Please show me one time in the past 50 years that a third party candidate in the US helped the Left win an election.
The GOP constantly funds and pushes for the Greens and Libertarians because they know those candidates sap the Dems.
Comment on Why are public school teachers so underpaid in the US?
Jack@lemmy.ca 2 days agoMaybe because 98.1% keep voting for either evil or the lesser evil; but almost none of them vote for the good like Nader?
“Everybody complains about politicians. Everybody says they suck. Well, where do people think these politicians come from? They don’t fall out of the sky. They don’t pass through a membrane from another reality. They come from American parents and American families, American homes, American schools, American churches, American businesses, and American universities - and they are elected by American citizens. This is the best we can do folks. This is what we have to offer. It’s what our system produces: Garbage in, garbage out. If you have selfish, ignorant citizens, […] you’re going to get selfish, ignorant leaders. Term limits ain’t going to do any good; you’re just going to end up with a brand new bunch of selfish, ignorant Americans. So, maybe, maybe, maybe, it’s not the politicians who suck. Maybe something else sucks around here… like, the public.” – George Carlin https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cBrbXOmnW70
“It is infinitely better to vote for freedom and fail than to vote for slavery and succeed.” - Eugene V. Debs, Appeal to Reason, 1900-10-13
“Wage-labor is but a name; wage-slavery is the fact.” - Eugene V. Debs, The Socialist Party and the Working Class 1904-09-01
DagwoodIII@piefed.social 2 days ago
Jack@lemmy.ca 18 hours ago
The Democrats are not Left wing. They’re left of the Republicans, and less authoritarian, but they’re a right-wing party who crippled banking regulation in favor of oligarchy, bailed out the worst banks, lied about drilling for oil[1] and causing a mass extinction event, and supported Israel even after they went from defending themselves to committing genocide.
The goal for ethical people is not to get the Democrats to win, but instead to elect ethical people to government. e.g Hawkins and Nader.
It’s possible, even in FPTP voting systems, for people to reject the 2 parties that usually wins - see the UK where the Tories or Labour have been the only 2 winning parties for more than 90 years (including 2 short coalition governments); but where polling shows the 5th party (the horrible Reform) and 8th party (Greens) are now leading.
“It is infinitely better to vote for freedom and fail than to vote for slavery and succeed.” - Eugene V. Debs, Appeal to Reason, 1900-10-13
“Wage-labor is but a name; wage-slavery is the fact.” - Eugene V. Debs, The Socialist Party and the Working Class 1904-09-01
[1] washingtonpost.com/…/biden-oil-drilling-productio… As he campaigned for president in 2020, Joe Biden made a bold promise at a New Hampshire town hall, adding repetition for emphasis: “No more drilling on federal lands. Period. Period. Period. Period.” […] The Biden administration has now outpaced the Trump administration in approving permits for drilling on public lands, and the United States is producing more oil than any country ever has.
DagwoodIII@piefed.social 18 hours ago
All that effort to show that you can’t tell the difference between ‘bad’ and completely horrible.’
You can babble on and on, but you can’t actually show one time that a strong third party candidate didn’t help the GOP.
Jack@lemmy.ca 18 hours ago
From your point-of-view, the Democrats winning is good, and the Republicans winning is bad. You might see them on a left-right scale of 0-10, where 0 is good, the Ds are at 3, the Rs at 9, and Hitler at 10.
Some other people see a bigger window than that: look at www.politicalcompass.org/uselection2020 and compare how these people see the distance between Trump +9+9 and Biden 7+6 compared to the distance between Trump +9+9 and Hawkins -5-3. These people agree that the Rs are worse than the Ds, but they don’t want to help the Ds win because the Ds are a mass-extinction causing capitalists. To convince these people to vote for the Ds instead of Greens/socialists/not-voting at all, you have to convince them that the Ds actions of:
*making anthropogenic climate change worse and so causing a mass extinction, *helping genocides, and *propping up an economic system that rewards narcissistic psychopaths and punishes ethical people;
are good, and worth voting for.
lmmarsano@group.lt 16 hours ago
meme: bitches dont know bout my spoiler effect
or primaries
That the US voting system lacks the sincere favorite criterion is mathematical fact: lesser-evil voting is necessary to avoid practically certain loss. Denying that is like denying laws of physics. You can’t coerce logic & causality to your will. Just because you don’t understand that doesn’t mean others don’t. Primaries exist to select better major party candidates.
Viable 3rd party candidates requires voting reform, which again requires passing those reforms through the current system.