It’s wild that you chose Perot as your example when he’s generally accepted as having not been a spoiler and his anti-nafta platform drug it kicking and screaming into daylight for everyone to see.
If anything, Perot ‘92 was a great example of a non spoiler third party forcing both major parties to actually be held accountable for their policies.
When both parties don’t represent you, vote for one that does!
uriel238@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 months ago
Okay, if you don’t care which of the two guys gets elected (Democrat or Republican) then sure, vote for the third party of your choice. That said, we don’t know if Perot was a successful spoiler. If Perot pulled (approximately) two GOP voters for every one Democrat, then yes, he was a successful spoiler (the math is even more sophisticates, since this would have to be calculated for each swing state and then summed up) but we don’t know.
But in 2024, every Republican voted into office advances the effort towards turning the US into a one party autocracy. This means you have to vote tactically based on if you want that process sped up, slowed down or don’t care. Unless you’re close enough to a billionaire to get the fuck out of dodge (e.g. leave the US for extended leave) then a Trump presidency is going to lead to a lot of Trumpgrets, and a risky venture through the gravity well of a purge and holocaust.
I can’t speak for you guys, but I don’t want to risk dying in a concentration camp, and I can’t emphasize enough how much that is totally not hyperbole.
bloodfart@lemmy.ml 2 months ago
We do know if Perot functioned as a spoiler. We know because after hw bush lost a bunch of people threw around the spoiler accusation and that prompted several groups to analyze the results in depth as you said would be necessary over the next decade.
It turns out that Perot did have more pull amongst conservative voters but the electoral college effect was only to reduce Clinton’s margin of victory.
Which sounds crazy unless you grew up in an area that was filled with conservative voters who had no desire to get behind hw bush after he lied about taxes.
Clinton’s success came from being conservative enough to rob pissed republican voters from their party, not from Perot siphoning off hw bush’s base.
Anyway, I’ll leave aside the question of how anyone can suggest that a regime actively supplying and denying a genocide while suppressing protests against it doesn’t count as fascist already and ask: if you really believe that project 2025 represents a move towards one party autocracy, and you remember January 6, what makes you think that Biden being declared the winner is going to stop the fascist state you fear?
If you truly believe that the republicans are as big a threat as you say then it doesn’t matter how people vote, they’ll just attempt a coup better this time. You’d make more sense if you were telling people to arm themselves instead of vote.
uriel238@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 months ago
The answer is it’s all up in the air.
I expect there’s a massive GOP movement to suppress votes and gerrymander other votes. I suspect there are efforts to defraud the election in some counties or even in some whole states. But I don’t know how successful they will be.
I expect there will be an attempted coup d’etat if Biden wins the election, but I don’t presume it’s going to overthrow the US. We may break out into civil war, but then if the Republican party takes power, the US is going to be really hazardous anyway. I’m no expert, but by my understanding civil war is going to be inevitable so long as we can’t get relief from the mass precarity and enough election reform to empower the public. And since the Democratic party still treats its progressive wing as red-haired stepchildren who have to dine at their own table, we can expect only table scraps.
Biden staying in the White House means I probably have longer before I’m collected to be processed as an undesirable. It could make a difference of months or decades.
That said, I’m pissed off, too, the degree to which the US is responsible for the Palestinian genocide, though the way I’ve been following it, Biden has been doing a lot more than the neo-liberal norm to quietly slow down Netanyahu’s offensive into Gaza. Not as much as I’d like, by far, but more than I’d expect from an establishment Democrat. Biden’s been slow-walking aid to Israel, whereas we expect the Republican party is glad to facilitate massacring Palestinians while simultaneously cutting off support to Ukraine so Russia can take over.
Assuming you are a voter, it’s up to you, and maybe it’s more important to you to symbolically support Palestine by not voting against the Republican party. But doing so might have material effects that make things worse in Gaza, hence I’m going to vote tactically.
bloodfart@lemmy.ml 2 months ago
Biden isn’t slow walking aid. The aid that is sent to Israel from the us with the approval and assistance of the Biden regime is literally being used to commit a genocide that Biden himself is on the record as denying.
There is no middle ground to this. He’s not doing more than the neoliberal norm. I can say that because the neoliberal norm was Clinton, bush 2 and Obama, under whose regimes nothing on this scale happened!
Biden is less willing to oppose Israel than Regan was.
Now a person could take the position that it’s acceptable (either because they can’t affect it or because they approve of it) for the guns of the fascist state to be pointed outside its own borders as opposed to inside. That person would be somewhere in the geometry that encompasses fascists, liberals and cowards.
I’m not saying that to place you there, only to point out the company someone keeps with such a position.
That’s not you.
A vote, a record of what you desire for your nation, state, county and town, is never symbolic. Even votes cast for parties that lose have substantial effects regarding funding, ballot presence, event appearances, media coverage and public awareness. I am in this thread telling people to vote their politics and values because that tactical garbage is what got us into this mess.
We’re stuck in the present but we can struggle for the future. The easiest way to be a part of that struggle is to vote for it!