I don't know what was wrong with Joe Biden. It's hard to imagine that they ever would have asked for a debate if this was the way he is normally. We've seen him recently holding press conferences and giving speeches and he seemed to be fine. They said he had a cold so maybe he really was on drugs — Nyquil or Mucinex or something that made him seem so shaky and frail. Whatever it was, it was a terrible debate for him and if he does stay in the race (which is almost certain in my opinion) the campaign is going to have a lot of work to do to dig out of the hole that was dug last night. The media smells blood and they are circling like a bunch of starved piranhas.
. . . For some odd reason, moderator Jake Tapper told Trump in the beginning that he didn't need to answer the questions and that he could use the time however he wanted. Trump ran with that, essentially giving a rally speech whenever he had the floor and was unresponsive to the vast majority of the questions. He made faces and insulted Biden to his face, at one point calling him a criminal and a Manchurian candidate. If anyone had said 10 years ago that this would happen at a presidential debate they would have been laughed out of the room.
After the debate when most of the country had turned off cable news or gone to bed, CNN aired its fact check. And it's a doozy:
It sure would have been good if even some of that epic litany of lies could have been checked while people were still watching. The decision to have the moderators sit like a couple of potted plants woodenly asking questions about child care while Trump responded with irrelevant lies was inexplicable. Why did they even bother to ask questions at all? They could have just run the timer and let the candidates talk for two minutes each about anything they wanted. It probably would have been more enlightening.
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Do you think it’s worth it to help the democrats win rather than build an alternative and show them where to shift their platform towards?
That’s not feasible in a FPTP system. Best you can do is keep voting for the least bad between the two “real” candidates and shift the Overton window overtime.
Or have a violent revolution, but that’s a bit more difficult to coordinate.
It’s literally what every third party campaign in our lifetimes has done.
Perot 92 pushed both parties to actually address nafta instead of sweeping it under the rug, Nader 2000 forced the democrats to run left in 04 and 08.
I saw these things happen with my own eyes and if anecdote isn’t enough for you they’re both well studied!
I’ll admit I’m not that well-informed on those elections, but would’ve they really been capable of being more than a spoiler candidate, had they not been “listened to”?
Looking at the data, every election in the past 200 years has been won with more than 50% of the electoral college. Latest one where a state has been won by a third party is ‘68. If those phenomena have been studied I’m interested, because it really doesn’t seem like they did anything looking at the results at a surface level.
Perot 92 was not a spoiler campaign.
After the dust settled, everyone accused it of acting as a spoiler. In the next two decades several groups studied the results and found that Perot only reduced Clinton’s margin of victory.
Perot 92 was listened to. Every candidate from it’s inception to the adoption of the usmcta had to answer “what are you gonna do about nafta?”
People like to call Nader 2000 a spoiler, but that’s just a distraction from the fact that jeb bush stopped the recount and the supreme court declared bush the winner.
Nader was listened to. The democrats ran left in 04 and 08, at least in word.
What I’m saying is, how did those studies reach the conclusion that said third parties were actually a factor in those changes, and didn’t just happen at the same time?
Because again, considering the statistics for recent years’ elections, third parties haven’t been a threat to the major two for over 50 years. I’m interested in why would they care about the relatively small voter base of those parties when they wouldn’t have changed any recent American election.
Hmm, yes, who can say why every candidate for over twenty years has had to explain what they’d do about nafta after the year some guy got on tv and yelled about it non stop when before no one could even describe it?
Who can say why the democrats tacked left after they failed to out conservative the bush administration?
Perhaps things are just occurring with no relationship to each other and can’t be connected!
Of course you’re not gonna find much succor for voting blue no matter who when you’re suggesting that we live under a complete breakdown of causality…
Your point that third parties havent been a threat isn’t in any way related to the documented effects third parties have had.
If the only outcome from a vote was winning or losing then you’d be right, but votes are used to figure out which parties get funding, presence on the ballot, event appearances, media coverage and public awareness.
Both major parties look at the recorded vote and triangulate how to get the numbers they need from the electorate that came out.
If there were a set number of voters than you’d be correct, there’s no reason to care about third parties, but third parties pick up tons of voters who’d otherwise stay home. Something like 30% in perots case and upwards of half in Naders 2000 campaign.
The reason the two major parties pick bits and pieces off third party formations is so they can add to the voting base and not have to try to chase after their opponents constituency. You know, like how the democrats are doing.
You said “if anecdote isn’t enough, they’re both well-studied”, so I thought some research actually existed about it.
I’m not saying third party campaigns are useless or always spoilers, I just don’t think they can actually force a change since it seems they can successfully be ignored with no repercussions. Sure, major parties can pick up bits from their programs if they want to, but they’re definitely not in a situation where they have to or else they’ll risk the election.
Even now for example, I think every non-major candidate except Kennedy is against funding Israel. But despite that, and despite (I think?) the majority of Americans being against it as well, both Biden and Trump are running with it. Because they know it’s not an issue that actually “matters” to the campaign, since there’s no viable alternative that doesn’t support it.
you'll have to forgive me, i'm not here to debate people so i don't link a million things or drop the good ol' tankie wall of links unless its asked for. my assumption is that if someone wants to learn something they can just look it up themselves.
Perot was not a spoiler, another source for that, people mad at hw bush lying about taxes voted for clinton, the wikipedia article on public opinion about nafta.
now usually I wouldn't link a wikipedia article but there's just so fucking much there that i'd rather someone actually read the sources linked in it rather than try to wrangle its' citations. one thing that isn't covered in the wikipedia article is that as public opinion changes, polls that ask specifically about nafta get negative results and polls that use more open ended language about "free trade agreements" get more positive results.
of note: the wikpiedia article specifically recognizes the effect perot had on public awareness of nafta, citing two sources that say support rose after his 93 debate with al gore (those sources cite one of the polls that asks about "free trade agreements" and not nafta specifically, natch).
I don't have the energy to figure out what sources would convince a person that kerry ran to the "left" of gore. i just have to trust that a person would see it and figure it out even though kerry was a piece of crap in his own way. as far as proof that platform was a response to the greens in 2000, there was no major third party turnout in 2004 and the greens positions in 2000 were subsumed into the democrats platform or winnowed away in 2004.
to your claim that third parties can't force other parties to do anything: you're right, they can't. we have the right tacking biden regime because of that. the democrats have decided that it's a better electoral strategy to run on, and i know i'm sounding like a broken record and its frustrating to always have to respond to these positions, genocide and border detentions rather than literally anything else.
third party votes can't force the biden regime and the democrats to abandon those positions, but they can show the democrats how much support they could pick up by taking them on.
you said every major candidate runs on platforms that the majority of americans don't support. you're right. why can they get away with that? is it possibly because people have accepted the "throw your vote away" logic?
I don't know the answer to that, but i do know that actually expressing what we want with the only voice we are given that politicians can't deny is a phenomenal way to change it!
Thanks for the sources, I was genuinely not aware of how many people supported Perot.
But even then, it’s usually not enough support for it to actually change the outcome. In the case of Perot it was, apparently, but even then it still didn’t push either of the candidates to change their views on nafta. If support that big is still not enough for them to worry, it’s hard to believe it can ever make a difference.
No, it’s because the US got so divided on stuff that’s supposed to be a given, that contributing to an ongoing genocide isn’t the most important thing for voters right now. When the main candidates are polar opposites on key issues in people’s lives like Abortion or LGBT rights, anything happening outside of the country becomes an afterthought.
It is, but not by voting third party. I can understand it if the candidate is actually leading in polls like Perot was, but right now hoping for a third party (or worse, Kennedy is apparently the most supported after the main two so FOURTH party) exploit is way too unrealistic to take the risk.
As I’ve said in another post, to me the only feasible way to get stuff to actually change is to keep voting for the “least bad” of the main candidates. If Republicans keep losing every election, eventually they’ll resign to the fact that they can’t keep running on christofascism and give their platform to a candidate that at least has the same opinion as the Dem one about basic human rights. And only at that point, when Dems won’t be able to run on “my opponent is literally Satan”, they’ll have to shift to more progressive positions to keep getting elected. If at that point they still don’t, you can safely vote for third parties because “wasting your vote” isn’t that much of a risk.
you just said the only feasible way to change things is to keep voting for the lesser of two evils. doesn't that seem a little absurd, given that its what got us where we are through a consistent movement right, not left?
how can you suggest that the democrats just need more of our votes when they got enough of them on a popular left movement to win both houses and the executive in our lifetimes only to pursue a right wing policy program?
you said republicans would change if they keep losing, but that's predicated on republicans losing consistently. even if by some act of a power higher than both of us biden manages to win this go round, how much longer do you think it will take before republicans resign themselves to it? two more regimes? four? before or after florida is lost to the rising atlantic? before or after every person who ends up at the southern border is detained indefinitley or put to death? can the people of gaza last until even this november?
how long do i need to patently wait? twelve, twenty four years?
What youre suggesting rests on fundamentally misunderstanding both the history we have to refer to the record to see and the history that we both lived through!
I will not wait for some unspecific pie in the sky future to be heard and neither should you!
You answered yourself, it’s because Republicans need to lose consistently, and it’s been over 70 years since the last time they even lost three consecutive terms.
Meanwhile, did you see what happened after three consecutive Republican terms? Clinton. Reagan + H. W. in a row definitely shifted the overton window to the right, and forced Dems to react accordingly. That’s what needs to happen, in reverse. Allowing Trump in office again would send the message that racism is the winning strategy, and Dems might get even worse.
Waiting for the window to shift might look like a pie in the sky to you (and you’re not even that wrong, considering how the DNC keeps pushing their worst), but a third party winning is a pie in straight outer space.
we need to keep voting for conservative, xenophobic, genocidal democrats in the hope that something which hasn't happened in seventy years is going to happen again before we can actually make our voices heard in a way that can't be ignored?
and that will somehow not send democrats the message that racism is the winning strategy?
thats a counterproductive and extremely bad idea that hasn't been thought out.
don't do that.
And splitting the votes of the sane Americans among multiple parties, allowing Trump to get a second term and enact Project 2025 is a productive and thought-out strategy?
We’ve already been through this.
Third parties aren’t vote splitting spoilers.
People who don’t vote for democrats aren’t insane.
If you’re really afraid of project 2025, buy a gun and develop deeper relationships with your neighbors. Voting against the person who already did January 6 won’t protect you from them.
Build an alternative in... checks calendar, 4 months that can gain more votes than the active democratic nominee and beat the stir mad republican candidate whose supporters are voting for out of pure spite. This comment is either in bad faith or you literally have no idea how the election works. Best case here isn't even winning, it's taking as few votes from the sane candidates as possible because all this'll do is split the democrat voting block.
At what point does a person recognize and admit that Biden or trump, we lose?
If someone is only going to do the least they possibly can, vote in the election, when should they stop trying to pick the least harmful winner and instead start working towards an alternative?
If all a person will do is vote then is t it most important to record their policy preferences in the only way that can’t be glossed over, lied about or deepfaked?
These are not equivalent losses. I think that's what you're not getting. Biden wins we get a senile leader with near dementia in charge for 4 years. Trump wins we get a Russian puppet who would literally kick start an insurrection over admitting his own losses. These are not the same thing, although both objectively suck.
Okay so if you really believe that trump is a foreign asset who will attempt a coup then why are you worried who people vote for?
You ought to be pushing people to prepare to defend themselves and the country from January 6 part 2, not vote in an election whose results won’t matter (because the foreign asset led coup attempt will have to be defeated).
Attempt a coup? Did we not live through the same January 6th. He already bloody did. And we still haven't locked him up for it.
wow, maybe you ought to hold the biden administrations feet to the fire on that! i bet a person who was president could do something about it no problem!
You already gave up. Don't try to blame it on the time left being only 4 months. If you're willing to for for a genocide enabler you're already commenting in bad faith.
You're talking like there's even a independent candidate that has the experience and willingness to do this. Normally it takes a life time of experience to even apply for the position. Trump being a complete nobody throwing money to get elected was a bad thing and now you expect some random guy on the Internet to find and sell an alternative to the American people 4 months before an election and beat both 2 people that've already begrudgingly won the election and can at least claim to have some experience. It isn't giving up to admit somethings impossible. I ain't giving up on becoming an astronaut if I can't do it by next week. If you'd like a 3rd party candidate feel free to find and prop someone up but best case they aren't going to be ready for a presidential run until 2028.
I see you have the 4 months so we have no choice talking point locked in. The Democrats got you with that one. Stay reactionary. 👍
I look forward to the new independent party candidate you prop up to win in 4 years. Good luck buddy.
Nice strawman. I never said this was possible. Stay classy .world user.
What the he is your point here if you think it's impossible. Both candidates suck, someone else should run, no one can be prepped to run in time, so... do nothing. That's your master plan. Responding to you is a collective waste of time for everyone myself included.
Don’t bring Perot 92 up if you really want to believe in spoilers. After everyone freaked out and made that accusation his campaign was shown to have only decreased Clinton’s margin of victory in the electoral college.
It seems counterintuitive but remember that Clinton ran conservative to scoop up republicans who were mad hw bush lied about taxes.
Perot 92 also refutes the idea that third parties can only act as spoilers because perots nafta platform drug Clinton and hw bush’s positions on the trade agreement into the public view kicking and screaming. It’s the reason there was no argument from anyone that we’d need to replace it after it expired before Clinton’s first term was even over.
Political parties aren’t stupid. They have people whose whole education and job is all about knowing how to pick up just enough votes in particular districts in order to win. If you always vote for them no matter what then why would they adopt your platform and policies when they could tack right on the border and pick up a district in Pennsylvania?
You went out of your way to describe third party votes in a lot of flowery language, let me describe third party votes in concrete language:
Third party votes, like all votes, are a record of exactly what positions a party needs to take in order to win each district. If you vote for a candidate who is imprisoning people at the border and funding and denying a genocide, you are telling all the political parties that will spend years poring over the recorded votes “you can lock migrants up and supply and deny a genocide and I’ll still vote for you”.
Stop doing that.
Vote for a candidate from a party with a platform that reflects your values and politics and reap the real documented benefits of it instead of throwing your support behind your abusers.
It’s not a “fuck you”, it’s not a middle finger, it’s telling politicians in the literal only language they listen to what they have to do to get your support.
Lincoln’s second term was a third party victory running under the Union party.
It’s also a great example of a third party causing a major party to change its position for the better because it represents creating a new, broad coalition including a bunch of extant parties that popped up to capitalize on new identities and platforms that sprang into being in the lead up to the civil war and during it.
You know, it’s almost like if you think we’re headed for another civil war then there’s a lesson there…
Of course if you wanna stick with recent stuff, Perot 92, like I said, had a positive effect on both parties because his campaign forced them to talk about nafta instead of glossing over the fact that both Clinton and hw bush held the same incredibly anti-worker positions and neither was interested in wrestling with the details of how the trade agreement would impact American lives.
In this very moment both Biden and trump are trying to bring back (or recreate!) the American jobs lost to nafta.
It’s almost like there’s a lesson there…
Another great example of a third party causing one of the two major parties to change their platform was Nader 2000, who literally ran on the platform of pushing the democrats left and suddenly, as if like a bolt from the blue, the democrats ran more left campaigns in 04 and 08.
Surely there’s no lesson there…
I already detailed explicitly why and how your description of third party votes as protest votes is wrong and represents a fundamentally flawed understanding of the American electoral process, so instead of rehashing that, I’ll talk about the Simpsons.
There’s a funny bit where two tentacled space aliens with big sharp teeth are campaigning to get American votes on different platforms that both boil down to killing and eating their constituents in slightly different ways. A guy pipes up and says “I don’t like any of this killing and eating business, I’m gonna vote third party!” And one of the aliens says “go ahead, throw your vote away!” And the guy takes on a sheepish expression and sits back down.
It’s very funny.
Not because voting third party is throwing your vote away, the conceit of the bit is that voting for either the democrat or republican monster would be throwing your vote away because they intend to kill and eat you, but because the person who steps out and voices an alternative is so afraid of the possibility losing that he can’t continue to speak out against the explicit guarantee of losing.
As I said before, your vote is the only way you can force politicians to listen to you. Don’t throw it away telling them that you’ll stand with them even when they commit atrocities, make it clear that if they need your vote they have to take up your platform.
If you do anything but vote third party you’re literally, not figuratively, literally, explicitly, in writing, expressing support for the democrats and republicans genocide.
Don’t do that.
Right, stick to what's not working, voting Democrat. 🥾👅
Sorry but opposing genocide and imperialism overrides all other interests, IMO.