• bloodfart@lemmy.ml
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    10 days ago

    No one has said it in this thread, and there’s a lot of people talking about how they wish there was another option:

    I’m voting for the Party for Socialism and Liberation and you can too!

    They’re running Claudia de la Cruz on a platform of Palestinian statehood and an end to arms shipments to Israel.

    There are many alternatives.

    • UltraGiGaGigantic@lemm.ee
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      10 days ago

      Pass electoral reform first IMO. Unless critical mass is achieved, we would be spoiling the election. This is why passing electoral reform is of utmost importance.

      Democrats clearly understand the faults of First Past The Post voting. Go on any platform and suggest voting third party and the liberals will come in droves to explain the faults of the FPTP voting system.

      Okay, you understand the voting system is flawed… then why do we still use FPTP voting? How can you explain these mathematical flaws to people considering voting third party and NOT do anything about the voting system? You don’t get to have both.

      • bloodfart@lemmy.ml
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        10 days ago

        I don’t buy that. Both major parties, all the donors, the media, the lobbying groups and all the party machines in all fifty states are heavily invested the system we have.

        I’m not gonna wait till we tip the whole system over to record a vote that actually represents my political positions.

        If the two major parties are afraid of third party spoilers then they can adopt the platforms of those third parties.

        • Lightor@lemmy.world
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          10 days ago

          Ok, then just be aware that when the pile of votes for 3rd party isn’t anywhere near either candidates pile your vote won’t matter. Biden and Trump will get the majority of votes and you will lose your chance to impact one of the most important elections in US history because of naive idealisms.

          And neither party is afraid of the 3rd party, they use it. They take reasonable minded people who would never vote Republican and push them to 3rd party to weaken the Democrats votes. It’s exactly what they did with Bernie and how Trump won. They had massive turn out for the 3rd party that did absolutely nothing but split the Dems and allow the Republicans to be unified. A vote for 3rd party is a vote for Republicans, I know you don’t want to believe that reality but it’s true.

          • bloodfart@lemmy.ml
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            10 days ago

            that’s not true.

            third party votes provide access to funding, ballot and event presence, media coverage and public awareness. third party votes do matter and they have a measurable positive impact.

            third party votes tell the two major parties exactly what positions they need to integrate into their platforms in order to pick up those ballots in those particular districts. even if a person doesn’t think it’s worthwhile to build support for a third party, a third party ballot is an undeniable record of what the two major parties can do to get your support.

            when people start talking about this kind of thing i generally like to bring up perot 92, which had a serious effect on domestic policy and was proven not to be a spoiler multiple times in the years that followed.

            • Lightor@lemmy.world
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              10 days ago

              Ok, prove me wrong, when was the last 3rd party president?

              Anyone can see that a majority of 3rd party votes come from Democrats because the right is radicalized. So by splitting that base you empower the Republicans. A split Democrat/3rd party base accomplishes nothing but clearing the way for this project 2025 bs.

              • bloodfart@lemmy.ml
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                10 days ago

                I never claimed there was a third party president and I already proved your claims wrong in my last post.

                But if you want a third party president, look into Lincoln’s second term running as the Union party candidate, a coalition formation that came from triangulating around a bunch of smaller third parties.

                If the democrats are afraid of a split they can change their platform to get more votes.

                • Lightor@lemmy.world
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                  10 days ago

                  Yes, there has never been a 3rd party president and their won’t be for a long time.

                  But ya, let’s teach the Dems a lesson by handing over the country to the radical right, boy that’ll show em. How purposefully self destructive. You’re so idealistic that your not playing out the reality of how that will go.

                  • bloodfart@lemmy.ml
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                    10 days ago

                    Lincoln literally ran for his second term under a third party, the Union party, which was a coalition formed of his own republicans and others like the nativists.

                    I’ve tried really hard to not be idealistic and only talk in material terms about the way things are.

                    The only thing I’d like to show the democrats is what they need to do to get my vote. I plan on doing that by voting third party. My vote will also support in a measurable, material, real way a party and candidate that has nearly the same politics as I do. I’m not petulant or using my vote to express anger at the democrats.

                    How will it go when the democrats lose?

        • SleezyDizasta@lemmy.world
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          9 days ago

          Being a Marxist in 2024 is clown shit as it is, but voting for Marxist-Leninist party in America is just baffling. The cherry on top is that the clown you’re planning to vote for has some mighty interesting policy proposals including:

          • Seizing the 100 biggest corporations in the country
          • Seize the agricultural and energy industries
          • Repurpose the energy industry to generate exclusively renewable energy
          • Expand the transportation system with all an electric fleet while no autoworker loses their job and millions of new, good paying jobs are going to be created
          • Expand affirmative action discrimination
          • Use the assets of the seized top 100 corporations as reparations for black people
          • Cut the military budget by 90%
          • Abolish NATO
          • Support Russia against Ukraine and China against Taiwan
          • Abolish AFRICOM specifically for some reason
          • Abolish the CIA, NSA, and FBI
          • Abolish the Senate, the Supreme Court, and the Federal Reserve
          • Expose all of the America’s state secrets
          • End all American sanctions on dictatorships such as Russia, Venezuela, Iran, North Korea, etc
          • Help aid the destruction of Israel
          • Going on purges to lock up the “corrupt elite”
          • Cancel all debt
          • Eliminate inflation with an “across the board price freeze”
          • Ban evictions and cap rent at 10% of income
          • Tax all income and assets over 10 million over 100%
          • Ban ownership of overseas assets

          It’s like a bad joke, except nobody is laughing. The fact that there are people out there who are so mind numbingly ignorant of economics, government, social politics, history, and geopolitics that they actually think this brain damaged list of policies is a good idea is just sad. Claudia de la Cruz is so bad that she is unironically worse than Trump, and you have to try really, really hard to be worse than Trump. Literally a turd is better than Trump, so for her to be worse is just… wow. Do better, come on.

          • bloodfart@lemmy.ml
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            9 days ago

            i’m already convinced to vote for her, you don’t need to make the case.

              • bloodfart@lemmy.ml
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                9 days ago

                Can you tell me what’s bad about that platform?

                Even with the uncharitable wording you used on some items it seems like a huge list of good policies and goals that would help the American people. How come it’s bad?

                • SleezyDizasta@lemmy.world
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                  8 days ago

                  I’ll give you a genuine answer because I assume you’re actually being serious.

                  I’ll dissect 3 of their policies at random that I already listed above to demonstrate just how of touch these people are. Just an FYI, they have a few more ridiculous policies that I didn’t include because my list was starting to get too long, but I just wanted point this out nonetheless. Anyways, let’s get on to the policies:

                  Abolish NATO

                  Why exactly? In what way does this move benefit the United States? Do these idiots even understand what country they’re running to govern? NATO is an American led organization that has served as the backbone of American-European bilateral cooperation and one of the most fundamental pieces to American foreign policy for decades. Not only does NATO guarantee American security and the security of our most important allies, but it also serves as one of the biggest pillars of American soft and hard power. Rouge regimes like Iran and Russia know better than to mess with our European allies in NATO because they the presence of the US military and it’s might acts as a deterrent. NATO is the symbol of Western unity, it is a stabilizing force in Europe, it is what’s keeping Europe largely peaceful.

                  Not to mention that NATO’s explicit purpose of defending Europe from Russian aggression is more relevant than ever because Russia has literally invaded Ukraine, the second largest European country, right now in the largest land war in Europe since WWII. It’s a blatant act of unprovoked aggression and imperial conquest. Putin along with his cronies have publicly threatened other countries such as Lithuania, Poland, Estonia, Moldova, Latvia, etc with invasion and have threatened other countries such as the UK and Germany with nukes. This is on top of Russia already invading Ukraine in 2014 and annexing Crimea, invading Georgia in 2008 and creating two puppet states in Abkhazia and South Ossetia, illegally turning Belarus into a puppet dictatorship, illegally occupying parts of Moldova in the form of Transnistria, starting the war in Donbass, annexing all of southern Ukraine in their current invasion, spending billions annually on propaganda and misinformation campaigns to destabilize the West, sending in assassins to take out targets in the West, constantly launching cyberattacks on our infrastructure, bolstering our enemies like Iran and North Korea, and the list goes on and on.

                  Why the fuck should we put ourselves and our allies at risk, appease a ruthless dictator, and destroy all of the alliances and good we’ve made? How does abolishing NATO serve our national interests? Calling this idiotic is too generous for what it is.

                  Cancel all debt

                  No debt? Yay! But what does that mean exactly? See, if the policy here is to cancel specific types of debt, then you could excuse it. If it is promoting a welfare program that provides relief to people, then you could make an arguement for it… but no, on their official platform they just straight up claim that all debt should be cancelled.

                  Let’s think about this from a logical point of view for a second. This country has a lot of debt whether it’s public, corporate, or individual… how exactly would cancel it? Is their plan to print money to pay off all of the debt? That’s a one way ticket to inflation. Are they planning to ban loans? That’s another way to screw over the economy, especially poor people. Are they perhaps planning to just to write a statement saying that all debt is hereby void and expect that to actually work? It’s really baffling.

                  Let’s suppose, they manage to actually do it, are new loans going to be allowed? If not, how are they going to prevent the banks from collapsing? Banks literally run on loans, that’s how they work. If the banks collapse, so does everything that uses them, which basically means that the US economy will crash and burn. Is this their genius plan? Is the grand socialist idea to collapse the American economy and plunge the world economy into absolute chaos? I shudder at the thought of how many people will fall into poverty or famine because of this.

                  The thing that pisses me off about this is that they don’t even bother to explain their reasoning. If you’re going to do something this big and stupid then at least have the decency to explain it to your voters. Explain why debt is bad and how you’re going to cancel it. Keeping it this vague and sweet sounding when the consequences are so devastating just reeks of malicious intentions.

                  Seizing the 100 biggest corporations in the country

                  Socialists have this completely out of touch view that if a government seizes large swaths of the economy, it’ll run exactly the same except the public will reap all the benefits… that’s just WRONG! That’s not how it works. We’ve seen time and time again throughout history that planned economies ALWAYS result in failure. The government is way too inefficient, way too slow, way too rigid, and is prone to making poor decisions. This is the actual reason why socialism is a failure as an economic system. All it does is give the government way too much power, which inevitably corrupts it and turns it authoritarian. Unless the government sanctions it’s own corporations that run the same way as private corporations, it’s just not going to work. Do you know what does work? The free market.

                  Let’s sit here for a second and think about how America became so wealthy and developed. All this wealth didn’t teleport here from another dimension, no it was created by the free market. It’s been shown time and time again that when you give people agency and freedom to run their own livelihoods, they will do so better than anyone else. Private economies are constantly more productive, more efficient, more resilient, more dynamic, and more wealthy. You clearly see this contrast throughout in history. Take for example the backwards hellhole that was the East Germany and the thriving hub that was West Germany or the closest thing to hell on earth in Maoist China compared the booming China of the 2000s or the starving authoritarian pit known as the Soviet Union and the prosperous United States. There’s hundreds of examples like this, you get the idea. Capitalism works, and economic freedom is a proven method to generate wealth and prosperity.

                  Is our current economy flawed? Yes, it is. It has a lot of problems that range in severity and scale. However, the solution is to vote in principled politicians who will reform the system to add pragmatic regulations, incentives, and policies to more effectively run the economy to keep it sustainable, accountable, and working to the benefit of the people. The last thing we need is for economically illiterate people stuck to a failed ideology trying to use government power to seize a swath of the economy that will inevitably lead to unprecedented authoritarianism, collapse of the global economy, and money to flee the country in droves.

                  Literally all of their policies are this nonsensical. Every. Single. One. Just the slightest bit of criticism is enough to expose their positions for being nothing more than meaningless drivel.

                  Here’s the thing, politics as a concept is about how best run a government. You can’t run a country on fantasies and outlandish ideals. You NEED to have pragmatism or otherwise you’re going to risk collapse. The big issue with both Trump, and to a lesser extent, Biden is that they’re both out of touch with reality. So much so that they’re widely regarded as the two worst candidates in American history. Even though they’re old and senile, they still at least try in some half assed way to be realistic with their positions. Claudia De la Cruz, Karina Garcia, and all these other clowns are so batshit crazy, so deranged, and so out of touch with reality that they make Biden and fucking Trump look sane in comparison.

                  People who support Marxism in 2024 are victims of propaganda from a bygone era. Marxism is no more, it’s a failed ideology. It has been tried dozens of times across time, culture, and land and it has collapsed every single time. The only thing it has to show for it is tyrannical regimes, famines, and widespread poverty. The ideology has a track record that’s on par, or arguably worse, than fascism. The era of Marxism is gone and it’s not coming back. The ideals of the Soviet bloc were never good, but now they’re just irrelevant. It’s time to move on.

                  I understand that it’s hard to vote for either Trump or Biden, but this? This is even worse. Marxism and this clown party aren’t genuine alternative and never will be. There’s appetite for a new political, economic, and social system not just in the US, but around the globe. With the impending large scale population collapses and shrinking demographics world wide, we will be forced to either work with we got to stay afloat or come up with an entirely new system. If we do innovate a new system it has to be created in the context of this era. It has to be made by people of this era to address issues of this era with solutions designed for this era. Will that be UBI and AI? Who knows. But what I do know is that Marxism definitely doesn’t have a place in the modern world anymore.

                  • bloodfart@lemmy.ml
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                    8 days ago

                    A tremendous corpus is no substitute for understanding.

                    NATO is bad. I hope de la Cruz succeeds in destroying it. It would be a complex process that ends in a new alignment of power. That would be good.

                    Debt harms Americans institutionally. I will always choose the well being of my countrymen over that of the poor widdle banks.

                    The entirety of the 20th century is the story of planned economies succeeding where the free market failed. If anything I fear seizing the 100 biggest companies in America would be catastrophic because their size is often a function of market manipulation as opposed to productive capacity on a year over year basis.

                    I want to warn you now that the claim that communism is worse than fascism is a disproven dogwhistle to fascist sympathizers and antisemites.

                    I don’t think you’re trying to do that on purpose, though. It’s hard to defend some of the positions you do without accidentally stepping in Nazi doodoo.