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JWeinCom on 17 September 2024
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Ryuu96 said:
Spoiler!

Spoiler!

Trump is escalating his immigrant rhetoric lately, a bit scary how he's trying to turn an entire country against immigrants of all kinds, making up outright disgusting lies about them stealing your pets and eating them, calling them animals, talking about how they're going to liberate America from them, it's all sorts of hateful and inflammatory language and it's being directed at immigrants of all kinds.

Sorry to those who think we have to handle Trump with kids gloves, but it has to be said. This is exactly the sort of thing Hitler did. This kind of rhetoric is what lays the groundwork for atrocities. Sorrynotsorry.

SanAndreasX said:

Aside from the winner takes all, first past the post, zero-sum aspects of the political system in this country, Jill Stein illustrates a secondary reason why third parties don’t do well in the U.S.

They’re novelty candidates. At best they can start off sounding reasonable and then veer completely off the rails. They think that by virtue of being alternatives to the main parties that they’re entitled to make Hail Mary runs at the White House. They never demonstrate their actual policies on the ground trying to win local elections. They think that they’re the candidates for the people who are too “smart” for the main parties.

The only third party candidate who had any measure of success in the past hundred years was George Wallace, who ran on a platform fueled entirely by Southern hate and anger. Kind of like what Trump is running on now. The Wallace-LeMay ticket actually won 46 electoral votes in 1968. It didn’t make a difference in the election itself - Nixon won 301 votes, more than Humphrey and Wallace combined - but it did contribute to the Southernization of the Republican Party.

I don't think any third party candidate actually expects to win. In the cases where they actually have good intentions, the purpose is to try and force a policy shift. For example, both parties generally can be said to favor Israel. If there were a third party candidate who ran primarily based on opposition to fracking and was receiving 4% of the popular vote. Harris would likely have to consider changing her position on fracking to get them to drop out (although it may be too late for that) or to endorse her.

If we were to be more cynical, it can be intentionally to sabotage one party in order to either help the other, or to extract benefits. This seems somewhat the case with Robert Kennedy who initially was a spoiler for Harris, but because of his antivax and generally conspiratorial leaning seemed to be taking as much or more from Trump. So, he offered to drop out and endorse in exchange for some favor.

I do wish we had a parliamentary system where choosing a third party candidate may be a logical choice, but alas we don't. I find it hard to criticize third party candidates generally, because doing so keeps the current broken system in tact, but this election is not the time to rock the boat. 

Last edited by JWeinCom - on 17 September 2024