I'm left-libertarian (upper case left, lower case libertarian) on the political compass, which is practically not represented in US politics, so I'll take whatever I can get. Biden is, realistically, the best I can hope for this election cycle. He's not great, there's a lot of big policy issues I diverge with him on pretty sharply (both on left and libertarian), but the other candidates for the DNC are a hot fucking mess. As for the libertarian party, it's actually insane. Gary Johnson got booed for saying he'd want people to have driver's licenses to drive. That's a no go for me. And as far as the conservatives go, they run the gamut from not an instant disaster (I guess) to the loud, proud, and complete end of the republic.

Biden has at least done some things that I kinda like, and doesn't seem keen on destroying the republic. I'd love to get a reformer in and sweep Reaganism out on its wrinkled, swampy ass forevermore, but I don't think that's realistic at this point. Where I start getting worried is that the Biden campaign seems dead set on repeating some frankly terrible HRC '16 strats, which, well, we saw how well that worked for her, but the pro-Biden response is "Trust me bro, Trump is actually unelectable this time". I'm also concerned because, let's face it, Biden's old enough that he could get struck down with a stroke or what have you at any minute.* Every day, the cosmic dice are getting more and more weighted against him. The democrats have done very little to make a case for a possible candidate/president Harris, where the republicans have laid a LOT of groundwork against her. If Biden bites it or gets incapacitated, Harris is going to have a huge uphill climb in front of her.

I guess where I get uneasy is that it feels like the democrats are making a lot of avoidable and predictable mistakes, and they're just banking that it won't blow up in their face this time because, uh, what, that was that time, this is this time? They could do better, but they're just going to choose not to, and be shocked if shit goes sideways.

*I mean, so could Trump, but I'm not hoping that he wins.

[–] AlmightyTritan@beehaw.org 1 points 11 months ago (1 children)

I wish you the best of luck with your strategic voting, hopefully the lesser of two evils has some amount of representation for you.

I don't really understand the US' electoral system, but you guys seem really boned by the whole two party system. Like no wonder everyone is so grumpy and unsatisfied all the time when you guys seem to just have two big parties that span such wide gamuts of views and policies.

[–] conditional_soup@lemm.ee 1 points 11 months ago

Basically, yes. Speaking as someone who's voted third party before, there's no hope of changing the system by voting third party at the federal level. Game theory on first-past-the-post elections and the absolutely insane amount of money in our elections practically ensures it. The best way to effect change there is to go to some form of transferrable vote or ranked choice vote at the state and local level. There are already some states whose electoral college splits its votes in this way, and the two main parties (and their big donors) hate it because it erodes their ability to take a state's vote for granted and weakens their duopoly.

load more comments (37 replies)