a vote for stein is a vote for trump, both of which are a vote for poo-tin
But I didn’t want Clinton to win. My picks were: 1. Lessig, 2. Sanders, 3. Stein, 4. Johnson (Gary), 5. blank. Knowing only what I knew in 2016, I disliked Trump and Clinton equally, and would never have voted for either one.
(And yes, I did know that Sanders had endorsed Clinton.)
We wouldn’t have a 6-3 conservative supreme court with Clinton, along with a rash of conservative lower courts. Not only have we had extreme fallout from this already. But it will be affecting us for decades.
A bunch of our red states likely wouldn’t have swung to extremism, like my home state which went from Asa Hutchinson to Sarah Huckabee-Sanders. I don’t know if my kids will legally be allowed to learn that slavery existed in school.
We would absolutely have a 6-3 conservative court with Clinton. We just wouldn’t call it conservative.
We probably wouldn’t have a fascist court like we do now though.
I would hope that you learned something from your error, but this comment shows clearly you haven’t. I learned it when I voted for John Anderson and in my tiny way contributed to Reagan winning: in America, you vote to keep the worst fascist out of power, and if it means voting for someone who isn’t perfect but has the numbers to do it, that’s who you vote for. The primary may be your opportunity to show support for other parties, and you can go to rallies and spread the good word to influence the discussion, but until the day your third party candidate has enough potential votes to actually win it, you help hold the wall.
John Anderson shoutout!
Man, Lemmy is awesome.
Shit, I wouldn’t even discount trying to vote 3rd party when it comes to local elections or state elections. You have to chip away at the power the big parties have at the peripheries first, before trying to do big stuff like voting 3rd party in the big presidential election where they are basically guaranteed to not win.
Yeah but saying that you vote third party during local elections doesn’t rile people up. Many of these third party voters only come out of the woodwork during presidential elections just because they want to be contrarians.
in my tiny way contributed to Reagan winning
Reagan won in a landslide
Best Putin Pronunciation Award Goes To..
I love how entitled to peoples votes the democrats are.
Voting third party in a first past the post voting system ensures you get the candidate you want the least.
Third party is not a solution to a two party system but it does disproportionately affect democratic votes who want change and don’t blindly vote. That’s why it’s often with Republican interests that these 3rd parties are funded in the first place.
Long term, its a solution to neither candidate supporting your values. It shows that you wont blindly support whoever is barely less bad. If your vote counts at all (which it pretty much doesbt) then you cant tell people not to vote for whoever is closest to their values. You should be telling the candidate to listen to their voters.
Long term plans that will fail if you let the system break before those plans have a chance come to light. You’re trying to fine tune a system that’s in danger of falling apart. We need to make sure the system doesn’t fall apart before we can worry about tweaking it.
Candidates should listen to the voters, but we need to be realistic on how and when we can make moves. We need to look at the situation and see how we can best move the needle in the right direction. If you let evil men come into power as a result of your rigid morals than you are actually helping create what you hate most. You want the needle to move all the way to good, you won’t take just %10 better, and as a result things may get much worse.
The road to hell is paved with the best intentions had never been more true.
Understandable. I’m not arguing about the technicalities of third parties in the first past voting system. You are 100% correct.
I just don’t like the entitlement. I also don’t like the green party cause I only hear about and of them once every 4 years for the elections. I’m simply stating how annoying and frustrating it is to see Democrats court more centrists and trad republicans than to their core base who they take for granted in a “who else you gonna vote for removed” kinda attitude.
Without third parties Republicans would win more
The opposite is true. It’s not republicans splitting off to vote green lol When Trump won and when bush won, third parties took away significant votes (1-3%) away from democratic candidates.
In 2016:
In Michigan Gary Johnson got 172,136 votes, in Pennsylvania he got 146,715, and in Wisconsin he got 106,674. If all Greens voted Clinton and all Libertarians voted Trump then New Mexico would’ve only been won by Clinton with around 1,000 votes, Colorado would’ve also been nearly Trump. Nevada, New Hampshire, and Minnesota would’ve been won by Trump. Maine might’ve gone majority Trump.
In 2020 if Libertarians went Republican and Greens went Democrat, Trump would’ve won Georgia, Arizona, Wisconsin, and nearly Pennsylvania.
That would’ve tied the election, leading to a Trump presidency.
You’re right about 2000 though.
“if they did that”. Which they didnt, because third parties disproportionately affect democrats.
Thank you for revealing what you are so I can block you
you dont feel they are?
No, they are showing how Trump, a person who never should be president, became the president. It shows that 3rd party voters can impact the outcome but choose not to. It doesn’t have to be that way, you can make an impact.
They are not arguing in good faith
However, calling a person a (person who has an agenda) from (country that they are from) is against the rules
So just block them
Did I just get profiled for questioning the Democrats?
Block me as well blue conservative.
I don’t take orders from pompous shitbags, good sir.
“Im going to be barely better than the alternative and people will literally worship me for it. Also even though i support killing children, trump would kill more probably. Vote blue!”
Disclaimer because lemmy users are becoming more like redditors everyday:
yes trump sucks. Yes vote kamala if youre in a swing state. No, dont attack every person who points out the massive flaws in your democratic system or the “democrat” party. Because they fucking suck also. Just slightly less.
“And we won’t even support you federally and protect your rights … Vote blue!!”
(Completely agree with your disclaimer)
Jill Stien only had 2% of the vote in 2016. That is nothing. Most of those people would have stayed home. The reason Hillary lost was because she was a bad canidiate who was unable to resonate with young voters.
I remember 2020 where Trump did not win. All problems are fixed now.
Would you rather he did?
No more children in cag- uhh I mean no more war in the middle- ah fuck surely no more fracking at least??
I might risk voting 3rd party if this election wasn’t a choice between boring corporatists and 100% concentrated evil.
The stakes are just too damn high to risk letting Trump get back into the White House again.
This is the way.
it’s not worth it until first past the post is removed.
Until then it’s mathematically impossible for a third party candidate to win. Focus your energy instead on removing first past the post, then you have a chance
The only time I went third party it wasn’t to win. It was because I saw it as two main candudates so shirty that there was a good chance for third party to snag more voters than usual, possibly enough to gain slightly better recognition in the future.
The monkey’s paw curled.
We got Trump. The recognition came as irrational blame for Trump.
I won’t make the same mistake of voting for someone I think would do the best job. Now it’s merely an effort to keep the worst viable candidate out.
You do understand that this is exactly what the democrats and the GOP want? Most importantly, what the people funding both parties want. If you’ll vote for an unelected enabler of genocide just to keep another guy out you’re showing them morals don’t come into the equation for your vote.
What’s stopping them from running a charismatic fascist vs an unlikable one?
Stop blaming voters for the democratic party repeatedly choosing the most conservative candidate and pretending they did it for “electability”, only to end up in tight races.
What I want is to vote for someone I believe in. I don’t get to have that in this current reality. So I opt to do the most good I can with what extremely little power I have. It doesn’t matter what any other faction wants at that point. If the Republicans want my vote, they can stop presenting the greater evil.
Honesty is refreshing. I’m voting for Harris because I don’t want to see Trump’s orange face every week. Yes, I know what she is. Yes, I know what that makes me. I’ve made my peace with it. No, I don’t blame others who feel differently.
I’ve always critiqued the democrats but I’m so tired of trump. I will vote for a thousand boring democrats if it means removing these entitled, lying MAGA idiots from anything resembling power. They all belong in lunatic asylums, not in government.
The elections will always be between “boring corporatist and 100% concentrated evil”. Every election feels like it’s the most important one. You just gotta suck it up and vote third party regardless.
That doesn’t have to be the case. I’ve never felt that we had pure evil to battle until Trump was a candidate. Historically there’s been mostly two sets of policies and I prefer one or the other
Except this time there is a literal fascist running. The third party argument doesn’t work when we’ve got a candidate quoting Hitler and promising that this will be the last election you’ll have to vote in.
There’s always a literal fascist running, that’s what the GOP is there for. Lately, there’s two.
No, there isn’t always a literal fascist running and to say that there is severely and dangerously downplays the threat that Donald Trump poses to both the US and the rest of the world. It’s also a disgusting way to devalue the victims of fascism. A fascist is not simply someone you disagree with; they are not just an asshole, or a bad leader, or someone who leads their country into a war for their own gain. Fascists will erode your way of life, they will take whatever they want, they will take away your rights and spit in your face while doing so (assuming they don’t simply have you arrested), they will kill you as soon as it either benefits them or if they just want to for the hell of it.
Use whatever perceived intellect and moral high ground you can trick yourself into believing you have to vote 3rd party, but just know that you are aiding in Trump’s re-election. And all because you’re too much of a dipshit to know the difference between an asshole and a fascist. Fuck you.
Lmao. Don’t lecture me on what Donald Trump is gonna do to the rest of the world when it’s been both parties robbing us in the global south. Many of Trump’s most atrocious policies have just been happily accepted as the new normal by democrats. That’s their function, one does the dirty work, the other pretends it has to stay this way now.
Any metric that doesn’t include Joe Biden – the guy directly responsible for the mass incarceration of PoC via the 90s crime bill, a segregation advocate, a guy who has increased the number of children in cages in migrant camps, who keeps shipping weapons to a state in the middle of a completely broadcasted genocide – as a fascist, is a worthless, arbitrary metric.
You’re telling me Bush, who greatly enhanced the ability of the NSA to spy on every single citizen in America, who had a torture camp in Guantanamo where they knew they were torturing innocent people, who had black sites in abu ghraib, who gave finance capital carte blanche to rob people with predatory mortgages and securities built on air, that guy isn’t a fascist?
All this tells me is that the US has a far greater tolerance for fascism than anywhere else in the world as long as you don’t use the word, and provided the fascists aren’t targeting them specifically.
G.R.E.E.N.
GET
REPUBLICANS
ELECTED
EVERY
NOVEMBER
If you don’t like stein, consider voting party for socialism and liberation instead.
They’re running Claudia de la Cruz on a platform of Palestinian statehood and an end to arms shipments to israel.
I found out recently that they’re on the ballot or have official write in status in 42 states, so unless you’re in Alaska, Nevada, Montana, South Dakota, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Georgia or Pennsylvania go for it!
E: forgot Nevada. They’re not officially recognized in Nevada.
Are they running anyone in elections they might actually win? I might vote for a party like that for mayor or something. But I wouldn’t even vote for them for state house representative unless they were well known enough in my state that they might actually win.
‘Third’ parties in this country can show themselves as serious if they try to establish themselves from the bottom up. If all they do is run for president and occasionally Senate or House, then they show themselves as unserious parties which are probably nothing more than attempts to siphon votes that might have gone to a real candidate.
I don’t know odds, I’m not much of a gambler. You gotta start somewhere though and winning isn’t all that matters: at the presidential level losing parties’ turnout determines their ballot access, event presence, access to funds and media and obviously how much you hear about them.
At the state and local levels there are Byzantine other benefits to having some percentage of the vote that vary wildly from place to place.
So its worth it to vote for a small candidate even if they lose because it can have big effects down the road.
Psl runs candidates at lots of local races, especially in California because that’s where they started.
Of course, if your main worry is having voted for a candidate that can win: good news! Psl can win every race it has a candidate in as far as I know. People were saying that they didn’t have enough ballot presence to tip the electoral college but they were wrong!
I’d advise that no one buy into any of this nonsense. De la Cruz has a barely above zero chance to win, and at this point will serve only to siphon votes and spoil the election. Knowingly or not, this is what is happening.
Think about it: Ever wonder why you’re really only hearing about them recently? Where were they four years ago? What have they done to prove they will even do as they say? They have no track record to stand on, but for some reason, these people seem to think they can sneak into an election and have a chance to win on unproven, untested policy with no practical or effective way to make any of it happen?
Make no mistake- there is no good intention from anyone asking you to throw away your vote on these people this late in the game.
We’re it a year or two ago, I could maybe see it. But weeks away from white might be the most important election of our lifetime- to even think to request people not do emerging they can to stop Trump from forcing America’s militarily on us is shamelessly in bad faith.
DO NOT LISTEN TO THESE PEOPLE.
I might be misremembering the electoral values of the states here, but I think the combined value of the states they’re not official write ins or on ballot is only 64.
That leaves 474 electoral votes that psl could get, so they very much could win.
The history of the party is easy to find. They’ve been around for a little while now.
I’d choose a party with no track record over one with a consistent track record of genocidal violence and extrajudicial killings, but luckily psl has a track record of grassroots activism that’s pretty consistent, so I don’t have to take a gamble.
It’s a bit absurd to call opposition to genocide and apartheid unproven, untested policy.
I’m swiftly climbing the ladder of age and my whole life people have been saying “well, you should have been advocating for this or that last year, it’s too late now, this is the most important election of our lifetime!”
The best time to vote (and do groundwork for) psl was last year, the second best time is now!
I agree with the last part though, don’t listen to people peddling tired cliches and misinformation trying to manipulate you into voting one way or the other!
News flash genius…. Most everyone here is opposed to genocide. As has been said before, you’re not part of some fringe grassroots group that figured out that genocide was bad ahead of everyone else.
Stop with that shit. I don’t believe you’re here in any good faith to help anyone in any way.
Most everyone here is opposed to genocide.
Most everyone here is also voting for the Democrats, instead of agreeing to vote for a third party who is opposed to genocide
Again… everyone is against genocide. Your bad faith accusations aren’t working on anyone anymore. It’s just… cringy as fuck now.
And so you know- the third party clowns currently running have no viable end game to shut shit down over there. Go ahead and look it up. They say they do- but have no clear answer on how they’d do it that is even remotely viable. But it all looks good to the smug edgelords that think they’re somehow unique because they are against dOiNg gEnoCiDes!
What part of cutting military funding by 90% (Claudia de la Cruz’s platform) would fail to stop funding Israel?
They will have a barely above zero chance of successfully doing this. My god you people will believe anything won’t you?
I wonder why they didn’t just say they’re going to end world hunger…. Or cure cancer.
De la Cruz is a nobody that has no idea what there doing and no chance to ever see a position of authority to create let alone enact any policy that would produce meaningful change.
She’s a spoiler. And at this point- I’m beginning to think it’s purposeful.
You really think she’d have the support of Congress to do such a thing? In a system like America’s? That’s ridiculous. You should know full well such a thing would never happen even if Cruz were to magically win the presidency.
Talk is cheap, and it’s easy for third parties to say they’ll make such sweeping changes when they don’t have to actually back it up. They can tell you what you want to hear, but at the end of the day it’s all talk because such policies will never get past Congress.
If most everyone is opposed to genocide then I agree with them and want to help them find parties and candidates that oppose it too, like psl!
What party in opposition to genocide do you support?
I’m not going to stop politely and courteously advocating for the party and candidate I think is appropriate in threads where it’s on topic in a political comm.
It might not be a good idea to accuse people of bad faith when you open up with a sarcastic insult. World is pretty strict about that stuff, it’s like their number one rule.
America is a two party system.
Someone should tell it there’s all these other parties then.
With the way our system is set up, a third party will never win. Especially when 50% of America is still backing Trump. We need a new voting system before anything can change
I accused you of bad faith because that’s what I think you are. And I think the PSL is hot garbage and that’s why no one is taking them seriously.
Is there an argument I could make from my position that wouldn’t read as bad faith to you?
You’re here trying to garner support for the hopeless psl within weeks of an election, so….
No.
So early voting has started in some states. Get out and vote people
I don’t know if you’ve noticed this about Stein voters, but they’re very unlikely to switch their vote from Stein to Harris. If anything, there would suddenly be an unexplainable surge in write-in votes for Putin.
You fundamentally misunderstand the people you speak authoritatively about. Please remember that voters and supportive posters on the internet are not the same thing. I agree that Green Party voters (actual human citizens, not boys and trolls online) are woefully misguided but they are not trumpets by any stretch. Have you talked to any of them in person?
Ok champ. 👍
Idiots exist or the grifters wouldn’t target them.
These numbers are not correct according to NY Times
I double checked the subtraction with the NYT numbers you linked to, and the numbers look correct to me. Which numbers are wrong?
I can’t math and I think I looked at the wrong state for Michigan
Dont let online bullies influence your vote. Each citizen gets one vote, cast it for whom you wish to support. Learn about the issues, the policies being proposed, and cast your vote for whomever you support.
REEEEEEEEE how dare you vote any other way than what I PERSONALLY WANT? Have you thought about asking me first??
*as long as you support one of the major 2 parties
The GOP and the democrats are two arms of the same corporate party. Fuck them.
That makes an assumption that all or a big majority third party voters would prefer Harris over Trump.
Just for clarifying the logic here.
Yes. If Greens tend to the Left, the last thing they should want is right extremists
These numbers are also lies. Trump won PA by 68,735, while Stein got 48,912. It’s just misinformation.
Nobody who would have otherwise voted for Trump is going to be convinced to vote for Stein. Every vote she gets IS one that was much more aligned with Harris.
This isn’t a question of ALL third parties, but there aren’t any right-aligned third parties making any kind of a meaningful run.
What??
In Michigan Gary Johnson got 172,136 votes, in Pennsylvania he got 146,715, and in Wisconsin he got 106,674. If all Greens voted Clinton and all Libertarians voted Trump then New Mexico would’ve only been won by Clinton with around 1,000 votes, Colorado would’ve also been nearly Trump. Nevada, New Hampshire, and Minnesota would’ve been won by Trump. Maine might’ve gone majority Trump.
Third parties hurt Trump more than they help him, because Libertarians would not have voted Clinton.
And how many of them are running now? This isn’t about them, this is about the one third party candidate that actually makes headlines.
Why do headlines matter if she gets way less votes than Libertarians?
The Green party gets more attention in left-leaning circles because there are people sympathetic to it and there are people who want to blame them for the Democrats losing. It’s not because they’re actually more popular than the Libertarian party, which regularly gets like 3 times as many votes.
2020: 1,865,917 (LP); 405,034 (GP) 2016: 4,489,359; 1,457,216 2012: 1,275,923; 469,627 2008: 523,713; 161,797 2004: 397,265; 119,859So it’s completely wrong to say that “there aren’t any right-wing third parties making any kind of a meaningful run.” It’s just that your perception of how popular the Libertarian party is compared to the Greens is distorted.
At the same time, the way that the EC favors the GOP causes the spoiler effect of the Green Party to be amplified compared to Libertarians.
How? By the same math as OP, the Libertarian Party splitting the vote cost Trump Arizona, Georgia, and Wisconsin in 2020. That’s 37 EC votes which would’ve been enough to make the election an exact tie.
The Green Party is far more left-wing than the Libertarian Party is right-wing.
How does that contradict what I said. Also the LP is still further right than the GOP
They actually aren’t further right anymore
I don’t agree, but “right-wing” doesn’t really have a non-arbitrary definition so it doesn’t really matter
If all third-party candidates had to vote for one of the two main candidates, I think nearly all of the Green Party votes would go to the Democrat, while the Libertarian votes would be much more of a split.
It’s very convenient measuring ideological abstracts rather than the objective number of votes those parties got.
Vote for the candidate that aligns to your politics. If genocide and climate disaster is compatible with those, stick to the GOP or the Democrats.
This proves that left leaning holdouts have real leverage. The Dems need us to win and if they want our votes they have to appeal to our values.
I guess…
Alternatively, left leaning holdouts for some reason really like to punch themselves and all their friends and family in the nuts and are a real wanker class.
Supporting genocide crosses a line for me that I am unwilling to compromise on. If that makes me a wanker I’ll call myself a wanker proudly.
Trump is a clear supporter of the genocide. He wants Israel to destroy Palestine and he wants the US to do more to help them accomplish this. Harris is nowhere near as bad as this. She’s not going to withdraw support for Israel, but she’s at least going to try to rein them in and return to the pre-war status. Not great, but realistic the best that we can hope for with how supportive our politicians are of Israel in general.
These are the only two people that have a chance at the White House. If you don’t want to support the genocide, don’t waste your vote on somebody that is absolutely, without a doubt, going to lose. Instead, use it to vote for the one candidate that is possibly able to win over the person that is explicitly, unequivocally supportive of the genocide.
In my eyes, not voting for Harris is supporting the genocide. Anything that allows Trump into office is supporting the genocide.
So the only thing I can do if I want to end the genocide is to vote for the person currently doing the genocide?
The “democracy” isn’t worth saving at this point
So the only thing I can do if I want to end the genocide is to vote for the person currently doing the genocide?
You either think Joe Biden is still running for re-election or you don’t understand the powers of the vice president.
Got it. It’s the latter.
Who do you think the US president is right now?
I’ll consider believing there’s a difference between Kamala and Joe when Kamala says there’s a difference. Until then, you’re just making up a reality in your mind where she is somehow better than him on this despite showing no indication of that.
“My vote can’t end the genocide immediately, so I might as well accelerate it”
What an asshole position.
IT’S BEEN 12 FUCKING MONTHS OF GENOCIDE, 12 months of Biden/Kamala publicly defending a genocidal regime and giving that regime everything it wants.
Where is your red line? Mine was crossed a long time ago. Maybe you don’t have a red line when it comes to foreigners murdered by our tax dollars but I do.
You know, at first I was thinking that this is a really bad take. But then I realized something: this is a classic trolley problem.
Sparing the details because you probably already know them, it comes down to a choice: you can do nothing and five people will die, or you can actively perform an action and only one person will die. The only choice you have is to do nothing or do something.
So the problem becomes: which is the morally correct choice? On one hand, does doing nothing absolve you of the five deaths you could have avoided? On the other, does actively participating make you responsible for the one death even if it was to save five?
Back in the real world, you have the same choice. Since voting for a third party that has no chance of winning is functionally equivalent to not voting, it plays out the same way. You can do nothing and the genocide gets worse, or you can actively participate and try to reduce the damage. Which is the moral choice? Which will help you sleep at night?
That is a question philosophers have struggled with for centuries, and there’s no good answer. From my personal perspective, doing nothing IS a choice, so no matter what I do I’m still an active participant. Therefore I will choose to minimize the damage.
Yes, it’s bullshit that the current administration hasn’t takes a tougher stance on the conflict. But it will be worse under Trump, as demonstrated by both his words and his actions when he was last in office. So the question is: which will help you sleep at night: doing nothing and telling yourself that you are not responsible when Trump wins, or doing something even though you know it won’t be enough?
As powerless members of the masses, it’s the best we can do.
That’s extremely entitled of you. You’re willing to throw away a flawed democracy to allow fascism to take over because you don’t like either viable candidate? Absolutely childish. I guess the LGBTQ folk, minority folk, women, and everyone else who will suffer under Trump don’t matter one bit to you, and ironically you’ll accelerate the genocide in Gaza by letting Trump win.
You don’t have a choice for “no genocide” because Israel has no intention of stopping. You can choose the one viable candidate who has a chance at lessening it, or you can choose the other candidate who has explicitly stated he will let Netanyahu do whatever he wants. Third party votes accomplish absolutely nothing for Gaza, and the Palestinians sure as hell won’t thank you for it.
You’re willing to throw away a flawed democracy to allow fascism to take over
The only 2 viable candidates are both pro genocide
Fascism has already taken over and according to you there’s nothing I can do about it
left leaning holdouts for some reason really like to punch themselves and all their friends and family in the nuts
My brother is voting for Jill Stein because Biden (and by association Harris) supposedly supports genocide - but he thinks Putin is a good person (and has recently started talking about how great China is) and waves his hand when I mention that Trump would support Netanyahu even more. Your “for some reason” resonates with me because I have no fucking idea what happened to my brother to make him start saying this kind of nonsense - except that I know he stopped reading books and now gets his news entirely from his Facebook feed.
Dems would rather support genocide than win an election.
I mean, Trump supports the genocide too. If he were president, we’d probably have troops there helping out. I don’t see how this is even a choice.
North America’s electoral systems are so broken. It’s painful to see so much negativity, frustration, and fear directed at third parties in general. If that same energy was directed towards building a ranked choice voting system with proportional representation, like single transferable voting (STV), the duopolies would crumble and we could all actually vote for whoever we want without having to worry we might end up with the worst candidate winning.
That’s great. I Agree.
We got four more years to do that, if Trump doesn’t win.
We’ve had tons of time to change voting systems.
All the third parties couldve banded together to get it done. Ya know. With all their existing seats of power in federal, state, and local government.
Oh wait.
Hint. Hint.
A third party would be worthless if it won federal office right now. It would be roadblocked every step of the way.
I agree that our voting system needs an overhaul. But don’t try to do it by electing a third party president. It’ll never work, and if it did, they would be falling flat on their face for four more years and paint a terrible picture for the future of all third parties.
A protest vote means absolutely nothing, except that it helps the least-aligned primary party power. You are bolstering your opponent to do so. Literally cutting off your nose to spite your face.
It doesn’t need to start with the federal level. There’s a growing amount of states that have already adopted some form of ranked choice voting and some of those have also adopted a proportional variant. Progress is being made in some places at lower levels, but it’s slow. Other states have banned it unfortunately.
So then what is to be gained by voting for Stein? A clean conscience about the atrocities abroad?
That’s cool. Remember that when there are even more atrocities here against your brown and LGBTQ neighbors.
Remember that when there’s more middle-class homelessness because there’s not enough contractors with all the deported.
Assuming their original country takes them back. If not, they stay here as detainees. Now we are paying to host them in the prison system. But, at least since illegal immigration is a crime, they can essentially be near-free labor thanks to the 13th amendment. Is that the right way to fix the housing crisis?
Not saying we can’t be world police. That position benefits us greatly and give us tons of soft power. But maybe we should worry about keeping our own house from caving in on itself before we start trying to fix someone else’s.
I’m Canadian. I can’t vote for Stein. Nor would I under your current system if I was able to. It’s tragic though that your federal system funnels your people into just 2 options.
Canada’s electoral systems are not much better but at least we have viable third party options up here that have been able to exert pressure and influence our governments and bring attention to important issues. It’s still first past the post, and that should change. Third parties can do good work in the right environment if you let them. We recently got the beginnings of a national pharmacare and dentalcare programs from our social democratic / democratic socialist / progressive party working with the liberals.
At lower levels of government, the US does have third parties other than the Greens that have been putting in work between presidential elections. Vermont’s Progressive Party and New York’s Working Families Party are worth checking out.
