"Progressives should not make the same mistake that Ernst Thälmann made in 1932. The leader of the German Communist Party, Thälmann saw mainstream liberals as his enemies, and so the center and left never joined forces against the Nazis. Thälmann famously said that ‘some Nazi trees must not be allowed to overshadow a forest’ of social democrats, whom he sneeringly called ‘social fascists.’
After Adolf Hitler gained power in 1933, Thälmann was arrested. He was shot on Hitler’s orders in Buchenwald concentration camp in 1944."
Plus we keep using this outdated first-past-the-post voting system in the 21st century.
Yup. We need ranked choice/instant runoff voting first.
Approval Voting is even better.
Literally any voting system other than the one we use is an improvement.
Yeah, ranked choice already seems to have a lot of momentum, and would fix a lot. That counts more than theoretical perfection that may not even exist in the real world.
I second Approval Voting. STAR as well, but perhaps slightly less intuitive.
That’s why one should always vote for Democrats who support voting system reform.
Are we talking about the same Democrats that sued to keep ranked choice boating off the DC ballot this year? or the Democrats that chose to keep ranked choice voting that had already been passed by voters off the Alexandria VA ballot?
I interpreted it as “vote only for those democrats who support voting reform,” but it could also be sarcasm.
Do those sound like Democrats who support voting system reform?
We need the presidency first. We need a majority in both houses first. We need a supermajority in the senate first. We need a 2/3 majority in the senate first. We need to completely overhaul the voting system first.
There’s always something we need to do first. It’s right there on the timetable. Timetable subject to change. Offer void in red states.
What’s your plan to change the system?
Different user, but still have an idea.
Take over the DNC with actual leftists that will implement better voting systems, starting at the lower levels with grassroots campaigns, and slowly work our way up.
Hitler didn’t win because he beat Hindenburg after Thälmann split the vote. He lost to Hindenburg, the center-right candidate endorsed by the social democrats, then won anyway because Hindenburg appointed him Chancellor.
The social democrats were the ones who refused to back Thälmann, the only anti-Hitler candidate in the race. And the same way that the communists called them “social fascists,” the social democrats used similar rhetoric, frequently saying that the communists were no different from the Nazis, that there was no difference between the far left and the far right.
But also, we don’t have to keep rehashing 100 year old grudges from another continent.
That was going back much further. The Communists had tried to overthrow the Weimar Republic in the Hamburg Uprising a decade earlier. So the social democrats, who were a key supporter and really the creators of the Republic, saw them as an enemy. Thälmann was especially outspoken against the social democrats. Hence they saw supporting Thälmann as supporting an enemy of the Weimar Republic.
However Jill Stein and co policies are mostly about as radical as the German social democrats back then. All of it could be done by reforming the US political system. At least near term.Also the German communists were much better organized then the US left. They were sitting in most parliaments of German states and cities. The US Green Party has no officeholders on a federal or even state level right now. Of the 8 state level officeholders they did have only 3 have run on a Green Party ticket, the rest was elected Democrat and switched to the Greens. That has to be changed first, before running for president. Seriously if you can not take state seats, then you can not win the presidency.
The background for the KDP’s uprisings is WWI. The war was incredibly destructive and pointless for every country in Europe. Before the war, the Second International (of which the SDP was a founding member) put out a manifesto with unanimous support that said:
In case war should break out anyway it is their duty to intervene in favor of its speedy termination and with all their powers to utilize the economic and political crisis created by the war to arouse the people and thereby to hasten the downfall of capitalist class rule.
However, once the war actually started, the SDP (along with many other social democratic parties in Europe) suddenly found all sorts of reasons to rally around the flag and support it unconditionally. The British socialists would point to problems in Germany under the Kaiser, the German socialists would point to problems with Russia under the Tsar, and each side would talk about how it’s not that they support the war, it’s just that they don’t want to lose. And so there was a failure across Europe (except in Russia, of course) to create domestic pressure to put an end to the war, and result was that it raged on until it had claimed 20 million lives.
It was only at the end of the war, when it was clear that Germany was going to lose regardless, that a revolution occurred, initially supported by both the SDP and the communists, which is what brought an end to the German Empire. During that uprising, the SDP and communists split over the direction of the country, and the SDP won and sent in the Freikorps to exterminate communist leadership. So when you talk about Thälmann trying to overthrow the government, I think it’s important to put that in the context that the government in question had come to power only 4 years prior by overthrowing the government - and that government would go on to last only 15 years in total before the Nazis were able to seize power through it. All of which is to say, it was a chaotic period, and there were reasons for the KDP to resent the SPD as well.
The tendency to force history into boxes defined by modern day politics loses a lot of that nuance. In contemporary American politics, there is no Second International. There is no Great War. There is no Sparticist Uprising. It’s bad enough when contemporary politics outside of the US are forced into the boxes defined by American politics, we don’t need to extend that throughout history.
The Nazis had also tried to overthrow the government once by that point, so making a coalition that included the Nazis is no less backing “an enemy of the Weimar Republic”. The difference is, of course, that one is an enemy to capitalism and the other is an enemy of communism. It’s no wonder that liberals would choose the latter.
Hitler and Thälmann lost to the center right Hindenburg who was backed by the social democrats. Hindenburg was already president since 1925, so he was seen as no direct threat to democracy. Then Germany had parliamentary elections in July 1932. Those had a Nazi + Communist majority, so they repeated the election in November as they did not have a majority to form a government as both the Communist and the Nazis were against democracy. That however although slightly better did not solve that problem. So Hindenburg used decrees to work with the Nazis so they could form a government.
So if the Communists and social democrats would have worked together and elected a left president. That might have been somebody from the social democrats or indeed Thälmann, then a minority centrist or left wing or a majority centrist and communist government would have been possible. The Communists however never tried to work with the democratic forces. The Nazis actually did exactly that, which they were able to use to gain total power.
Point should be obvious.
both the Communist and the Nazis were against democracy
This is ridiculous, the Communists opposed the Weimar Republic, but they absolutely supported democracy. In their view, in fact, they supported a much more authentic form of democracy by extricating private interests from the process.
Hindenburg used decrees to work with the Nazis so they could form a government.
We keep glossing over this “liberals siding with Nazis” thing
The Communists however never tried to work with the democratic forces.
I really think the word you’re looking for here is “liberal”
Point should be obvious.
You’re making significant assumptions, such as any of the liberals actually being willing to work the with the Communists, which would be a hell of a change for the SPD after that business with the Freikorps. Otherwise, the argument is just “join the SPD” and assume that they can bring their voters with them while completely abandoning their revolutionary project and putting themselves under the discipline of a liberal party. I feel that this is something of a muddy issue that you’re interpreting in a convenient way.
“Aren’t you as well?” Fair question, and there’s a lot about this situation that I can’t speak to, but what I said before I am completely sure holds, which is that Hitler gained power, on the most proximate level, because of liberal collaborators.
The SPD initially prefered to work with further left forces. They worked together on the Reich Congress of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Councils however the SPD wanted a parliamentary democracy and the USPD wanted a council republic, so when they realized the most of the councils were not in fact communist and actually supported the SPD, that caused uprisings against the interim SPD lead government, which the USPD left. The USPD was also unwilling to work with the SPD in the national assembly, which was the parliament they set up and they were sitting in. Intresstingly the Weimar constituion has a few points which could have been easily turned to accomadate workers councils. Hence the more centrist forces worked with them and the consitution was born.
I really think the word you’re looking for here is “liberal”
No it is democratic, which the KPD at this point was no longer. They were working on setting up a Stalinist dictatorship and no longer a council democracy.
You’re making significant assumptions, such as any of the liberals actually being willing to work the with the Communists,
I am looking at what we might want to learn from what happened back for the US election and other struggles against the far right. So pointing out that this was an option is imho extremely important. Obviously they did not do it, but that does not mean it is impossible to do it at least partly today, with different left wing groups considering different centrist groups not radical enough.
No it is democratic, which the KPD at this point was no longer. They were working on setting up a Stalinist dictatorship and no longer a council democracy.
I was going to let it go, but this really bugs me. What are you even talking about here?
This is what I am talking about, especially the second half of the article:
https://jacobin.com/2016/08/ernst-thalmann-east-germany-stalin-nazis
These posts are always missing the point. Voters will vote third party. Your moral claims won’t change that, but your candidate’s policies could. Also, most of us don’t live in swing states. Don’t pretend our vote matters when it never did.
Voters will but they can’t do so under the delusion that a) they are making any sort of change or b) that they aren’t hurting the actually viable candidate closest to them.
The winner of the election in every state will be the Democrat or the Republican, full stop. You can choose to help or harm the one closest to your opinion.
This is the type of delusion that eventually leads to fascism any way
“Hey don’t try to change anything because obviously only one of two people can win”
“Hey you have to change things from the inside of the party, you can’t just have a third party even though every half decent western government has multiple parties”
“If you don’t want to vote for a genocidal enabler of capitalism and class separation paid for by the same people who pay for trump/hitler, then you’re voting for trump/Hitler”
“You have to bring the super nuts authoritarian fascists into the group, and exclude the actual left wing people who are screaming for basic decency and rights for everyone”
“Oh no how on earth did the crazy right wingers take over the entire country who could have seen this coming? It’s totally not the fault of a governmental party that can’t sort their shit out and take on policies that a majority of it’s constituents want, but instead keeps sliding as far to the right as possible every time they have to move”
The delusion is thinking you can change things with a single election. If you don’t like the two party system (and I don’t) then you must get more involved in politics than voting for the president. You would need to elect principled progressives at every level of government, fight against fascism at every opportunity, and diligently protect the progress we have made.
Voting for a third party candidate is like showing up to a birthday party as they’re lighting the candles and complaining that nobody asked you about the decorations. It doesn’t matter if your objections are valid, you’ve missed the window to do anything about it.
Not a single party on the face of the earth is gonna switch to an alternative voting system. Democracy devolving into 2 parties is a problem in nearly every country and unfortunately the ones who can make the change are the ones who benefit from first pass the post voting
No “democratic” party is gonna switch to STAR or a similar voting system unless the citizens start being very loud.
On other hand, radicalizing people to support alternative voting is also very hard, because it is hard to explain and hard to understand for majority of people and its often viewed as if the supporter is trying to benefit from the said change and trying to sabotage democracy, when in reality, they are the ones who want real democracy
We could avoid this with ranked choice voting.
Yes, but you’re going to need to find a way to think beyond that, because both parties understand that it’s in their interests to oppose rcv, so “vote democrat until we get rcv” effectively means “vote democrat forever”.
Fundamentally, there is a limit to the extent that a capitalist democracy will tolerate actual democratic power, because eclipsing the power of capitalists obviously means threatening their position. They will not sit idly by and allow their power to be voted away.
This guy performs material analysis.
Oh, you mean like these two Democratic reps and the one Democratic Senator who just introduced a bill to do ranked choice voting for all 2028 congressional races? https://rankthevote.us/raskin-beyer-welch-bill-would-bring-ranked-choice-voting-to-congressional-elections/
There’s no need to be so smarmy. Anyway, the individuals may behave in aberrant ways (or perhaps as a red herring, up to your interpretation), but the Democratic Party will reject it just as the Republicans will. I’m talking about classes and political parties, not every person as an individual.
If it passes, I’ll eat my hat, but it doesn’t have a snowball’s chance in Hell.
So even when Democrats do the right thing, you don’t give them credit? Got it.
Making a declaration is worthless. This is three people saying that they’d like to do something and they will fail just as these attempts have always failed. I can give them as people some amount of credit for trying to make the world better, but that does not exonerate the system! The system – including the rest of the Democratic Party – will still put their attempt down regardless.
Do you not see the difference here? The fact that people can and do propose to do good things now and again and those attempts are shot down even by the so-called left wing party is not a defense of the republic, but an indictment!
How do you think legislation happens? This isn’t just “three people”, this is a sitting Democratic Senator and two Democratic Reps. All with long histories in the party. Hell, Beyer was Lieutenant Governor of Virginia. These aren’t nobodies.
And they’re not just “saying that they’d like to do something”, this is actual legislation that was submitted in both the House and Senate. These kinds of bills may have to be introduced a number of times before they pass but Dems are the only ones doing the work to at least try and if nothing else keep the issue alive and active as a discussion.
This is how the legislative process works all over the world, and if you can’t or won’t bother to understand that, than I can’t imagine there’s anything else really for us to talk about.
It has very little support, it’s DOA. That’s just what happens. Look at all of Bernie’s failed bills; they just don’t push the needle. You can tell me that at some point in the future the Rapture will definitely happen, the righteous will be saved and the sinners will be cast into perdition and so on, but I don’t see any reason to believe it considering the history of the Democrats for the last 40 years and their incredible ability to pretend to want good things while either conspiring with open rightists or making limp gestures like this.
You will not see the Democratic Party vote its own power away, it just won’t happen.
Or will they? You see, this is what I don’t understand about MAGA congressmen. If they make Donald Trump their dictator, they are abdicating their own power and giving it to him. How is this in their best interests?
Well, two things:
One, that is a very alarmist view of Trump. He liked slinging around executive orders, but he had neither the ambition nor the audacity to be a Hitler. It simply isn’t realistic to think he’ll execute his second term by toppling the Republic, he doesn’t have visions like that, even if many people have visions like that for him (including Mike Lindel, somewhat hilariously, with his apparent attempt to get Trump to do a false flag and establish emergency powers).
Second, look at history. Inevitably, some people who release leopards do get their faces eaten, but becoming an executor of a fascist regime isn’t a loss of power, it’s a change in title at worst and, if anything, something of an increase in power. Imagining Trump becomes a fascist autocrat, that doesn’t actually mean that his whim is enough to unilaterally move things however he likes, and that is true of every leader in history. The reason for this is that his power, his authority, doesn’t come from himself, it comes from the class (or classes, historically) that support him, so he needs to make sure to keep them on his side or they will absolutely just kill and replace him. The petty Congressmen that support him know this, and are fine with working in a paradigm where they benefit from his support and are left with a broad range of things that he views as acceptable (since Trump won’t try to micromanage the whole country) in which to exert their personal agendas as they see fit.
But again, Fuhrer Trump is a fantasy. Maybe Tom Cotton poses such a threat, but Trump does not.
Does this all make sense?
Ummm there definitely is evidence against you. First in our current system the president needs Congress to get things done, but we’ve seen the plans for Project 2025 to get around a lot of this.
Second, we’ve seen with the freedom caucus that a small group of congressmen can wield a lot of power.
Third, I think we definitely can expect a very different Trump in a second term versus his first term and he definitely HAS expressed an interest in this with all of his dictation envy too become Fuhrer and worse there is a large portion of the population that is content to be rolled under a Trump dictatorship.
If any of this is true, it should lead to less power for congressmen.
First in our current system the president needs Congress to get things done
There is quite a lot that the President can do independently using Executive Orders. Even tasks that, on paper, require congressional approval can be subverted, and you can look at the US’s record of entering undeclared wars as evidence of that.
Beyond that, see what I already said about how there’s no such thing as an autocrat.
Second, we’ve seen with the freedom caucus that a small group of congressmen can wield a lot of power
These are people who would do the best in an imaginary Fuhrer Trump political machine. Think of it like getting promoted to a bigger, more powerful Freedom Caucus.
Third, I think we definitely can expect a very different Trump in a second term versus his first term and he definitely HAS expressed an interest in this with all of his dictation envy too become Fuhrer and worse there is a large portion of the population that is content to be rolled under a Trump dictatorship.
People have been talking about him admiring dictators before he was elected and all throughout his first term. There’s nothing new here, no evidence that suggests something has changed.
I promise you it’s just hysteria. So there’s a chance of something beneficial happening in this conversation, I want you to just take note of this conviction you have that Trump will be Hitler and then, if he is elected, just remember it as he blunders his way through being racist and doing war crimes just the same as he did before with no particular change besides Vance leading a new rhetorical tact.
No, I won’t be doing a mirror version of this exercise. I’m a communist, so if I’m wrong and he’s a neo-neo-Nazi, I get the wall anyway and it’s no harm done.
This is a great post! Well said!
I appreciate the kind words and am glad to see an open socialist on .world
Thanks! I get a LOT of hate and variations of “U must suck Putin’s cock” type of comments, but hey it’s expected. People are pretty afraid of change and losing their power.
I’m glad you’re here too! We’re all gonna make it, brother.
Ranked choice voting probably leads to two-party domination (see Australia or Malta), and even without that caveat it’s otherwise suboptimal. Score voting is the way to ensure voting for your favourite comes with no strategic tradeoffs.
This might work, but in our current situation I don’t see the outcome as much different than what I’d expect now. MAGA would give Trump the highest score. Dems would give Harris the highest score and the rest would split.
I also don’t agree with the part of the premise that says our system is prone to fraud. Because each district does things differently, it makes it hard to hack. In Miami for instance they had hanging chad, because they used a punch system. Where I live, we fill in a bubble and in some states only mail in ballots are used. The real hacking takes place before the vote, in social media.
First time around Dems would probably vote Dems 99, GOP 0 and leave every other party blank, but over time people would realise that you can ALSO score your actual favourite (think of all the people that would vote Green if it wasn’t a wasted vote) a 99 without hurting the “lesser evil’s” chances. Greens 99, Dems 99 and GOP 0 is just as bad for the GOP as Greens blank, Dems 99 and GOP 0. That’s the magic of score voting. And people who are really apathetic and refuse to vote because they think all parties are bad could still express an opinion akin to Dems 10, GOP 0, rest empty.
GOP 0? Trump barely lost the last election and the Republicans still control one house of Congress.
These are different ways to fill the same ballot! In score voting you give every party a score (in this case from 0 to 99). This was the example of a die-hard Democrat. A more moderate voter might vote something like Dems 50, GOP 60, or Dems 30, GOP 25
in ranked voting there is still the possibility that a fear of a deeper evil driving straight to a bipartisan situation again.
You still have all the same campaigns exacerbating fears with just a different look to the ballot. Ppl could easily fall into the trap of picking their top 1-2 choices based on who they don’t want in power after glued to the screen watching all the drama.
Rcv just seems like the new ev where someone oversells that it fixes all things but hides the cons that we’re all pretty much in the same spot we started.
I agree with this assessment for the most part, but it does seem like the best method for introducing a third party, which the US desperately needs. Do you have a better EV?
introducing a third party, which the US desperately needs.
Very much so.
Sure, but the current duopoly doesn’t really want us to have that.
Do not forget that in '32 the SPD backed Hindenburg… who then nominated Hitler as chancellor.
Thälmann was foolish, but even if he didn’t run, Hitler would still get into power. If the far right is strong enough, mere electoralism will not stop them. Fighting them must happen on the street level.
Genuine question - at what point?
You do it early (now), and you push swing voters away and hurt your cause.
You do it after they have power, and you’ve manufactured the pretext for your extermination.
Do it very early before they’ve metastasized. Do it after they have power too. The pretext already exists, they campaigned on it. Being a partisan is now literally a fight for your life.
The liberals fucking won that election and it was the liberal Hindenburg appointing Hitler to the Chancellorship that facilitated his rise to power, not anything the KPD did. This is disgusting historical revisionism that a search engine could dispel in 5 seconds, but you choose to warp history to make it look like Hitler actually won the election and make the liberals who enabled him seem blameless. It is, in effect, apologia for Nazi collaborators. Exactly appropriate for someone shilling for Dems while they gleefully subsidize genocide.
there sure seems to be a lot of Nazi apologia coming out of .world recently. wonder why that is 🤔
I’ve seen a lot more come out of lemmy.ml.
Especially the Russian and Chinese kind, they apologise for all kinds of atrocities those fascist states make. Even apologise illegal invasions of sovereign nations.
Gleefully?
No you’re right they’re super sad about funding the genocide
We desperately need more real third-party participation in politics, but voting for third parties in presidential elections doesn’t make that happen—the US voting system isn’t a business that adapts its products to meet consumer demand.
in presidential elections
Or in House of Representative, or Senate. The real power is in Congress.
Local elections is where most of the current people in power got started. Anyone voting for third party in the presidential race missed the boat.
Vote progressives into local offices so they can get experience to work in state offices so they can get experience to work in Congress so they can get experience to be a good presidential candidate. Also to fill offices at every level with progressives.
Yup. We need ranked choice balloting first.
That… is the exact opposite of what the article is arguing. If one side of the political spectrum (inevitably right-wing) unites, they immediately run over the side that is split up into different fragments that are arguing over just how much of a school lunch should be subsidized by the government.
And we have seen this in the modern day as well. A couple months back basically the entire Left/Center-Left of France had to unite to try and prevent fascists from taking power and… it is unclear if they actually succeeded.
Its fun to parrot the exact same text every single time a topic comes up. But shit like this is a lot more important than meming about Subway and it is well worth understanding what efforts do and don’t address and think through those problems. Otherwise we just leave ourselves more and more vulnerable to hate.
The point though is that ranked choice allows you all the benefits of 3rd parties without the downsides.
One can just as easily argue that that is the point of primaries in the US and other countries. You get a wide range of left and right leaning candidates and you downselect based on who the majority wants as well as general election theory to handle moderates.
And… the end result is that people get incredibly pissy when their candidate doesn’t win and disenfranchise themselves. Theoretically, a very strict ranked choice model that requires ALL candidates to be ranked could help with that but you still get into the realm of “protest votes”. See: People who refused to vote for Biden because he had shit stances on genocide and who would have given trump, who is openly genocidal, the win.
The reality is that we need to actually educate people on how governments work to undo decades of “haw haw, douche or a turd sandwich” levels of narrative. But we also need the politicians to actually unite against common threats. The fascists already understand that. But the Left continues to infight at every opportunity.
voting for third parties in presidential elections doesn’t make that happen
In a winner-take-all system, the marginal votes on the winning and losing side don’t matter. Third parties are an extrapolation of this principle. But when you’re voting in a state that is 60/40 for a given party, any individual vote for a given party is equally meaningful.
The only real benefit to valuing a Big Two party over a Third Party is if you’re in a swing state, where the odds of your vote being the tipping point are reasonably high. And even then, the powers invested in the partisan state secretary and county election’s commissioner offices render that decision relatively meaningless.
People losing their shit at Ralph Nader and Pat Buchanan in 2000 seem to have completely overlooked the impact of the mass voter disenfranchisement under Jeb Bush and Katherine Harris, the Butterfly Ballot design that confused voters into voting Buchanan over Gore, as well as the transformative impact of the Brooks Brother’s Riot and the subsequent SCOTUS decision to halt the vote count in Dem leaning districts.
At some level, Americans must stop treating their elections process as free and fair, and then deflecting blame of defeat onto anyone who doesn’t vote for your favorite candidate.
Tbf, it very much appears similar to battered partner syndrome. It’s going to be painful either way, but if I stay blah blah blah.
Don’t feed up on the propaganda all it takes is a bunch of celebrities endorsing third parties and then they become popular enough to make a change. The moment the red and blue start to lose votes and their grip on power they have to go in damage control mode and change their politics to please people and get votes back.
You need ranked voting
Score voting is the real way. Superior to every other method by pretty much every sensible metric
Just a note, while ranked voting is much better, the people who are influenced by parties that game the system and a gullible ignorant base usually consolidate themselves into one big party that still does everything to undermine the rest of the coalitions as long as it makes them look bad even if it’s worse off for society as a whole and that like a tumor can keep growing until it goes past the midpoint for toppling the democracy that elected it. It’s part of the solution, but not all of it, societies act like headless chickens when things get bad enough, regardless of who was responsible for them. For example, Brexit.
2nd note, RCV is better, but approval and star voting are best.
I feel like we need something like the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact that is aiming to eliminate the electoral college, but for Ranked Choice.
Passing this federally is too hard. We need do to this state by state.
Until I can vote for a third party with RCV, then I might as well be saying that I have zero preference about the GOP and DNC options on the table.
Alaska does it (assuming they won’t repeal it in nov). Oregon is going to try and do it, if it hopefully passes. If we get two states proving it works and isn’t a problem, that momentum can snowball.
Please help support the RCV effort in Oregon if you can. https://www.oregonrcv.org/
I heard this a couple of days ago, and the more I’m looking into it, the more I find the green party a joke at best.
Alaska has a number of things. A population of conservationists amoung the general population who are likely disaffected. An environment that is being exploited harder than most states. Now ranked choice voting. Most people would see them as the environmentalist party. How much good could they do towards that cause if they got into that state legislature? What if they could take the congress seat or a senator? If they took the electoral votes it would be harder since the ranked choice only seems to be for the states choice, but they could prove they could win at some level. How many candidates are they running in Alaska? One, jill stein. How much effort are they putting in there for her? I can’t tell. The main criticism of them does not exist there, but they aren’t even trying. They can accomplish many of there goals there more easily than anywhere else. It’s the perfect storm for them. Pathetic.
I wish it were different, but the Green Party sucks in the two countries I’ve lived in. I want to vote for environmentalists, but they seem to be Russian shills in the US, and they’ve had literal stasi members in Germany, where they were so opposed to nuclear, that the country still uses mostly coal.
Rightwing Dems that get to the primary off corporate donors in the primary will never let RCC take over
The only reason they win in generals is the only other option is Republicans.
To fix anything on the federal level we need the Dem party onboard and all on the same page, then heavy majorities, then fix the system
I’d argue that you don’t need it in every state. You just need it in enough states to make a 3rd party candidate viable.
Look up the Moral Majority. They wrested control of the GOP from Nelson Rockefeller et al by showing up at every local Republican function with enough votes to make sure they got heard. They started out putting their sheriffs and county clerks on the ballots.
Dems are not letting that happen.
Problem is that RCV will only have a chance in deep blue states, and all it would accomplish is reducing the blue representation in congress.
To put it bluntly, all it would accomplish is more in fighting and contributing to the reputation that Dems are ineffective. Except, it would be the “blue aligned coalition” instead of “Dems”
The only real path to making this change is to give Dems a super majority so they can amend the constitution.
And, well, the minority of Red voters have a majority of power thanks to the electoral college, so a super majority is absolutely impossible for the foreseeable future.
Edit - it’d also cause disruptions in States that don’t adopt RCV, as “progressives” protest vote 3rd party and sandbag the Dems
I’m not voting for Harris. I’m voting against Trump via Harris.
I’m voting FOR Harris in the same way I was previously voting FOR Biden. Biden/Harris & Harris/Walz support policies that most closely match those policies I support.
If Trump died tomorrow I still wouldn’t support Vance or any other Republican because they support policies that I am strongly opposed to.
I would like to have more options, but realistically those are my choices.
I don’t have to agree with Harris/Walz on 100% if issues. I’m allowed to criticize them. But at the end of the day I’m voting FOR something and not just against the worst possible choice.
Given that she has the same stance on Gaza / Palestine as Biden, I vote against the orange bad rather than for her.
Single issue voters are hilarious. That’s how we got here.
My comment said that I’m voting against my conscience wrt Palestine, so your comment doesn’t really make sense.
I’m voting for Harris i like the money for middle class people thing
I hope you never suffer an illness or injury that suddenly thrusts you into the group of working poor, living out of the car, couch surfing or sleeping rough.
American mercenary healthcare is the primary reason I abandoned my green card efforts. It just wasn’t worth the risk that a car accident could render me homeless.
The average American tax payer individuals who make less than a certain amount get nothing in return. If we got services instead of global war, I believe very few would have an issue with taxes.
And they have no clue how close to reality that is for all of them.
There currently is no middle class. There’s people that think they are still middle class, but they are struggling just as much as they poor.
If you live outside the ~5 swing states that decide the election you can go ahead and ignore stuff like this saying you can’t vote third party.
Shoutout PSL
Depends on how “safe” the states are. If its by just 100,000 then that’s not as safe as you think. If it’s by 600,000 then yeah that’s pretty safe. But at the same time why vote for a party that won’t win?
Also, the PSL is not your friend. Back in 2020 they realized they weren’t gonna get the Peace and Freedom nomination in 2020, so instead of having solidarity with their fellow socialists, they threw their weight behind the joke candidate Roseanne Barr. They blatantly sabotaged their fellow socialists because they realized they weren’t going to win. They are not a party worth your investment.
Here’s a great article about them and their shit.
But at the same time why vote for a party that won’t win?
Building support for change has to start somewhere, while they won’t win this election the more support they get the more visibility socialism gets as well as showing that people aren’t willing to vote for genocide. At the very least it shows the amount of people unhappy the democrats aren’t taking a harder stance on Israel.
As for the PSL specifically, they’re the best option on the ballot in my state. Thank you for the link though I’ll take a deeper look when I have a chance.
So people who don’t live in swing states should vote third party until there’s enough of them that the state is in danger of going to trump (or whoever)? If they’re successful at some point that’s a threat.
How do we actually get third party candidates to win, not just “oh, Ross Perot Jr got 3% of the vote”?
However you slice it, we’re looking at like a 20 year struggle minimum to get election reform, and it would be at least the same length to elect a third party candidate to the office of president, but that’s a one off thing. (Or more likely that third party would be the new one of two parties)
If we’re committed to the struggle of improving things, we might as well improve a reusable process rather than have a single go at a third party presidential candidate.
If enough people are voting third party that it’s a threat then maybe the other parties should take notice and change to support the popular policies and win back support.
Also we can do more than 1 thing at a time. We should be pushing things like ranked choice voting while also showing our displeasure with the current parties where it makes sense to do so.
Giving support to third parties gives them and the issues they’re promoting more visibility to the general public.
If enough people are voting third party that it’s a threat then maybe the other parties should take notice and change to support the popular policies and win back support.
This does not work in a FPTP system. Every vote you peel off the Democrats just enables the Republicans and sets reform back even farther. The only way telling people to vote 3rd party is helpful is if they were going to vote for the GOP. Peeling votes away from Democrats HURTS the chances of other parties to be viable in the future.
You’re looking at things through there lens of 1 election cycle.
If a third party that’s against the genocide Israel is carrying out gets say 5% of voters in deep blue or deep red states would that not be a signal to the democrats that they should change their stance before the next election?
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Not funding and supplying a genocide seems to be a pretty clear and easy issue to change especially when 60%+ of democrats are in favor of it. We’re already violating our own laws by continuing to do so.
The democrats are already moving to the right even with the left continuing to vote for them. They think they can win over some centrists republicans (even though they can’t in a meaningful number) by adopting right wing policies while not losing the left because at the moment they know votes are guaranteed because “republicans worse”.
Having voters in areas that effectively don’t matter this cycle show there displeasure in the genocide we’re enabling is the least we can do to counter it.
They think they can win over some centrists republicans (even though they can’t in a meaningful number) by adopting right wing policies while not losing the left because at the moment they know votes are guaranteed because “republicans worse”.
I don’t think they think that. I think we’ve swallowed that lie hook, line and sinker for 40 years and they will keep throwing the same bait as long as we keep biting while they keep moving right.
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The presidential election is not the time for any of that. You have a fundamental misunderstanding about how elections work if this is the only time you care about third parties.
It definitely isn’t the only time I care about third parties. Continued direct action in the community is the most important way to affect change. The election is just a useful event for publicity and gaining support for groups.
There’s 0% chance my comment is going to convince enough people this election cycle that it effects a non swing states election. It’s about slowly building support for groups.
I’m with you. I’m all about building support. Just as long as people understand there’s a time and place for it.
People have said that for 40 years. It’s always the right time to do the right thing.
Eta and for 40 years things have gotten worse for everyone but fat international corporate conglomerates and VERY wealthy people. The time is now.
And for 40 years voting in your local elections has changed things. That’s when you vote for change. If you think the presidential election is the time to vote differently you’re not paying attention, plain and simple.
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I’m pretty sure if all Nazi voters instead voted SDP, Hitler wouldn’t have risen to power. The only reason the Nazi Party had any appeal whatsoever is because fractured voting meant chaotic governments, weak and ineffective chancellors, and leaving the president with no choice but to issue emergency decrees just to keep the state apparatus in semi-functional condition.
The one way, the only way, given the composition of the Reichstag, that the Nazis could have been kept out of power is if the Communists were willing to swallow their pride and work with the Centre Party, moderate right-wing parties, and SPD to keep Hitler out of the Chancery. Instead, look what happened. Hitler was appointed Chancellor and purged the Reichstag of opposition. The Enabling Act wasn’t passed because everyone wanted Hitler to have those powers. It was because you either voted with the chancellor or the SS would gun you down on the way back home.
That’s the problem with today’s so-called socialists. An absolutely myopic stance that what isn’t perfect might as well be the worst thing on the planet.
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Then let it be. A liberal or conservative society is nonetheless better than fascism. What you have described is merely a situation where socialist and social-democratic politics have been electorally defeated by conservative ones.
The KPD chose to pout and fight to the bitter end rather than recognising that because they lacked the necessary amount of influence in the Reichstag to control the government, they could not get what they wanted, nor anything near it, and could only, at best, get an extremely watered-down version of the policies they want, or even settle for the status quo to prevent regressive policies from being enacted. Or even accept a mildly regressive policy to prevent a fascist one from being enacted. This is what democracy is meant to do. You give a little, and they give a little, and hopefully, we can both get a little bit of what we want or at least reduce the amount of the stuff we hate. If all of your positions are rigidly uncompromisable, you will find that a well-designed democratic system will keep you out of government and relegated to the sidelines unless you actually hold the popular mandate.
If the choice is to saw off your left foot or saw off your head, you must choose the lesser of the two. Refusing to choose does nothing to help you, and the KPD refused to choose.
Rather than accepting this reality, the. KPD decided it wouldn’t go down without a fight. Ultimately, they failed, and wouldn’t get the chance to govern (or even exist in public) for another two decades. Only after finding external help in the form of the Soviet Union and its Red Army did the KPD finally get what it wanted, subjugating the SPD. The new SED was ushered into government, will of the electorate be damned.
In the end, both the KPD and the Nazi Party wanted to destroy the Weimar Republic because they knew they could not get what they wanted by playing by its rules. The key historical difference is that the Nazis succeeded.
I don’t fault the KPD’s leaders for what they did. After all, we here in 2024 have the power of hindsight that was not available to them. But in the end, we must recognise that the KPD’s stubbornness certainly didn’t help with the collapse of the Weimar Republic and accelerated Hitler’s rise to power.
It is an uncomfortable position to be in when you are forced to criticise the decisions of those whose values you respect and agree with. But it must be done if the goal is to learn from history and not merely flaunt it.
I mean, we’re seeing the same thing (sans the communist orgs) play out in real time across Europe now. In Britain, labor purges Jeremy corbyn and his ilk, then gets elected with a solid mandate, then promises to gut the NHS and promotes transphobic policies (for no material benefit) in the name of coalition building anyway.
What distinguishes these “bipartisan” labourists and their american equivalents from the Tories except different colored hats? Would you also blame corbyn for running against these people?
No, I would not. In an ideal world, Corbyn would still be the leader of the Labour Party while Starmer would head a moderate centre-left or centrist liberal party, and after the 2024 election, it would be Corbyn and Starmer governing together in coalition, resulting in a government that is slightly more to the left than what it is now.
But the UK’s system of elections is flawed and definitely not perfect, which prevents this.
I was trying to draw a comparison to how the KPD formed in the first place. they were a group within the spd who were horrified at their colleagues voting in support of a brutal imperialist war and left (or rather were kicked out) of the party. Imo there has to be a moral line somewhere after which you refuse to vote for or even be in government with people who do monstrous things.
And it is not just the uk’s system of elections, as I mentioned this pattern happens across all of Europe and the United States, which leads me to also believe it’s an inherent feature of “liberal” bourgeois democracy and the kpd were right to roll the dice and try to fight it through non electoral means.
Frankly, most communist parties around the world that try to fight the government and take over violently get brutally crushed.
You cannot launch a violent revolution without popular support, and the reality is that absent extreme circumstances, the population as a whole at any given time will view the policies proposed by most communist parties as extreme. That is why it is so exceedingly rare for communist parties to be able to win power democratically, because the truth of the matter is that communist policies are usually deeply unpopular.
I do not care whatever your intentions may be; if you try to impose your ideology on the population against their will by violence, I equate you to the fascists. And indeed, many of the so-called socialist regimes that have popped up after these “worker’s revolutions” have been tinpot dictatorships with the socialist decorations, while extinguishing personal liberties and badly mismanaging the state economy. And the promise of equality is totally betrayed as the party leadership becomes the new bourgeoisie, living in luxury off others’ labour while the workers’ living standards remain much lower.
Simply put, just because a hammer and sickle was installed atop the state buildings, the flag drenched in red, and the Evil Bourgeoise Government renamed to the People’s Evil Bourgeoise Government doesn’t make it any better.
I am a socialist and also Chinese, and I believe fellow socialist George Orwell’s Animal Farm is shockingly illustrative of the situation.
Don’t fall for the third party trick, keep voting for the red and blue party and go back to work so a bunch of billionares and politician can keep feasting
