we need to keep voting for conservative, xenophobic, genocidal democrats in the hope that something which hasn’t happened in seventy years is going to happen again before we can actually make our voices heard in a way that can’t be ignored?

and that will somehow not send democrats the message that racism is the winning strategy?

thats a counterproductive and extremely bad idea that hasn’t been thought out.

don’t do that.

you just said the only feasible way to change things is to keep voting for the lesser of two evils. doesn’t that seem a little absurd, given that its what got us where we are through a consistent movement right, not left?

how can you suggest that the democrats just need more of our votes when they got enough of them on a popular left movement to win both houses and the executive in our lifetimes only to pursue a right wing policy program?

you said republicans would change if they keep losing, but that’s predicated on republicans losing consistently. even if by some act of a power higher than both of us biden manages to win this go round, how much longer do you think it will take before republicans resign themselves to it? two more regimes? four? before or after florida is lost to the rising atlantic? before or after every person who ends up at the southern border is detained indefinitley or put to death? can the people of gaza last until even this november?

how long do i need to patently wait? twelve, twenty four years?

What youre suggesting rests on fundamentally misunderstanding both the history we have to refer to the record to see and the history that we both lived through!

I will not wait for some unspecific pie in the sky future to be heard and neither should you!

lets say youre right, and the president can’t do anything to stop arms shipments. simply forcing the (it wouldn’t be swift, the supreme court works on a set schedule) case would be better than rubberstamping the appropriations of our genocidal congress.

simply forcing the supreme court to rule would be powerful!

make them put their names on their genocide! even if the executive fails wouldn’t it be better to actually try everything to stop the genocide than to simply say “nothing i could do!”?

of course, if the executive branch were so weak there’d be no reason to fear project 2025, but i’ll leave that alone.

but there are tons of ways to hamstring aid, usually it’s not explicitly listed what aid will be sent in a bill, that’s left up to the executive. in that case de la cruz could send nonlethal military supplies like food, medical and replacement parts.

in the case that aid is specified, it can be slow walked as part of a peace deal, it can be deactivated or simply sent during adverse conditions that will ensure it never arrives.

psl has been running in state, local and congressional elections since 2008.

its astounding to me how many people reply to posts like this saying “you can’t win, so dont try!” or “its going to be hard and people will oppose you, so give up!”.

it’s already like that.

wow, maybe you ought to hold the biden administrations feet to the fire on that! i bet a person who was president could do something about it no problem!

you’ll have to forgive me, i’m not here to debate people so i don’t link a million things or drop the good ol’ tankie wall of links unless its asked for. my assumption is that if someone wants to learn something they can just look it up themselves.

Perot was not a spoiler, another source for that, people mad at hw bush lying about taxes voted for clinton, the wikipedia article on public opinion about nafta.

now usually I wouldn’t link a wikipedia article but there’s just so fucking much there that i’d rather someone actually read the sources linked in it rather than try to wrangle its’ citations. one thing that isn’t covered in the wikipedia article is that as public opinion changes, polls that ask specifically about nafta get negative results and polls that use more open ended language about “free trade agreements” get more positive results.

of note: the wikpiedia article specifically recognizes the effect perot had on public awareness of nafta, citing two sources that say support rose after his 93 debate with al gore (those sources cite one of the polls that asks about “free trade agreements” and not nafta specifically, natch).

I don’t have the energy to figure out what sources would convince a person that kerry ran to the “left” of gore. i just have to trust that a person would see it and figure it out even though kerry was a piece of crap in his own way. as far as proof that platform was a response to the greens in 2000, there was no major third party turnout in 2004 and the greens positions in 2000 were subsumed into the democrats platform or winnowed away in 2004.

to your claim that third parties can’t force other parties to do anything: you’re right, they can’t. we have the right tacking biden regime because of that. the democrats have decided that it’s a better electoral strategy to run on, and i know i’m sounding like a broken record and its frustrating to always have to respond to these positions, genocide and border detentions rather than literally anything else.

third party votes can’t force the biden regime and the democrats to abandon those positions, but they can show the democrats how much support they could pick up by taking them on.

you said every major candidate runs on platforms that the majority of americans don’t support. you’re right. why can they get away with that? is it possibly because people have accepted the “throw your vote away” logic?

I don’t know the answer to that, but i do know that actually expressing what we want with the only voice we are given that politicians can’t deny is a phenomenal way to change it!

Okay so if you really believe that trump is a foreign asset who will attempt a coup then why are you worried who people vote for?

You ought to be pushing people to prepare to defend themselves and the country from January 6 part 2, not vote in an election whose results won’t matter (because the foreign asset led coup attempt will have to be defeated).

Hmm, yes, who can say why every candidate for over twenty years has had to explain what they’d do about nafta after the year some guy got on tv and yelled about it non stop when before no one could even describe it?

Who can say why the democrats tacked left after they failed to out conservative the bush administration?

Perhaps things are just occurring with no relationship to each other and can’t be connected!

Of course you’re not gonna find much succor for voting blue no matter who when you’re suggesting that we live under a complete breakdown of causality…

Your point that third parties havent been a threat isn’t in any way related to the documented effects third parties have had.

If the only outcome from a vote was winning or losing then you’d be right, but votes are used to figure out which parties get funding, presence on the ballot, event appearances, media coverage and public awareness.

Both major parties look at the recorded vote and triangulate how to get the numbers they need from the electorate that came out.

If there were a set number of voters than you’d be correct, there’s no reason to care about third parties, but third parties pick up tons of voters who’d otherwise stay home. Something like 30% in perots case and upwards of half in Naders 2000 campaign.

The reason the two major parties pick bits and pieces off third party formations is so they can add to the voting base and not have to try to chase after their opponents constituency. You know, like how the democrats are doing.

Oh well, if you clearly communicate your needs during the primary and fall in line for the general then why wouldn’t the democrats reward your loyalty by adopting your positions!

How clear and transparent would the upcoming trump presidency have to be for you to jump ship from the democrats and take up a position that they have to aim for in 2028?

Perot 92 was not a spoiler campaign.

After the dust settled, everyone accused it of acting as a spoiler. In the next two decades several groups studied the results and found that Perot only reduced Clinton’s margin of victory.

Perot 92 was listened to. Every candidate from it’s inception to the adoption of the usmcta had to answer “what are you gonna do about nafta?”

People like to call Nader 2000 a spoiler, but that’s just a distraction from the fact that jeb bush stopped the recount and the supreme court declared bush the winner.

Nader was listened to. The democrats ran left in 04 and 08, at least in word.

At what point does a person recognize and admit that Biden or trump, we lose?

If someone is only going to do the least they possibly can, vote in the election, when should they stop trying to pick the least harmful winner and instead start working towards an alternative?

If all a person will do is vote then is t it most important to record their policy preferences in the only way that can’t be glossed over, lied about or deepfaked?

Voting for what you actually want to happen is literally the only way to communicate your needs to political parties that they actually listen to.

There are people whose whole education and job is just to know how many people in a given district that the party can pick up by adopting aspects of a particular platform.

Tell them! Tell them that you won’t vote for them unless they take up the antiwar, Medicare for all torch! Tell them that they can’t get your district without a housing guarantee and free school lunch! Tell them to stop the genocide in the only way they listen to!

It’s not a protest to use your vote.

I’m voting party for socialism and liberation and you can too. They’re running Claudia de la Cruz on a platform of Palestinian statehood and an end to arms shipments to Israel.

For me there’s no better time to start building a new American political formation. If the democrats wise up and snap left when they see the third party/lack of turnout then that’s fine too.

It’s easy if you have a second computer or phone or something and can read and plan first.

It’s hard if you want to just click click click through.

It’s literally what every third party campaign in our lifetimes has done.

Perot 92 pushed both parties to actually address nafta instead of sweeping it under the rug, Nader 2000 forced the democrats to run left in 04 and 08.

I saw these things happen with my own eyes and if anecdote isn’t enough for you they’re both well studied!

Lincoln’s second term was a third party victory running under the Union party.

It’s also a great example of a third party causing a major party to change its position for the better because it represents creating a new, broad coalition including a bunch of extant parties that popped up to capitalize on new identities and platforms that sprang into being in the lead up to the civil war and during it.

You know, it’s almost like if you think we’re headed for another civil war then there’s a lesson there…

Of course if you wanna stick with recent stuff, Perot 92, like I said, had a positive effect on both parties because his campaign forced them to talk about nafta instead of glossing over the fact that both Clinton and hw bush held the same incredibly anti-worker positions and neither was interested in wrestling with the details of how the trade agreement would impact American lives.

In this very moment both Biden and trump are trying to bring back (or recreate!) the American jobs lost to nafta.

It’s almost like there’s a lesson there…

Another great example of a third party causing one of the two major parties to change their platform was Nader 2000, who literally ran on the platform of pushing the democrats left and suddenly, as if like a bolt from the blue, the democrats ran more left campaigns in 04 and 08.

Surely there’s no lesson there…

I already detailed explicitly why and how your description of third party votes as protest votes is wrong and represents a fundamentally flawed understanding of the American electoral process, so instead of rehashing that, I’ll talk about the Simpsons.

There’s a funny bit where two tentacled space aliens with big sharp teeth are campaigning to get American votes on different platforms that both boil down to killing and eating their constituents in slightly different ways. A guy pipes up and says “I don’t like any of this killing and eating business, I’m gonna vote third party!” And one of the aliens says “go ahead, throw your vote away!” And the guy takes on a sheepish expression and sits back down.

It’s very funny.

Not because voting third party is throwing your vote away, the conceit of the bit is that voting for either the democrat or republican monster would be throwing your vote away because they intend to kill and eat you, but because the person who steps out and voices an alternative is so afraid of the possibility losing that he can’t continue to speak out against the explicit guarantee of losing.

As I said before, your vote is the only way you can force politicians to listen to you. Don’t throw it away telling them that you’ll stand with them even when they commit atrocities, make it clear that if they need your vote they have to take up your platform.

If you do anything but vote third party you’re literally, not figuratively, literally, explicitly, in writing, expressing support for the democrats and republicans genocide.

Don’t do that.

Don’t bring Perot 92 up if you really want to believe in spoilers. After everyone freaked out and made that accusation his campaign was shown to have only decreased Clinton’s margin of victory in the electoral college.

It seems counterintuitive but remember that Clinton ran conservative to scoop up republicans who were mad hw bush lied about taxes.

Perot 92 also refutes the idea that third parties can only act as spoilers because perots nafta platform drug Clinton and hw bush’s positions on the trade agreement into the public view kicking and screaming. It’s the reason there was no argument from anyone that we’d need to replace it after it expired before Clinton’s first term was even over.

Political parties aren’t stupid. They have people whose whole education and job is all about knowing how to pick up just enough votes in particular districts in order to win. If you always vote for them no matter what then why would they adopt your platform and policies when they could tack right on the border and pick up a district in Pennsylvania?

You went out of your way to describe third party votes in a lot of flowery language, let me describe third party votes in concrete language:

Third party votes, like all votes, are a record of exactly what positions a party needs to take in order to win each district. If you vote for a candidate who is imprisoning people at the border and funding and denying a genocide, you are telling all the political parties that will spend years poring over the recorded votes “you can lock migrants up and supply and deny a genocide and I’ll still vote for you”.

Stop doing that.

Vote for a candidate from a party with a platform that reflects your values and politics and reap the real documented benefits of it instead of throwing your support behind your abusers.

It’s not a “fuck you”, it’s not a middle finger, it’s telling politicians in the literal only language they listen to what they have to do to get your support.

Do you think it’s worth it to help the democrats win rather than build an alternative and show them where to shift their platform towards?

If they won’t change and they’ll just blame you when they loose why are you voting for them?

If you got a messed up Linux I’ll help you with it.