this post was submitted on 24 May 2024
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Lefty Memes
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An international (English speaking) socialist Lemmy community free of the "ML" influence of instances like lemmy.ml and lemmygrad. This is a place for undogmatic shitposting and memes from a progressive, anti-capitalist and truly anti-imperialist perspective, regardless of specific ideology.
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Yeah no.
You don't know whose gonna show up and whose gonna stay home. Plenty of states were lost in 2016 just out of apathy. Enough states were lost in 2000 because Nader cared more about the environment.
Here's the thing. Suppose a progressive third-party candidate actually gets 5% of a popular vote. Well, there's only 100% to go around. So, a progressive third-party candidate would be likely be taking from the more-left first-party candidate.
So let's look at 2020. Biden had 51.3% of the popular vote, Trump had 46.9. So take 5 from Biden and that puts him at...46.3.
That's fine...after all we learned that the electoral college is all that really matters, right? Except two out of the last three presidential elections that Republicans won, they lost the popular vote, but because the EC favors their states, the won the election.
It. Is. Not. Worth. The. Risk.
The only way that it works (at least under FPTP rules) is if a comfortable majority of the country is already leaning in the direction of your third party, enough so that even with the 5%, the more closely aligned party still wins by a comfortable margin. We are not in such a position. Voting for a third party in the current conditions in the hope that they'll get to that magical 5 is, most certainly, shooting yourself in the foot.
Honestly the more you think about it, the more it seems like that 5% number is spoiler-candidate bait for the unaligned party to use at their advantage, to make voters feel like they are doing a good and noble thing, when they really are just cutting off their nose to spite their face.
al gore won the 2000 election, even with nader running. it was the supreme court that coronated bush.
Wouldn't have even been a question. Nader's votes in Florida alone were enough to secure a very comfortable margin, had they gone to Gore.
it didn't matter what the vote count was. gore won, we all know it, and bush became president.
Yeah no one takes orders from you take it down a notch kiddo. 😜
No reasonable person would predict my state would turn in this election. Even our Republican politicians hate trump here 🤣. Trump won't win my state. I would wager as much money as I could on it lol. Trying to dictate what I do with my vote based off this improbability is silly.
Don't be so laissez-faire with your words. You could easily be astroshitting all over the place. Somebody in Michigan or Pennsylvania or Florida or Arizona could think that voting for a third party will give them the warm/fuzzies too.
Astroshitting? Are you accusing me of being paid to do this? Dude I just made a comment with another reason someone wouldn't vote for Biden.
'Don't be so laissez-faire with your words. You could easily be astroshitting all over the place.'
My original comment used the words "non-swing state" now you're saying "oh well, I didn't know when you said non-swing state I thought maybe it could be a swing state." You're silly. You also edited your last comment after I responded to it, which is gross.
I won't be wasting my time with responding to you after this 👈😎