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RFK Jr. can't win. But he and Cornel West could put Trump back in the White House.
(www.usatoday.com)
this post was submitted on 06 Apr 2024
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So how does voting for third party do anything to further any change to the current system toward one you're talking about?
This really isn't that complicated. The country doesn't run a two-party system because of arbitrary or conspiratorial reasons, it runs one because the system's structure produces two parties.
Are we having two different conversations? Did you read what I wrote?
I'm not advocating voting third party, nor am I rationalizing a two party system as some type of conspiracy.
I was simply stating a desire for a system that actually produces real choices instead of the one we currently have that forces a choice nobody wants. How we get to that is another discussion, but frankly, we can't have that discussion when one party is panicking about loosing voters who are dissatisfied with the choices on offer because (i'm looking at you here) every statement of dissatisfaction is interpreted as subterfuge.
Last I checked, I'm not Biden and so I'm not panicking about "loosing" voters.
I learned for the final time in 2016 that the voters in this country are determined to take it to the brink of disaster every 4-8 years no matter what absurdity is carried into the office by the R behind his name.
I just genuinely don't understand the positions of third party voters nor their apologists (I'm looking at you here).
So you're not critiquing 3rd party voters for spoiling their vote and letting Trump take the white house? What other reason would you disagree with voting 3rd party?
I actually think you're selling yourself short here - I think you do understand, you just disagree with the risk they're willing to take in their pursuit.
Because it will in no way help achieve any of the things they claim to want.
Which is why I don't understand their position nor those who apologize for them.
Third parties and their voters are just another sideshow in the American three-ring electoral circus, and I genuinely don't understand how people view them as anything other than that.
this isn't true, it shows there is a real caucus of active votes who are disenfranchised by the two parties. Whenever there is a breakout 3rd party, there is usually a period of policy realignment in the larger caucuses to pull them back in.
What I think you mean is that it doesn't achieve any electoral outcome, especially one that denies office to a fascist asshole we all oppose. And while that's not an outcome anybody really wants, it does provide an opportunity to bring the democrats to the table when they wouldn't ordinarily be willing, which makes threatening to do so particularly effective this cycle.
Nope, that does not cover everything. A lot of people will say "we need more parties, and we should encourage more parties" just like you were saying two posts up and they'll use that as their reason for voting third party as if that in any way helps improve the short-term or the long-term viability for a national third party that does not just wind up becoming a half-plank (if that) in one of the existing two party's platform.
People voted for Jill Stein and Gary Johnson in 2016 and it did nothing to advance the national viability of the Green or Libertarian parties.
In addition (as you acknowledge), they also did nothing to advance the cause of either the Green or Libertarian party in terms of actual policy. Republicans became less Libertarian as a result of their 2016 win (adding record amounts to the deficit and debt, cracking down on weed users, becoming notably more authoritarian, and even gasp enacting new gun regulations), and the Republican-led government (of course) worked explicitly against Green party principles.
Three-party system advocates that try to take a "vote-only" or even "make my own party" (with blackjack and hookers) approach to achieving a viable, national 3rd party are misguided clowns.
You're leaving out what happened after Jill Stein lost her bid in 2016: many (not most, not even a lot, but a few) of their positions were adopted by the DNC the following cycle (aspects of the green new deal, weed legalization, even Biden's student debt relief could partially be attributed to their free tuition position). Third parties (and third party candidates caucusing with the establishment parties) help move the overton window by forcing debate and consideration, even if it doesn't end up moving the window much.
I'll even go out on a limb and say that you're mostly right: electoral politics generally does fuck-all to move the needle for more progressive governance, and even in the few instances where progressives eek out a few concessions they're usually compromised to all hell and are no longer effective by the time they're implemented. But saying that voting third party 'does nothing' is like denying the existence of gravity. Organized resistance to establishment politics -no matter what form that takes- is possibly the only way to move the needle when it comes to the two party system aside from holding primaries, but you might have noticed that didn't really happen this year for the democrats. Third parties represent a threat to establishment parties, and because of that threat they have some amount of leverage and bargaining power.
I'll be charitable again and float the possibility that you do actually see these benefits (small they may be) to third party activities, but you may just think that those small benefits aren't worth the cost or risk. I'll even concede that those concerns are fair and justified (for those who still see value in the democratic party), but denying the political reality of those organizations is more than a little defeatist (or wishful thinking, depending on your leaning).
*Edit: and if you've still decided you don't understand those dynamics, then I'll float the question: what do you think is an effective way to push the needle left?
You're pretending that Jill Stein votes caused any of this when they obviously didn't. Bernie (working from within the party) made these leftward changes in the Democratic party, and he started doing it during the 2016 primary.
The only time in my lifetime I have ever seen a third party candidate have any leverage or bargaining power at all nationally was Ross Perot in 1992 and the only thing he maybe achieved is that he pushed Clinton slightly rightward (EDIT: even that's debatable, as the Dems had lost the white house for over a decade and had to get Reagan voters somehow to get into office). The only reason he was relevant at all too was because he spent a crazy amount of money buying airtime, which is exactly the opposite of what you're saying here with grass roots voters having more influence.
Same goes for RFK, Jr. btw, the guy is only talked about at all because Republicans want him to be a spoiler candidate for Biden, he had a famous dad, and because he bought a super bowl spot. It's a joke. He might as well be one of those English candidates for office that show up to debates dressed up in costumes.
I'm not denying that they exist nor their "political reality". If anyone is denying political reality here it's you by pretending that third parties do all kinds of impactful work that they clearly don't. Even Teddy fucking Roosevelt couldn't get into office without the two party system and in the end made himself a spoiler that got Woodrow Wilson into office.
It's pretty clear what I think, they're ineffective. They're far from the best way (and I'd argue aren't even a way) to achieve any actual change or desired outcome nationally, and they produce nonviable, loser candidates that just add another turd to the shit show that is American politics.
If you're looking to actually change national policy in America, you have to start by living in reality and working inside of the two-party system instead of denying it and having the "brilliant idea nobody ever thought of before" and launching yet another third-party.
If you want to actually have more choice in elections, you have to start by organizing movements to change the way votes are tallied and people are elected. It probably makes more sense to start those kinds of movements at the lowest possible level (i.e. local, then state, then national). The American system of (largely) "first past the post" practically guarantees that you'll have two national parties, and our national history provides evidentiary support for exactly that.
Look at Andrew Yang, the only reason he and UBI were briefly in the national conversation is that he ran as a Democrat. He has since formed his "forward party" and was never heard from again.
Ah, ok, here's something we can agree on. All political power originates in organized resistance, full-stop. The relative effectiveness of third party candidates is really just an indirect measure of what is otherwise just a group of voters exercising collective power over the electoral system.
You can hand-wave away the green party's roll in the DNC taking on more progressive policies if you choose to (lol to it being 'obvious' that they didn't, Bernie himself was a third-party candidate that caucused with the democrats in 2016), but saying change only happens 'within the two-party system' is ridiculous. Civil rights leaders famously organized outside of that system in order to pressure it to act on civil rights; the same could be said for organized protestors now placing pressure on the DNC from the outside to push for an end to the Palestinian genocide.
3rd party candidates are just another form of collective organization, and that organization has power the same as any other collective movement. The trouble you're running into trying to measure their effectiveness is in looking at electoral outcomes as an end-goal.
But you are right, though; you can place more leverage over local and state government elections than you can in national elections, but some issues simply cannot be addressed at the local level. To have any hope at pressuring change on the national DNC platform, organized resistance has to happen outside of that system, especially when that structure has closed itself off from internal debate.
Measuring the success of those structures outside the 2-party system simply isn't as easy as looking at electoral outcomes, and that's the weakness of liberalism generally (it ignores power structures that exist outside the primary structure). The electoral system is not neutral and requires great pressure to move it.
Bernie was a candidate for the democratic nomination for president and worked through the DNC. His protege AOC wrote the Green New Deal that you're referencing above, and he was instrumental in a lot of leftward movements in the positions of both Clinton as a candidate and Biden as president. But sure, it was the green party the whole time. 🙄
In some cases, 3rd party candidates are a form of collective organization. In others, they are one guy trying to buy the airwaves or pretend there is a movement that does not actually exist.
Look at your notable national 3rd party candidates in recent years...Kanye West, RFK, Jr...Cornel West, even John Mcafee in 2016. These are jokes. They are not real candidates and they have a zero percent chance of winning nationally and most do not even have a real movement backing them. They're essentially cults of personality without a home, because the Republicans already have their cult leader assigned, and the current Democratic candidate is an incumbent.
I am not exclusively talking about at electoral outcomes, though it makes little sense to talk about viable, national 3rd parties without talking about them. The US is not running a parliamentary system. Minority parties do not form an alliance in order to govern. People who do not win at least a significantly large percentage of seats do not have a say in the affairs of the legislature, and, in the executive branch, the President can make a large amount of decisions disregarding the losing party entirely if he so chooses.
Fair enough. There are a lot of reasons why a 3rd party candidate might gain traction, and discrete policy differences is really only one. I would say of those you mentioned, only Cornell West has a coherent policy strategy worth speaking of. But they do still represent collective power, especially when they receive some marginally significant portion of a vote; they just don't necessarily represent a group that could be appealed to via policy. There's real effort that needs to be spent identifying why any candidate might be receiving attention, and they don't always represent a policy failure so much as general frustration (e.g. anti-establishment candidates and voters). But just because those candidates/parties/voters don't represent a clear objective doesn't mean there isn't power in their existence, nor does it mean their existence is random. It's for this reason single-issue challengers are more effective, because there's a policy disagreement that is clearly legible that can be responded to (Yang with UBI, Bernie with income inequality, Greens with democratic reform, ect). When there's a clear objective being communicated, a collective block of voters can move the needle.
This also isn't limited to 3rd party candidates; the current republican national committee and nominee is made primarily of aesthetic fascist components and no real policy direction, and they represent close to 50% of the national voting base. It's extremely important to understand why that movement attracts so many voters, and I think there's a real lessen for Democrats to take from the growth of anti-establishment voting blocks since 2016.
No argument there. The point of voting 3rd party (or from abstaining, or ticket splitting, ect) isn't to play electoral politics, it's to communicate some dissatisfaction with the primary choices on offer. The US faces a very serious crisis of democracy, but it's not for the reason most liberals think. The US presidential system is failing, in large part because it's electoral system has consistently failed to produce effective nominees and its congress has settled into an unproductive pattern of aesthetic opposition. If democrats were honestly concerned for the health of the democracy, they'd be paying more attention and addressing the concerns of those people threatening to vote 3rd party, abstain, or vote for a fascist. Instead they're hand-wringing about 'the other guy' and refusing to put forward clear policies to address the crisis. Even if they pull out a win in November, a fascist takeover will only become even more likely next cycle unless they enact bold policy.
I think they honestly are concerned for the health of the democracy, but I think they're limited in what they can do to address root causes because of their funding apparatus. Biden specifically strikes me as a person that cares deeply about the well-being of the citizens of this country and if he were able to wave a magic wand and reverse Citizen's United I think he likely would do so, but it unfortunately is not that simple.
Some Democrats are fighting in an asymmetric war as well (e.g. AOC and other "justice dems") which makes them less effective than they could be and in a constant electoral squabble, but keeps them from completely compromising their principles.
Ultimately, there is no issue as continually relevant in modern US politics as the power of money in politics (a.k.a. regulatory capture) and I do not share Biden's optimistic outlook for the future of this country given its current political state.
The primary complaint from leftists about Biden and most of the Democratic establishment is that they tend to prioritize the systems that yield electoral influence over solutions that would address any particular issue but might damage some arm of the system that is relied upon elsewhere in the party. This is why Biden is really good at putting forward policy solutions that sound good on paper but fall well short of their stated goal. He's great at harm reduction, but when you're someone like me who believes the problem is with the system itself, harm reduction isn't sufficient. They could 'wave a magic wand' and address campaign finance regulation, but the democrats need that structure to run their campaigns. Democrats can't consider solutions that might hurt their long-term electoral odds, and that's a huge-fucking problem.
As you zoom out further, that problem starts to loom larger and larger, until it encompasses the entirety of the US Liberal Democratic system. Leftists end up resenting democrats because the systems we are fundamentally oriented against are exactly the ones democrats wont/can't touch, either because there are rules in place to protect them or they depend on them themselves. The only way forward for leftists is to bring that tension to the foreground, and part of that strategy is to undermine the typical structures democrats use to reinforce their electoral advantage so that they're forced to reconcile those contradictions.
That's why vocal abstention and vote-spoiling/splitting are things I advocate for, because democrats can't address those issues until they personally risk loosing power if they don't, and i firmly believe that the risk of a fascist takeover in the US will continue growing until those things (wealth consolidation, voter disenfranchisement via campaign finance dis-regulation, privatization of essential resources, ect) are addressed. Fascist voters are responding to extremely real material conditions; they aren't going away until those material conditions are addressed.
We've simply run out of time.
It's not just (or even mostly) the democrats that need that structure. It's largely republicans who are (ironically) a minority party that need outsized money from a smaller pool of donors. Republicans do not have majoritarian, grass roots support for just about anything they do and rely to an even larger extent upon big money donors. But there also is no magical wand Biden could wave. You need legislation to pass which requires the legislature to act. Democrats have a non-filibuster proof majority in the Senate and a minority in the House...you ain't passing jack shit with those numbers besides perhaps more billions for bombs. I'm surprised they even have a speaker and have funded the government with the state of politics in this country. I almost would've bet money on a default a while back.
I don't know if either part of this statement is true. Historically, fascist movements have been defeated in different ways but at least one of them is just killing them in war.
I also don't understand advocating against democrats in the short term even if it means they eventually lose out to fascism because every moment that you aren't under fascism is better than living under it. Delay the inevitable long enough and it is no longer inevitable (see: Trump and the justice system).
Frankly, I find it surprising that there is not a group or person who haven't tried primarying against Republicans from left of the Democratic party position.
The GOP seems like a cult-of-personality shell that is completely moveable on policy (because it doesn't have any except perhaps hating "those people").
That's perhaps because it's all about the $$$ and the leftist groups have found themselves wanting in that area, but ultimately I find it a lot less miserable to live under Republican presidents than Democratic ones, even if it isn't utopia.
And to kind of conclude the earlier discussion, I think we're closer to either a civil war or a blind black jewish lesbian woman amputee winning the presidency than we are to a viable 3rd national party in this country.
I would really recommend reading "The Fascist Revolution: Toward a General Theory of Fascism", which is AFIK the most comprehensive exploration on the topic. He theorizes fascism evolves out of a decline of an existing cultural/economic disenfranchisement and dissatisfaction with the existing order. As per putting fascist movements down: it has rarely (if ever) been put down by voting it away.
I don't know if this has ever been the case with fascism, but i'd be happy to be proven wrong. Especially if fascism arises out of systemic dissatisfaction, I don't know how fascism could possibly just 'go away' on its own.
I would like nothing more than for democrats to address the problem, they just haven't shown the interest in it. This is also a particularly privileged view that ignores the conditions that lay the groundwork for fascism. Many of us currently live under economic and cultural oppression and violence right now, there just happens to be a number of those who don't share that experience and would very much like things to stay the course.
I don't disagree, but that's not really the point of voting 3rd party.
Fascism kinda requires a single, "strong man" leader. The Achilles heal of all "dear leader" movements (autocracies, monarchies, etc.) is that the succession plan is garbage. People in these movements really get invested in "the guy" at the center of them, and it's difficult for anyone else to scratch that same itch for them (e.g. Desantis).
If you run the clock out on Trump (i.e. he fucking dies of a filet of fish overdose), I suspect his supporters will go in the can right along with him.
The demographics are also changing and not to get all "demographics are destiny" on it, but if we somehow miraculously manage to stave off Republicans at the ballot box for a few more election cycles they may be forced to reform themselves in order to be relevant again....if it doesn't spiral into out-and-out violence at which point politics are kind of irrelevant.
I don't mean to sound rude, but that is incredibly naive
Some probably start following his charisma-less kids while others turn into huge desantis fans or something, but the party's largely over once dear leader is in the ground.
If democracy is still in place at the time, that'll mean that those factions will have to choose another guy.
A cult leader dying is the beginning of the end of the cult. Their power typically doesn't transfer well to others.