Comment on Why are public school teachers so underpaid in the US?
DagwoodIII@piefed.social 1 day agoPlease 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.
Jack@lemmy.ca 17 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 17 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 16 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.
DagwoodIII@piefed.social 16 hours ago
Again, you ignore the actual facts.
Maybe you live in a world of privilege where things like schools, roads, hospitals, and wars are merely theoretical. We who actually have to deal with those things know differently.
Nowhere do you link to a 3rd Party that has any realistic chance of making any change anytime soon.
Quick historical note. Look up a fellow named Frederick Douglas. He was a former slave. In 1860 he had the choice of supporting a full on pro-Abolition candidate who had almost no chance of winning or supporting a candidate who had stated he wasn’t prepared to end slavery.
Douglas figured it made more sense to support a winner and have a foot in the door. He abandoned the Abolition candidate and backed the winner instead.
So, when you reply, please explain why people shouldn’t follow Douglas’s lead and back the imperfect candidate who might win over the ‘pure’ candidate who is sure to lose.