That sounds too much like work and not enough like bitching.
Makes me wish we had some serious third parties in this country, and not two grifting perennial presidential-election also-rans
Both agree on the point and the proper meme format
I’d have a lot more respect if there was a third party candidate running for my district’s house seat.
That would mean they’re actually trying to build election infrastructure.
Running for office costs lots of money and time. There are seats that go entirely uncontested, because the incumbent is too popular to challenge. I would love to see a 50-state Green strategy, too. I just don’t know who the 500+ candidates are supposed to be.
That would mean they’re actually trying to build election infrastructure.
I’m not sure where this “Greens never try to build anything” theory of politics came from. But if you think partisanship is savage at the national level, wait till you try and run as a Green candidate for municipal office. Talking about bike lanes in the wrong kind of county gets a certain kind of person shooting mad.
City elections are a mess on a good day, and a lot of it really boils down to which person the Mega-Church, the Millionaires, and the Morning Zoo Crew decide to endorse.
Local government is fucking awful. Think of an HOA and then make them accountable to the whiniest assholes in town. Just watch any footage of local meetings on YouTube to see what I mean.
Oh I don’t mean they need to contest every seat that’s an unrealistic standard. But they certainly aren’t going to be a real choice until they have election infrastructure in every state. So we’re looking at about 100 elections of varying offices. And yeah, that takes time to build. Showing up in the last 6 months of the presidential campaign every 4 years is not how you get elected. AOC and others have shown that mainstream democrats are vulnerable in some of those seats that aren’t usually contested. And yeah you’re going to get gerrymandered out of seats a few times until you have a large enough group in the state legislature.
Saying it’s too much work to expect for a third party is just ridiculous. Nobody is going to just hand you a victory on the national stage.
But they certainly aren’t going to be a real choice until they have election infrastructure in every state.
Infrastructure costs money and manpower. Money tends to come from people looking to buy political favors. You can’t dole out political favors if you’re not in power. So power entrenches itself, with a single party dominating a particular seat by way of a patronage system.
And yeah, that takes time to build.
It has been built. Show me a state and I’ll show you a Green Party chapter. But it also decays without reinforcement. And it decays rapidly when the party becomes a scapegoat for deficiencies in one of the Big Two.
We see this with Libertarians as well. Every time the GOP loses, they take a big chunk of blame. People lose enthusiasm as they start getting yelled at by MAGA psychos accusing them of being Deep State agents of the Dem Party. Etc, etc. And eventually, they fold back into the GOP, rather than solidifying as their own party, when the GOP big dollar donors entice them into the tent again.
I suspect that’s what we’ll see with Greens. A mix of public shaming and private bribing will reincorporate them into the Dem Party where they can be more easily controlled.
To be fair the Greens have made a massive mistake with Jill Stein. They aren’t going to be the big third party that eventually breaks through unless they seriously reform. But no, a chapter in every state is not the infrastructure you need. Not beyond the most reductive meaning at any rate. You need to be a household name. You need to have been present in the state level political scene already. Election infrastructure is hundreds of people showing up every day to make millions of calls. Thousands of volunteers papering neighborhoods. Supporting PACs and local relationships to generate endorsements. A hundred members who meet once a month isn’t going to cut it.
To be fair the Greens have made a massive mistake with Jill Stein.
She’s been the sacrificial lamb election cycle after election cycle because she’s willing to do the job. If Cornel West hadn’t withdrawn, I could have seen him as a better choice. But given the smearing every Green candidate since Nader has endured, I don’t really blame him for wanting to stay out of the mud.
You need to be a household name. You need to have been present in the state level political scene already.
You need billions of dollars to operate at that level. Hell, even the party primaries are these enormous luxurious affairs. So much of this really does just boil down to money, which comes from people looking to buy access to the candidates.
Supporting PACs and local relationships to generate endorsements.
Who are the local Green candidates going to get to form PACs on their behalf? You either have a die-hard ideologue like Perot who bankrolls the entire party out of his tech industry fortune, or you have a scattered amalgamation of independent activists who congeal around a third party banner.
When you’re getting enough house seats and state legislature seats you can start working on PACs, nobody is going to give you a PAC before you’ve done the work.
When you’re getting enough house seats and state legislature seats
Where do you get the money to build the organization to win these seats? States don’t just give them away. A house district can run north of 600,000 residents and cost more than half-a-million in donations to compete in. Even state legislative races are enormous, expensive affairs. And that’s before you get into the incumbency racket of gerrymandered seats and access journalism.
Bet non of those people vote in local elections.
They’re all like, the same, man!
I like the sentiment and suggest taking it a step further.
If they aren’t starting at the local level then they aren’t serious about the national level regardless of when they start discussing the next election.
Nah buddy, we always have been and always will advocate for abolition of this idiotic bipartisanship.
You just happen to notice it only when you are begging us to vote for these genocidal neoliberal freaks.
Or, running down ballot candidates to actually affect genuine policy change. But no, just run for president to make a small amount of noise and rake in that moron money.
That’s my secret, I’m always talking about replacing First-past-the-post voting with Ranked Choice voting.
Democrats brining up abortion and housing prices. Republicans lowering gas prices. It’s that time of the year.
The “election cycle”
The long election cycle exists to purposefully reinforce the bipartisan duopoly by forcing candidates to campaign for 6+ months which is way too expensive for anyone that isn’t funded by billionaires. “Campaigning” shouldn’t take multiple months we all have tv and phones it doesn’t take long to tell us what you stand for and for us to make up our minds about that. Other countries don’t have this ridiculously long election cycle
Nah dawg. Check my post history (don’t actually), I’ve been advocating (and been getting heavily downvoted) for supporting third party candidates for years
Third parties in the presidential campaign only allow people to vote in a non tactical way. If they actually want to do anything they should start on square one which is to get a single candidate into congress.
The strategy for presidential campaigns should always be to run, get the message across, watch polling, withdraw, endorse until they are big enough. When big enough then open up coalition talks and affect policy by promoting voter reform and couple of key policies.
Doing just the presidency is good for publicity but incredibly inadequate.
Or the democrats could deal with the fact that there is a substantial group of people that don’t trust them or the republicans. Better not talk about why that might be right?
I think there is definitely political space for a left wing populist anti establishment party, you can either do it with Bundnis Sahra Wagenknecht type of party proper anti corruption social democrat or green.
Unfortunately the Green party is who everyone talks about but there are other third parties, and especially ones that participate in local elections more. I am interested in reading more about the Bundnis Sahra Wagenknecht party style though, thank you for referencing it.
This is not a post about supporting third parties, which is still pointless anyway. This is a post about third parties themselves doing nothing in non-election years. If you aren’t a third party candidate this post isn’t about you.
It is about them, just not in a positive way.
BTW, for some reason I have them tagged as “Tankie Dumpo”, no idea why.
Removed by mod
People talk about it all the time. Ron Paul was a household name. People we’re talking about RFK JR a year ago. People were talking about 3rd parties due to Biden’s stance on Palestine. People were talking about it after that first debate. All that’s fine, but it only makes the two main parties sweat within 30 days of election. That’s when all the “throwing your vote away” rhetoric ramps up.
Rather than doing better, working harder, or standing on better policy to turn out the 35% of people who don’t vote, it’s easier to vilify 1% of the people who do. That’s a problem.
Can’t, Democrats practice party suppression.
Eh, First Past the Post is party suppression, tbh. When the math pushes us towards two parties, a third party is always at the cost of some other party that is nominally “on the same side”.
I wouldn’t worry about it. I’m told that 3rd party voters are too small a bloc to bother trying to earn their votes.
3rd party voters are too small a bloc to carry a candidate, and pandering to that bloc at the expense of alienating moderates is strategically stupid.
It’s like you’re building the tallest tower. In a tight contest, every block helps, and a small block might be the difference between a success and failure if the competition is close enough. But trading a big block to get a smaller block is just plain dumb. There’s no reason to “earn” something that’s mutually exclusive with a more valuable something you already have.
The bourgeoisie politicians will be materially fine win or lose, it’s the prole voters who will materially suffer due to their “strategic” 3rd party vote. It stands no chance of winning, and there’s no mechanism to associate it with specific complaints. 3rd party voting isn’t even effective at the intended goal, it’s just a bad play.
But hey, go ahead. FA, FO.
Math is hard, though, can’t they just treat voting like a fun self-indulgence and not something that affects peoples’ lives?
The dems are FA and will FO. Opposing genocide is not “pandering”.
Again, the Democratic politicians will be just fine if they lose, the rest of us won’t.
Plenty of people aren’t fine now, and the democrats don’t care. Elections are won by politicians and campaigning. You can be mad at voters all you want, but it’s up to politicians to go out and get the votes.
I’ve said the same thing twice which you have ignored both times:
The politicians will be fine. The people who suffer are the voters. It is up to the voters to vote in their best interest. You can be mad at politicians all you want, but you have to look out for yourself, and sometimes that means holding your nose and voting against the evil that poses a greater threat to you, your loved ones, and the vulnerable among us.
Who suffers when you proudly declare that fascism lite didn’t do enough to earn your vote, while fascism extra strength rounds up minorities and declares women to be property?
Nobody is going to suffer from my vote or non vote.
Women, immigrants, and minorities are “nobody” I guess. Cool, good to know.
As I understand, it is true that non-voters are already counted out in statistical predictions, so in essence- yes. 3rd party voters while potentially helpful, are irrelevant to the actual numbers counted towards elections.
Please tell that to the people posting 100 memes a day about 3rd parties wrecking the election.
