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.

Thanks for the sources, I was genuinely not aware of how many people supported Perot.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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!

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

Would she? I’m not that informed on her politics but I think Bernie supported her, and Bernie is definitely a progressive even by rest-of-the-world standards.

I don’t know how viable would that be on a large scale, but they could just ban all China-based companies from operating outside like the US did with Tiktok.

I think that would deal a decent blow on their economy, but I’m far from an expert in those fields so someone who knows better will probably come and debunk me.

Now you’re just making arguments out of thin air. I never said anything about my opinion of people who voted Biden in the primaries (because, again, I literally never spoke to one), and most importantly never told you to do anything prior to my last comment, which was in response to you telling me what to do first.

“Drop the facade”, you’re just trolling to get a reaction out of people.

So instead of just you know, arguing with people on a platform I’m already on, I should sign up on a different site, search for posts from 4+ years ago and go harass random people that might’ve already regretted their decision. Definitely requires the same effort.

Why don’t you take your own advice and, instead of telling leftists what to do on Lemmy, you go on Facebook and do that yourself? You could also go directly for conservatives since they’re basically the root of the whole problem.

First, what exactly do you mean by “going after”? Again, do I have to break their legs or what?

And most importantly second, where are those people? Because I’ve seen exactly none on Lemmy or Reddit. I would like to argue with someone who actually thinks Biden deserved the candidacy over others like Bernie, but they’re definitely not here and I wouldn’t even know where to “look” for them. I do what I can on the social I use.

Where am I contradicting myself exactly? He has a public image to keep, so he can’t openly say that. But he very much can act accordingly anyway, and that’s what he’s doing. Because he knows we have no viable alternative and anyone who seriously cares about minimizing casualties (so apparently not you) will not risk Trump getting reelected over some moral superiority that means nothing. He’s never going to lose over his support for genocide because you literally can’t vote against it. That’s how two-party systems work, period. The only reasons he can possibly lose over are differences between his agenda and his opponent’s, and genocide is unfortunately not one of those.

You’re the one trying to avoid guilt so that when a genocide-enabling candidate inevitably gets elected you can say to yourself “well at least I didn’t vote for them!”.

If we were actually fucking united on this issue he would fold like wet cardboard! If his rallies were filled with protesters instead of blue-no-matter-whos chanting “four more years!” he would understand. He’s not a demon. He’s a politician.

This is just naive. Protesting against Biden’s Middle East policies is basically kids threatening to run away from home if their parents don’t buy them what they want.

Of course Biden is never going to say this because, again, he’s a politician and has a public image to keep, but he could literally reply to said protestors “Or else? You gonna let Trump win and do worse? Yeah right, now shut up and vote for me”, and they would have absolutely nothing to answer.

That’s how two-party systems work. You identify the worse outcome and vote for the other one. The only way to force the second-worst party to get better is to force the actual worst one to do it first.

instead of working to rid the Democrat party of pro-corporate trash.

So how is that done exactly? By hiring hitmen?

It’s not even a real ad, btw.

Hey, the situation isn’t so grim. At a certain point, old people will die and maybe then we’ll be able to elect sensible politicians.

Wasn’t aware that EVs were already that heavy. Then yeah, I guess that’s definitely not feasible, at least not at the moment.

Didn’t sodium batteries start getting marketed recently?

The indipendent thought:

Oh, I trust them to do everything I wouldn’t like them to do.

For example, so far they’ve been following through with removing LGBTQ rights and lowering taxes for the rich, just as they promised.