this post was submitted on 13 Jan 2025
617 points (84.5% liked)
Political Memes
11192 readers
1306 users here now
Welcome to politcal memes!
These are our rules:
1) Be civil
Jokes are okay, but don’t intentionally harass or disturb any member of our community. Sexism, racism and bigotry are not allowed. Good faith argumentation only. No posts discouraging people to vote or shaming people for voting.
2) No misinformation
Don’t post any intentional misinformation. When asked by mods, provide sources for any claims you make.
3) Posts should be memes
Random pictures do not qualify as memes. Relevance to politics is required.
4) No bots, spam or self-promotion
Follow instance rules, ask for your bot to be allowed on this community.
5) No AI generated content.
Content posted must not be created by AI with the intent to mimic the style of existing images
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
"Hey, let's vote for a candidate who literally cannot win from a party that hasn't done the necessary work to become nationally viable because I don't want to be part of the two party problem even though if we do so it will guarantee that a felon rapist who incited an insurrection, stripped women of a human right, and illegally attempted to overturn an election will win." - Dipshit 3rd Party Voters
Just as stupid as Trump supporters, as far as I'm concerned.
Well, they got what we told them they'd be getting. Why aren't they celebrating?
But you're SUPPORTING GENOCIDE when you vote for the candidate most likely to get the fewest people killed! While the people of Palestine are about to be annihilated, my own right to marry is about to be taken away, and all of my trans friends are going to lose access to the drugs that keep them from killing themselves, I can rest easy knowing that I didn't engage with the system at all
Nope. Voting for the slightly less evil politician doesn't mean you support genocide anymore than pulling the lever means you support innocent people being run over by trolleys.
Close, but you fail to understand that a vote doesn't necessarily mean I support them. It could be that the only alternative would be significantly worse. It's actually a lot like the trolley problem, in that sometimes there is no good choice, only a least bad choice.
There were exactly two paths the trolley could go down as of November. You can pretend there weren't, but the only option any individual had other than Harris or Trump was to assassinate one or both, and I'm not interested in getting iced by the SS
Unless you think there's some magic number of comments you can make on the internet that will somehow convince enough voters to ditch the two main parties. Of course, you would have to be incredibly naive to believe in that magic number.
Edit: let's update the trolley problem to be more in line with this election. Imagine instead of two tracks, there are three: the Red Track has 5,000,000 innocent people tied to it. The Blue Track meets back up with the Red Track down the line, but skips past 4,500,000 of those people. The Green Track doesn't have anyone tied to it at all.
If the trolley goes down the Red Track, 5,000,000 people die. If the trolley goes down the Blue Track, only 500,000 of those people die. If the trolley goes down the Green Track, nobody dies. The choice is obvious, right? Pick the green track!
Except polling shows that 75 million people will be pulling the Red Lever, 75 million people will be pulling the Blue Lever, and less than 1 million people will be pulling the Green Lever. What Lever is most likely to save the most people?
It's Blue, the answer is Blue, because not enough people give a shit about Green to pull it, and too many people are zealously in favor of Red to dissuade them. The only way to prevent any deaths is to help get the Blue lever pulled.
Objectively false. More than three paths literally on the ballot. Ignoring the pre-November time frame. Ignoring the possibility of write-ins. You are deliberately leaving things out in your framing - you're lying.
Yes, I could have voted for anyone I wanted, and there were still only two people who could possibly have been elected. Any vote for anyone other than those two literally didn't impact the election.
Unfortunately I couldn't read this idiot's replies before they got nuked, but I'm pretty sure I saw something along the lines of "and yet Harris didn't win the election" in my notifications.
Harris got 48.4% of the votes, Trump got 48.9% of the votes, and no one else got even close to 1%. If you don't understand how Harris had a solid chance and Stein doesn't, I can only assume you're either a child who's never interacted with an election before, or a troll from a foreign country trying desperately to sow discord in America, because I do not believe that an adult can genuinely be that stupid.
And yet Harris lost, therefore it was impossible she could have gotten elected. And every other candidate who lost. Fascinating argument.
Absolutely tremendous brain energy
All of that is fine and dandy except we live in reality.
Reality is a cold hearted bitch. The actual choices were between the status quo, with the occasional bone thrown out way, and billionaire backed fascism, where all of us will be actively fucked for at least the next four years, and likely longer because the fascists are unlikely to ever allow elections where they have a chance of losing.
Those were the only choices, not voting or voting third party was exactly the same as voting for the fascists. Congratulations, you did it, Trump won.
I saw these responses coming and worded my comment correspondingly. Read. More. Carefully.
Absolutely right on point A.
Point B: This is wrong and you've obscured the idea. " we ( potential third party voters ) must vote for them because we ( left voters as a whole ) are voting for them " It's not circular logic, they are two different groups.
So as someone who wants the DNC ( and the GOP ) to disappear, here's what I think are the important questions:
IMO a good idea would be a threshold system. So anyone can join the party and say, " I will vote if there are X commited voters ". If not, the party stands down. They get to build support without spoiling the vote.
This is all theoretical of course since the US may have just had it's last election.
I have an answer for 1. and that answer is "Never". a third party is never viable as long as we have First Past the Post voting.
As for 2, you don't put any effort into third parties until after we fix the voting system. You work within the system and push for voting reform, or else it will never happen, and we'll be stuck with First Past the Post forever.
The game plan is to push for one of two options, either Approval or STAR. Those two voting systems are the only Condorcet compliant systems that can fix our mess of an election system. There are some other fixes that come afterward, like ditching Primary elections (they're not needed under Approval or STAR) and ditching the electoral college, but those can come after we fix the core problem.
To reiterate, you cannot solve anything of the problems of our system from outside it. You must hijack one of the two parties and use that to fix things. The same way the Evangelical racists hijacked the Republican Party in the 70s and 80s.
Point B is not "wrong", and you have not showed it is. The population as a whole is responsible for selecting the best candidate. These subdivisions, "right", "left" and "really left" or however you want to depict them, are just cultural constructs (yes, like the election system itself) that affect people's decision making on how to vote. Like any other idea.
How does a third party "become viable"? Define "viability". Any party is "viable" in this system with a few votes on ballot petitions, associated paperwork, and the population voting for them. Again, this points to circular logic. It creates an impossible, circular dilemma if a population is deciding not to vote for a party because they think the population is deciding not to vote for a party. As long as they have that literally insane mentality, the third party is impossibly out of reach, like any other religious or irrational mentality, or any mentality in general, that successfully govern's people's behavior. What else do you want to hear? A "third party" becomes viable when they realize the insanity of that thinking and reject it.
Hmmm. I wonder how a population comes to vote for a 3rd party in significant enough numbers to win a national election. Hmmmm. This is a tough one. How could that possibly happen?
I'm going to spitball here. Maybe a 3rd party would have to start by supporting city/county/state 3rd party candidates across the country so that over time that 3rd party eventually has an actual presence, let's say, in the House of Representatives, which boosts name recognition even more, so that one day maybe there's even some in the Senate and then, holy shit, all of a sudden there's an actual chance at winning a presidential election.
It's comical to state that all the population has to do is vote for them, without grasping that all these other steps don't need to happen first. I'm going to run the Barbie Party candidate in 2028 and when they don't win, I'm going to blame the populace for not voting for them.
Uh-huh, and yet some of the population ARE aware of these candidates without being spoon-fed their "name recognition". So if social and conventional news media filter out all candidates but those of a preferred uniparty, those should be ignored? Bullshit, wrong.
What does this have to do with the price of tea in China?
Point A is absolutely true.
Point B would be true in a world where the US is a properly functioning and fair democracy. It is not. Elections are popularity contests, and the easiest way to become vastly more known and popular than other candidates is by throwing money at it. Without big donors, your party doesn't stand a chance. At best you have zero impact, at worst you act as a spoiler candidate and get the exact opposite of what you want in power.
In such a system, candidates aren't owed your vote. You owe your neighbors to vote in such a way that potential harm is minimised. A 3rd party vote, if unviable, is never that. In the US electoral system, it doesn't make sense to vote for someone, it makes sense to vote against someone. Which is a deeply sad reality and shows that the US is in dire need of electoral reform.
Again. I am excruciatingly well aware of the "realities" of the U.S. electoral system. They are handicaps that are currently preventing the best candidate from being selected. None of them change the fact that the population is responsible for selecting the best candidate. Of course the handicaps exist, that's why we're not selecting the best candidate. That does not somehow release us of the responsibility of selecting the best candidate. That makes literally no sense.
Thanks for helping Trump win! Palestine is so saved. This whole thing wasn't about you feeling morally superior at all.