia, apparently Vermont already has this party called the Vermont Progressive Party with a decent amount of positions with Vermont. And Sanders did help build the party, which makes me think he never should've gone to Congress to shill for Zionists and instead stayed in Vermont working tirelessly to continue building the party. The main issue is that it's just a socdem party and electoralism in general can only take you so far.
I think it's wiser for the various ML parties in the US to have a gentlemen's agreement where they divide the US into various zones and focus their organizing on their assigned zones only. If nothing else, it will cut down on embarrassing sectarianism like when PSL and FRSO got into a fight over Palestinian organizing in Chicago(?).
You say "it's the electoral college" but what does that functionally mean?
Here in the UK the election is done by regional representatives. IE, you vote and the winner in your district is an MP and the party with the most MPs gets their leader as the Prime Minister.
What's the difference? If I vote for a party that isn't one of the 2 main parties, my vote does not achieve anything in terms of affecting who gets power. It's a protest vote.
I don't see how there is a difference here. The only difference I see is cultural. Americans see it as utterly pointless and therefore don't bother at all, Brits on the other hand are stubborn fuckers and will go out and protest vote and those protest votes actually do achieve political consequences when they're big enough, such as UKIP's success in forcing the Tories to give a Brexit referendum "or else we'll make sure you lose".
There are fundamentally enough non-voters in this election to achieve huge things with if Americans adopted the stubbornness to actually go third party, but they're successfully convinced to not bother.
It goes back to my main point of the Democrats only losing out on the popular vote 2 times since 1992, once in 2004 with Bush Jr vs Kerry and once in 2024 with Trump vs Kamala. After all, Clinton beat Trump in the popular vote, but there wasn't this push towards getting rid of the electoral college, which is the conclusion any normal person would arrive at. Gamers routinely cry at devs whenever they get owned by an OP build or item, but I've rarely seen people, even people here, attribute Clinton's loss to the electoral college, which is the real reason why she lost. They say it's due to Bernie bros or how she's an unlikable ghoul or how she's a woman or any other reason tangential to the real reason, which is that she lost because she played under an undemocratic system. And this is not even going over the 2000 election where the Republicans stole the election. The Democrats got cheated out of a win in 2000 and 2016, but there was no real desire by the DNC to scrap the electoral college.
I think most electoral-minded progressives go through this phase where they come up with all sorts of reforms aimed at making the presidential election less terrible (getting rid of the electoral college, turning DC into a state, making political debates available for third party candidates, getting rid of FPTP) only to get hit with the realization that despite these reforms almost exclusively benefiting the Democrats at the expense of the Republicans, the Democrats haven't done anything to advance what should be their own party interests. And it's not like they're trying but get continuously cockblocked by Republicans. They literally haven't done shit. Every progressive gets hit with this contradiction sooner or later. Why has the Democratic Party continuously fail to act in its own self-interest?
Some people might arrive at the conclusion that the Democrats are hilariously incompetent, but hilariously incompetent parties don't last for 2 centuries. The Democratic Party is probably one of the oldest bourgeois party in existence. If they could make it out of the losing side of a civil war because they upheld chattel slavery, they're probably not as dumb as you think. I think on some level, most USians who thought this through understand that this whole electoral process is just kabuki theater. And I don't mean it in the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie sense. I mean that's it's complete theater even by liberal democracy standards. They may not have the theory and dialectical materialist framework behind them to actually craft a coherent answer, but the suspicion is there. Now add in the MLs and anarchists who eschew electoral politics due to ideology and it's not a surprise that most people wouldn't bother with protest votes.
Essentially, people who protest vote are people who are disillusioned with the status quo but aren't so disillusioned that they don't see the electoral process for what it is. People either take the blue pill and vote for one of the two parties or they take the red pill and don't bother with the electoral process.
In terms of american history it would surely because it would be unprecedented.
I just can't bring myself to say it's pointless because it's not. I live in a country with a 2 party fptp system where protest votes have fundamentally changed the country forever. There's political power in it and it's being left on the table instead of used and all I see is a cultural issue with americans simply not being bothered to do it because they do not recognise that there is a certain amount of power held within it. Not revolutionary power obviously, it isn't going to create socialism, but there's actual power in it for pulling other parties in a specific direction that is politically un-utilised by americans and the only reason I ever hear when asking people why makes it sound cultural.
no. you are just wrong. a million votes here or there for a third party candidate wouldn't change shit, except you'd give democrats a clear target for whom to blame the win of trump on. its not like every single other country in the western world, even those with not completely insane electoral systems, hasn't been experiencing a giant right wing shift over the last few decades-
I'm not hearing an explanation for why other than a general cultural attitude towards it being pointless rather than a mechanistic one.
except you'd give democrats a clear target for whom to blame the win of trump
Yes and that happens here too. Except it means the parties know who they need to win over and for what specific reasons. It causes parties to create policy intended to take voters away from those third parties.
15million people that voted Biden last time couldn't be bothered putting in a protest vote for something.
If Americans actually did this it would scare the fuck out of the two parties to see a third, fourth and fifth candidate with millions of votes.
Instead they resign themselves to apathy and "it's wasted anyway". When actually getting up and doing that shit directly empowered things like the UK leaving the EU.
If the 15million missing voters were on other parties instead of just being absent the Dems would have to reckon with "we need to be more like this third party to get those votes". But instead what we're seeing is "we need to be more like Republicans to get those votes"
What is it with americans and simply not voting or recognising political power exists within votes outside the two parties?
I think seeing over 100k votes for communists might do that at least a little bit. And Greens coming in 3rd.
Maybe so. But I think addressing the culture of non-voting instead of protest-voting is a valid one. It's sucking out political power that exists and could be genuinely powerful if put to use but because people are convinced it's pointless they simply do not bother. A huge amount of power is sitting right there and americans are just culturally propagandised into not using it.
It's the electoral college. There's no point in voting if you don't live in a swing state. Republicans only won the popular vote 2 times since 1992 and it doesn't mean much as far as US electoral politics is concerned. It's literally just trivia to make libs feel better whenever they eat shit.
I've always thought a better way for US third parties to approach this is to form a regional party that caters to a particular state or region. They probably still wouldn't win, but they could get to a point where they could outmuscle one of the parties. I think somewhere like Vermont could be a good place, a solid blue state that's taken for granted as a solid blue state by the DNC.
Before Sanders joined Congress, he actually was in a good spot as mayor of Burlington. Sanders should've tried building a third party or more seriously help a preexisting third party that's centered around Vermont. If done right, this party could've gone to the point where city counsel and mayors throughout Vermont are either members of that party or have to pay political tribute to that party. They probably won't be anywhere close to electing a governor or earning an electoral vote, but the Republicans don't exactly have a serious presence in Vermont either. They just need to have a larger state presence within Vermont than the Republicans.
Browsing through Wikipedia, apparently Vermont already has this party called the Vermont Progressive Party with a decent amount of positions with Vermont. And Sanders did help build the party, which makes me think he never should've gone to Congress to shill for Zionists and instead stayed in Vermont working tirelessly to continue building the party. The main issue is that it's just a socdem party and electoralism in general can only take you so far.
I think it's wiser for the various ML parties in the US to have a gentlemen's agreement where they divide the US into various zones and focus their organizing on their assigned zones only. If nothing else, it will cut down on embarrassing sectarianism like when PSL and FRSO got into a fight over Palestinian organizing in Chicago(?).
You say "it's the electoral college" but what does that functionally mean?
Here in the UK the election is done by regional representatives. IE, you vote and the winner in your district is an MP and the party with the most MPs gets their leader as the Prime Minister.
What's the difference? If I vote for a party that isn't one of the 2 main parties, my vote does not achieve anything in terms of affecting who gets power. It's a protest vote.
I don't see how there is a difference here. The only difference I see is cultural. Americans see it as utterly pointless and therefore don't bother at all, Brits on the other hand are stubborn fuckers and will go out and protest vote and those protest votes actually do achieve political consequences when they're big enough, such as UKIP's success in forcing the Tories to give a Brexit referendum "or else we'll make sure you lose".
There are fundamentally enough non-voters in this election to achieve huge things with if Americans adopted the stubbornness to actually go third party, but they're successfully convinced to not bother.
It goes back to my main point of the Democrats only losing out on the popular vote 2 times since 1992, once in 2004 with Bush Jr vs Kerry and once in 2024 with Trump vs Kamala. After all, Clinton beat Trump in the popular vote, but there wasn't this push towards getting rid of the electoral college, which is the conclusion any normal person would arrive at. Gamers routinely cry at devs whenever they get owned by an OP build or item, but I've rarely seen people, even people here, attribute Clinton's loss to the electoral college, which is the real reason why she lost. They say it's due to Bernie bros or how she's an unlikable ghoul or how she's a woman or any other reason tangential to the real reason, which is that she lost because she played under an undemocratic system. And this is not even going over the 2000 election where the Republicans stole the election. The Democrats got cheated out of a win in 2000 and 2016, but there was no real desire by the DNC to scrap the electoral college.
I think most electoral-minded progressives go through this phase where they come up with all sorts of reforms aimed at making the presidential election less terrible (getting rid of the electoral college, turning DC into a state, making political debates available for third party candidates, getting rid of FPTP) only to get hit with the realization that despite these reforms almost exclusively benefiting the Democrats at the expense of the Republicans, the Democrats haven't done anything to advance what should be their own party interests. And it's not like they're trying but get continuously cockblocked by Republicans. They literally haven't done shit. Every progressive gets hit with this contradiction sooner or later. Why has the Democratic Party continuously fail to act in its own self-interest?
Some people might arrive at the conclusion that the Democrats are hilariously incompetent, but hilariously incompetent parties don't last for 2 centuries. The Democratic Party is probably one of the oldest bourgeois party in existence. If they could make it out of the losing side of a civil war because they upheld chattel slavery, they're probably not as dumb as you think. I think on some level, most USians who thought this through understand that this whole electoral process is just kabuki theater. And I don't mean it in the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie sense. I mean that's it's complete theater even by liberal democracy standards. They may not have the theory and dialectical materialist framework behind them to actually craft a coherent answer, but the suspicion is there. Now add in the MLs and anarchists who eschew electoral politics due to ideology and it's not a surprise that most people wouldn't bother with protest votes.
Essentially, people who protest vote are people who are disillusioned with the status quo but aren't so disillusioned that they don't see the electoral process for what it is. People either take the blue pill and vote for one of the two parties or they take the red pill and don't bother with the electoral process.
No it wouldn't. Come on.
In terms of american history it would surely because it would be unprecedented.
I just can't bring myself to say it's pointless because it's not. I live in a country with a 2 party fptp system where protest votes have fundamentally changed the country forever. There's political power in it and it's being left on the table instead of used and all I see is a cultural issue with americans simply not being bothered to do it because they do not recognise that there is a certain amount of power held within it. Not revolutionary power obviously, it isn't going to create socialism, but there's actual power in it for pulling other parties in a specific direction that is politically un-utilised by americans and the only reason I ever hear when asking people why makes it sound cultural.
no. you are just wrong. a million votes here or there for a third party candidate wouldn't change shit, except you'd give democrats a clear target for whom to blame the win of trump on. its not like every single other country in the western world, even those with not completely insane electoral systems, hasn't been experiencing a giant right wing shift over the last few decades-
I'm not hearing an explanation for why other than a general cultural attitude towards it being pointless rather than a mechanistic one.
Yes and that happens here too. Except it means the parties know who they need to win over and for what specific reasons. It causes parties to create policy intended to take voters away from those third parties.
stop being a lib, like come on. unironic "push them left" posting is cringe af
This is literally the electoralism comm.
ok thanks for reminding me i will block this community now thank you