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[–]MarkTwainiac 15 insightful - 1 fun15 insightful - 0 fun16 insightful - 1 fun -  (5 children)

I don't agree with Jimmy Dore on everything, but I think his points about Biden vs Trump have merit. He says the idea that Biden is the lesser of two evils is BS - Biden is just another kind of evil. The Dems and Republicans nowadays are not opposite poles - they are two sides of the same venal, corrupt corporatist coin.

I have voted in every POTUS election since 1972. I would never vote for Trump, but I can't vote for Biden. I have never been so despairing, depressed and pessimistic about the politics of the US - and about girls and women's rights in this country.

https://youtu.be/gFL9y1NzvBI

https://youtu.be/zkJKOT1FNhA

https://youtu.be/ObR8TiAHIh0

https://youtu.be/vV2mBhQR3r4

https://youtu.be/xZy0rnXSpnw

https://youtu.be/fBh47sIdkQs

[–][deleted] 6 insightful - 1 fun6 insightful - 0 fun7 insightful - 1 fun -  (3 children)

Thank you for your comment. I’ve never heard of Jimmy Dore before, but the videos were certainly helpful. Considering what else I’ve heard about Biden it falls suit, and fills the holes. In that regard, I too am very scared, cause I know deep down that maybe change won’t happen if I vote third party

[–][deleted] 4 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 0 fun5 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

Voting third party in a plurality election dominated by two major parties is literally throwing away your vote. It's unfortunate, but true, and is why plurality voting is so, so stupid. Short of a massive event that results in the dissolution of the Democrats or Republicans and allows either the Green or Libertarians to fill the void (or actual election system reform to a competent system), the Democrats and the Republicans will always be the 2 major parties in charge. Events that unseat a major party out of 2 party dominance are exceedingly rare in plurality systems once 2 major parties cement their power.

The options are:

a) Vote for one of the two major parties currently in power, even if you hate both for varying reasons. On the plus side you at least get to vote for the lesser of two evils, but on the downside you're forced to vote for the lesser of two evils.

b) Vote honestly for your preferred candidate, even if they're a third party candidate. This hurts your ability to make a decision about the parties in charge since your vote won't have a real impact on the election outcome unless the third party happens to be close enough in votes to threaten one other party (in which case they're likely a spoiler party).

c) Officially reject your ballot. Some places allow you to record this, many do not or will record it as "did not vote" or merely "wasted ballot".

The problem with b) and c) is that the parties in charge generally don't give a shit about third party voters or people who rejected the ballot. They don't see a reason to reach out to either group, because the voting system promotes absolute dominance, rather than compromise and good representation. Indeed, the media and pundits generally look at third party voting as wasted votes, a mere curiosity at best, and because of how rejected ballots are not recorded, rejecting the ballot altogether would get recorded the same way people who did not vote are recorded.

Our current election system is shit and is one of the worst possible election systems you could choose to use. It's terrifying how widespread plurality voting is.

I don't like Biden much either, and I hate how electing him legitimizes the Democrats basically carrying on as usual without pushing for real electoral reform, but the alternative of letting Trump win is unacceptable. The best move I can see in this election is to tolerate a Biden win and then campaign hard for permanent election reform using Trump's election as a cautionary tale to get a movement going. There's various small groups such as https://electionscience.org and https://www.counted.vote/ pushing for voting reform with score voting based methods, but unfortunately it's hard to get real demand for it unless we can get actual government officials onboard with reform and talking about it publicly.

Assume Trump is allowed back into power because people are unwilling to vote for Biden: the Republicans absolutely will carry on business as usual, as they have demonstrated their will to do so in the impeachment hearing when they had the chance to hold Trump accountable. Allowing Trump back into power as a "piss people off to drive reform" is a wildly risky and bad move that is unlikely to work or be worth the additional years of chaos he'd bring, whereas it's still possible to campaign for reforms even under Biden, since you could easily press for reforms to prevent a Trump scenario from happening again.

[–]jelliknight 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

b) Vote honestly for your preferred candidate, even if they're a third party candidate. This hurts your ability to make a decision about the parties in charge since your vote won't have a real impact on the election outcome unless the third party happens to be close enough in votes to threaten one other party (in which case they're likely a spoiler party).

Since in the USA almost half of the voting population don't turn out to vote, and these are the least inspiring candidates of all time, i don't really get the idea that voting for a 3rd party is a 'waste'. Each political party gets about 25% of the overall vote while 50% don't vote at all, there's actually a lot of potential to get a third party in. Unfortunately none of them have done anything to mobilize support as far as I can see.

Maybe the solution is to vote for a conservative spoiler party and encourage other people to do that too?

[–][deleted] 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

In theory, a 3rd party vote would be great! Government's supposed to govern as a collective body, working together for the common good, and if they see a lot of people voting for a separate party they'd want to try and represent everyone's interests as much as possible when you're sending the message that you don't care for either of the two main parties in power.

In practice, the two parties are so entrenched that they just laugh at, and proceed to ignore third party vote data. They only care about a) people who are fence sitters, and b) getting people to vote (or in the Republican case, doing everything possible to prevent their enemies from voting).

You'd have to actually build up a second conservative party from scratch to the point where it can legitimately threaten the Republican party as a spoiler candidate. Much easier said than done, and doesn't fix the underlying cause of the problems in the first place, since a conservative could then do the same thing with a more liberal party as a front. The real solution is to use a system that is immune to spoiler parties (also referred to as clone candidates, candidates similar to one another that they pull votes away from each other in a plurality system).

[–]lefterfield 4 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 0 fun5 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

I feel this. I wish I knew the solution.