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I feel like the reason there's been a resurgance of posts rehashing this has to do with Zohran Mamdani winning a primary in the largest city in the United States. While being openly pro-palestinian AND using the Socialist word positively to boot.
If Harris had won it is highly plausible she would have endorsed Cuomo leading to Zohran's loss.
Mamdani lends credibility to some of those 3rd party/non-voting/protest voters' strategy.
I think this causes some... feelings.
Mamdani is not third part though, because he won the primary. So he's the candidate from one of the two big parties.
Not really. New York's mayoral election has ranked choice voting so it's a different situation. Also, Cuomo is the 3rd party candidate at this stage - he's running as an independant.
If democrat politicians weren't so shit it wouldn't be so close in the first place
So true, the Democrats had a fucking easy ass win all lined up and threw it so hard. 1.6B in campaign funds and they ran on, "We are changing nothing, but at least we aren't republicans."
Everyone below the upper middle class knows the government is not working for the people. People voted for trump because he ran on change. We know he is a liar and using politically uneducated people to push the right wing agenda, but the primary message of his campaign was what people wanted. And he won.
3rd party/non-voters didn't help, but the loss is primarily on the Democrats.
I remember having arguments with these Blue MAGA muppets during the election. I kept trying to explain to them why it was insanity to pretend the economy was fine. But they were morons with a 1984 streak that would make Orwell blush, and thought they could just manifest their way to an election victory. They kept citing CPI data, saying, "but inflation adjusted wages have never been higher!" When you pointed out that inflation purposefully leaves out a lot of the volatility in prices people were reeling from, and how not all income groups experience inflation equally? They didn't want to hear it.
Remember the absolutely insulting, just disgustingly condescending term "vibession?" I do. That term alone probably cost Kamala the election. The only thing that makes people angrier than having to deal with a rotten economy is to have their leaders gaslight them and pretend nothing is wrong.
These morons didn't want to hear it. They have a three monkeys belief system. Just ignore all problems, pretend everything is fine, and just try to bluff your way to victory on election day. You point out the suicidally stupid policies that were killing the Kamala campaign, and they just acted like three year olds saying, "harumf, I guess you want Trump to win!"
This is exactly what people are referring to when they describe liberal arrogance. Criticism is unacceptable. Shut up and tow the line. Vote Blue No Matter Who (unless there's a progressive on the ticket.)
we need to be honest with ourselves.
Being angry at republicans for blowing up the government is reasonable.
It's also reasonable to be angry at the democrats, who sat around watching them work towards blowing up the government for fifty years and being like "hurrdurr FAIRNESS!" while doing nothing to stop it.
This community is still in denial from last year I see, I guess none of you braindeads learned your lesson huh
Even funnier now that the DNC approved candidate is running as a 3rd party in NYC after losing his own primary. Suddenly no issue voting for an independent candidate there.
I'm getting tired of this back and forth. This bickering is childish and our time would be better spent drumming up positive interest for ranked choice voting.
That's a huge uphill battle, it's outright banned in 17 states. Yes, we absolutely should be doing everything within our power to drum up positive interest, but absolute best case scenario it's going to take several election cycles. We still need to make viable plans for the interim.
Imagine being more upset with 3 million leftists than 70 million republicans.
this yet again, still seething.
democrat failure is a failure of the democrats. they knew the assignment, they didn’t want to pay the price. they chose this reality instead
Barely anyone voted for third parties. I have much more blame for the people who didn’t bother voting than the people who voted third party.
I’ll also call out that “not bothering” ignores that a huge sect of the public gets their vote falsely purged, or has their polling location closed, or some other voter suppression tactic.
I love how divisive this is without respect to gerrymandering.
Watching Biden kiss billionaire ass was way better than watching Trump's construction of concentration camps and also kiss billionaire ass.
This is a fucking pointless fight. If you're still talking about this responsibility shifting nonsense, it doesn't matter what side of the argument you're one, you're a part of the problem.
Y'all are still going to be fighting about this dumb bullshit while ICE handcuffs everyone. Maybe unify so that doesn't happen.
Telling leftists to stop bickering and infighting over pointless bullshit instead of actively attacking the actual enemies of democracy...
First time?
It would be saying you are perfectly ok with either candidate over the other. If you say Trump is worse, but the Democrat didn't earn my vote so I didn't, that's pretty aggravating to hear. If you truly felt both options were equally bad, well I can't imagine that perspective but at least that's a rational stance for going none of the above with a different vote.
It often sounds like you will only vote for the perfect candidate who agrees fully with you on every thing, which is an impractical ideal.
All this said, the numbers didn't break in a way for those third party voters to actually have mattered this time around, so despite how frustrated people may be, there's nothing rational in harping on it for 2024.
Sadly, they both "may" be equally bad. The dems hide it well, trump flaunts it. But they both serve only the elite. Clinton was an epstien friend. And he endorsed cuomo for NY mayor because the party asked him to. They say they want to do things that help the people. But whenever the chance comes, they somehow just can't do it.
We need more parties to at least make it so people can't just run and win by not being then other guy.
And notice how they mostly just take turns being in charge. Either it is part of thier plan, or it is just proof that neither side actually does enough to be worth voting in repeatedly. Cause they could... but they won't.
I'm from Oregon, so my vote doesn't matter either way. We always go blue. At least that means we get less election propaganda in the mail and on the phone.
Jesus Christ the election is long over
Simply accept that out of two outcomes (leftists uniting to vote Democrat/leftists trying to send Democrats a message by not voting them in) both would lead to terrible consequences. It was a matter of time, it just got expedited to now instead of few years later.
You cannot vote democracy in if there's no fair democracy in the first place. Elections are over, they won't save you, unite over what you can do instead of wasting everything you have on infighting.
Organize and protest. Join the political organizations in your area and unionize. This is a harder way, and I know it takes time and energy to figure things out and organize and take part in all the actions made, but it is the only way that works.
Please, if you aren't already part of your local organizing teams, go search for them right now.
This sentiment has never made sense because libertarians steal more votes from replublicans than greens do from dems.
The important thing is to be more pissed at the Democrats for not being good enough than you you are at the Republicans for being evil. There is nothing worse than a western liberal, not even the pro-trans-murder party
This PIS again...
Oh, let's not blame the Nazis and their supporters in 1930s Germany. Let's blame everyone else who didn't vote the SPD.
Y'all are still doing this? It was moderates who lost you the election, now stop crying about it.
That would require investigating the underlying reasons for election failure instead of the smug vibes-based 'analysis' that centrists prefer
Ranked choice voting and money out of politics are much more important than this dualistic psychological warfare. Republicans lose votes to third parties, too. Don't play their game. Vote blue if you want, but also extend love to your "deplorable" neighbor. Our division is a much stronger force for control than who is signing oligarchical legislation.
In summary
Vote blue no matter who:
Pro - Democrats more likely to win. Things won't immediately get worse.
Con - Democrats have no incentive to do anything other than what their wealthy donors want.
Result - Things don't get worse now, but eventual rightward drift is guaranteed because the democrats will do nothing good and the republicans will win eventually.
Vote blue only if X:
Pro - Democrats have an incentive to do something other than what their wealthy donors what, in theory.
Con - Democrats less likely to win.
Result - Democrats might do something good if they win. Rightward lurch is possible if they lose.
Can we please stop litigating this now?
Edit: The "best" approach would ultimately depend on the relative effectiveness of influencing democrat policy via primaries or whatever, and I don't think the answer is immediately obvious. I am not advocating one approach over the other, I just want people to stop pretending the answer is obvious.
The democratic party prefed Trump over giving up some deeply unpopular positions. Truly insane.
I too like punching down at people with no power. It would be too much for democratic leadership to learn the lessons of 2016 and 2024. Just blame progressives and people who want better things!
No I take this back. Harris was right to push for a fascist border bill and Biden was right to flood cops with money. Oh and we can’t forget enthusiastically funding genocides!
The dems really need to try to out fasc the fascists. That way they can persuade the moderate fascists! After all, progressives have no where else to go! I’m so glad Dems have so many big brained think tankers leading these extremely good strategies that always seems to work out well for us.
While that sentiment may be the most frustrating, even if every third party voted against Trump, he still would have won. If even 10% of those voters went to Trump, he would have even won the popular vote. Polling suggests that non voters were about evenly split, so a stronger turnout generically may have done nothing.
The result was mostly due to a very boring reason. Inflation was high so whoever in office gets the blame. Similarly Trump lost mainly because COVID sucked, and anyone would have lost (his response did suck, but we saw that there was no such thing as a sufficiently good response).
People like to imagine some big political cause for good or for ill moving the voters, but by and large it's mostly about how comfortable or uncomfortable they are in the moment to vote for or against the status quo of the moment. But those folks are "just voting" while a very loud minority talks up their "superior" choice to not vote for a lamestream candidate. They speak loudly, but they didn't have enough votes this time to make a difference. They did in 2000 (technically Gore did have the votes when the data was in, but third party would have made it a decisive Gore victory).
I am European, so, an outsider perspective, but....
I'd love to know actual numbers, because I get the feeling "commies who voted third party" are too small a group to swing elections. Just a quick look at the numbers on Wikipedia give 0.11% for the Socialism and Liberation candidate. Jill Stein got more, as did RFK even after he had withdrawn already, but I doubt they were the popular choice of the communists arguing here on Lemmy during the election campaign. (Where I, personally, argued for voting for first Biden, then Harris, because I did not see the left in the US as organised enough to react to the kind of oppression Trump would bring early, whereas I'd wager a Democrat would not have escalated like this. Just to root my own bias for context.)
I am not saying it is impossible that they could have swung a very close state, but I admit, I do think it is very improbable.
So, this feels very much like impotent rage to me, directed at the annoying but ultimately equally impotent agitprop people on here. They are loud on here, but do you really think they were that influential during the election?
Holy shit is this a braindead take.
ITT: Lots of people who don't understand that US presidential elections are a binary choice, and one of them is going to be president.
Plus the republicans cheated. They did it legally through gerrymandering and voter suppression, but they also said they did it illegally. I believe them.
Well, at least they voted and did their duty as a citizen of democratic nation. Some people didn't even bother to do that much, so for these people they don't get to complain.
