Yozul

Cool. It’s easy to misread tone in a forum like this, so we kinda almost lost the plot there for a minute, but in the end I think we ended up back on the same page. And yeah, I absolutely understand how frustrating it is to have your vote in the big headline grabbing elections be completely meaningless. It sucks. I’m glad you’re getting involved where it matters most though. If we want real change it’s going to have to filter up from the bottom, not be ordained from the top down.

Look, I get it. I’ve spent most of my life living in a very red district in a very blue state. That’s not true now, and I’m happy to be taking advantage of it, but I understand. Just remember to actually vote at your local level. It makes more difference in your day to day life than who is president anyway. I’m just trying to be clear about what’s going on. Historically and this November.

The number of third party votes has gone up and down a little, but over the last 40 years the only third party candidate to get over 5% of the vote in a presidential election was Ross Perot. 2020 actually had very low third party support. The most popular third party candidate left of the Republican party in the last 40 years was Ralph Nader in 2000, and he got about 2.5% of the vote. There will almost certainly be more people voting for third parties in 2024 than there were in 2020, but unless something very weird happens between now and November it will probably just be going back to normal. 3-4% Libertarian and 1-2% Green. That’s not gonna do much of anything.

Okay, so first of all, yes, I do live in one of those 10% of districts.

Secondly, you don’t even have a candidate, let alone a popular one. It’ll be a miracle if an actual leftist candidate can pull 3% of the vote to come in fourth behind the Libertarian candidate.

It is less dangerous to cast a protest vote if you’re in a district that is dramatically unbalanced, but if you think you’ll make a difference by doing it you are going to be sorely disappointed in November.

Minor problem. I’m neither liberal nor angry. I’m trying to get you to understand that purity tests on Lemmy are at best completely useless, and realistically make you a liability to real leftists. What do you think you are accomplishing here? What have you ever done in your life that actually ever made anything better for a single person?

And I’m hoping you grow up and learn how people organize themselves instead of wasting your life feeling morally superior for accomplishing nothing while isolating yourself from all the people you need on your side to change anything.

If you think the US government gives a shit about “millions in bribes” then you have no idea how numbers work.

I’m not delusional enough to think I’m voting for a leftist. That’s never what Biden was. I’m voting to stop fascism. Socialism isn’t going to win at the ballot box. Elections are how we stop things from getting worse while implementing real solutions. If all you’re doing is whining about presidents then you are a bad leftist.

Not doing everything possible to prevent something is not the same as actively doing it. It’s still bad, but if you seriously think it would be a good idea to let fascists take over America because Biden isn’t marching troops into Gaza or whatever it is you want him to do, then hopefully there are enough sane people left to make you irrelevant.

No. It means reapplying makeup. I guess facial powders aren’t as popular as they used to be, but that is where the saying came from.

It seem to me like the intention was to say the economics practiced by liberals, not the beliefs of liberal economists. It’s phrased ambiguously, but I prefer to interpret things generously.

Economists may not be like that, but politicians are, and they’re the ones that run the economy.