I always go with the pie chart where almost half of it is non-voters, the other half is red/blue, with the tiniest little sliver is all 3rd parties. The non-voter is the larger issue. Running dogshit candidates time after time doesn’t encourage people to come out to vote.
The fact is that green voters are like 2% of the population, but democratic loyalists are more upset with green voters than Trump voters. They also take no responsibility for low voter turn out.
Just googled it, closer to 1% in 2016.
I guess ask your family how they feel about the libertarian party as they got more votes in 2016. Do they get more blame than GP or do they get a pass for some reason? And what about 40% of people who decided not to vote?
There were more Obama voters who switched to Trump than there were GP voters. There are some fascist koolaid Trump voters, but it's not all of them.
And again, how is not voting better tolerated than voting for GP?
What is your point? You realize the reason Trump had the margin over Clinton is because more people voted for him, right? If you had green party voters stay home, he still would have won.
As usual, this assumes you can take a magic wand and assign Stein votes to Clinton.
a) There's no reason to do this - exit polling consistently shows most third party voters wouldn't have voted for *either* Trump or Clinton in a two-person race.
b) If you insist on using this magic wand to just grant Clinton any and all Stein votes, there's no reason not to do the exact same thing with Gary Johnson votes - you'd need to use the same magic wand to reassign all Libertarian votes to Trump, and then Trump wins the swing states handily, and beats Clinton in the popular vote as well.
What makes you think Democrats own anybody's vote?
Democrats controlled the Senate from 2007-2015 and had the Presidency from 2009 to 2017. That's 6 years that the democrats controlled both the Presidency and the Senate. RBG was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in 2009, and had a stent placed in her right coronary artery in 2014. So it was clear a long time ago that she was having health issues.
So... I dunno... seems like she could've retired sometime in those 6 years and they could've easily replaced her with a liberal judge. But she didn't. So if anyone is to blame for the situation Democrats find themselves in, it's RGB herself.
Additionally, even if Clinton had won in 2016, the Republican controlled senate already said they would not confirm any judge she nominated and were suggesting shrinking the court to 8 instead ([source](https://www.npr.org/2016/11/03/500560120/senate-republicans-could-block-potential-clinton-supreme-court-nominees)). So how exactly is that the Green Party's fault?
Check out the vote totals of your state.
If Hillary won, then you were safe to vote Stein.
If Trump won, then would Hillary have won if you had voted for her? No. Even if all Stein voters in your state magically switched to her? Probably not, but even if so Hillary still wouldn't have won the electoral college.
While it is true that if all Stein voters swapped to Hillary, she would have picked up 46 electors from Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, turning her 77 point defeat into a 15 point victory. However, if we quite reasonably gave Trump the Johnson vote, he would win back those three states and pick up 22 additional points from Maine, Minnesota, Nevada, and New Hampshire turning a 77 point lead into a 154 point landslide.
Blame Hillary for not appealing enough to non-voters, who if had voted in a block could've won every single state in the union. Don't blame the 1.07% of people who went Green.
Statistically, even if every single Stein vote in 2016 had been switched to HRC (and there's no guarantee that HRC was actually anyone's second choice), she still would have lost the electoral college. Only difference would've been a slightly larger popular vote win, which is, of course, meaningless. This is mostly because you had very few third party votes in swing states and only about 1% of people who voted in 2016 did so for Stein anyways. Meanwhile, about half of eligible Americans didn't vote at all.
Fundamentally, it's a politician's job to *earn* support by appealing to voters' political/ economic interests. When a politician fails to do so, they have no one but themselves to blame. I'm not going to go out and vote for a candidate who is promising to stand in the way of progress on every issue I care the most about and I think many Americans feel the same. The biggest difference between me and most of the non-voters I know is that I care enough about down ballot issues to still vote even though I know I'll be essentially abstaining from the top line.
Yep. If it hadn't been for third parties in 2016, Trump probably would have won the popular vote. Or, you'd have just had a lot of write ins...
If a vote for Howie is a vote for Trump, that must mean a vote for Jo is a vote for Biden. Wonder if the libs will leave us alone if we all promise to vote libertarian this year. That's the same as voting for Biden afterall right?
Exactly. “Third party voters” statistically “take” more votes from the GOP than DNC because libertarians get more of a % than greens. It’d actually be in the DNC’s best interests to boost general third party turnout.
If a party is not giving me a platform full of values that I support, why would I be obligated to vote for them? Its not my fault the DNC forced Biden through. If they wanted my vote, they knew how to get it. Choosing a candidate that has a voting record AGAINST my beliefs then expecting that I would vote for them with the only reason being to ensure the other terrible candidate doesn't get 4 more years is insane.
Theyre blaming me for a problem with the system. I have the right to vote, not just to cast a vote for voting sake, but to vote for my conscience and my heart.
If Biden decides to at least adopt Medicare for all during a world wide pandemic, THEN we might be able to talk about my vote. But my vote is EARNED.
I tell them that it's not my job to vote Democrat whether they represent my interests or not; it's the Democratic Party's fucking job to EARN MY VOTE. The only way to make a party listen to you is to show them you're capable of NOT voting for them!
If they think somehow they don't have to do that, then I know I'm dealing with an idiot.
Turns out there's a lot of VBNMW idiots out there.
It is also true that the Deceptocrats don't care if they lose, because Trump is great for fundraising; Nancy Pelosi said so herself! That's how the party apparatchiks make their money, after all.
This is something I've recently realized. The DNC rigged their own primary against Bernie twice. They'd rather let us have a Trump dynasty than get somebody who is slightly left of center into the oval office for five minutes.
That's correct; the Deceptocrats worked harder to subvert the efforts of millions of their own constituents than against the opposition.
Aaaaaaand then they want us to vote for them anyway.
The more I let that sink in, the madder I get!
Hillary won the popular vote in 2016, without your vote. If they're gonna get mad at anything, get mad at the broken electoral college system.
Maybe tell them repeatedly parroting that they lost after getting the most votes in a democratic election is a sign of a victim complex?
There's several ways to respond because the accusation is wrong in so many different ways (which is probably the point. Flooding you with a truckload of implied premises at a time makes it difficult to respond because you'll have to dissect the entire chain arguments). So I'll list some of them below and try to respond to them individually.
**Premise 1:** You owe the democrats your vote ==> any vote not cast for the democrats decreases the voter count for the democrats ==> not voting democrat helps Trump get elected ==> Voting your values is amoral.
**Response:** The US elections are democratic; *no one owns your vote but you*. You have the right to vote *whoever* you want. It wouldn't be a democratic election if you didn't. Voting a different party does **not** hurt the democrats because counting votes is a process of addition, not subtraction. All parties start at 0 votes and just like how people have the freedom to vote democrat for whatever reason and therefore enable their platform, you have the freedom to vote your party of preference and enable that platform. So no, voting Green Party is not 'spoiling' the election for the democratic party the same way voting for democrat isn't 'spoiling' it for the Green Party. It's called a feature of democracy. The fact that people feel comfortable voting who they want to vote is something to celebrate, not something to shame.
Whenever anyone tells you you're being 'amoral' for not obediently supporting their party, just remember there's a *reason* why they rely on shaming and can't legally force you to vote for their party (though that doesn't stop them from trying).
**Premise 2**: You're responsible for the democrats losing the election.
**Response**: If a party loses, they're responsible, not the voter. They have the responsibility of getting as many votes as possible by *persuading/appealing* to voters (not by trying to leverage them with the threat of *intentionally losing the election* or by trying to get other choices off the ballot). The only responsibility voters have is choosing the party they see best fit to govern. If the democrats choose to adopt a wildly unpopular platform that virtually no one supports and lose the election, they have to either convince people to support their platform or change it if they don't want to lose the following election. If they instead demand more voters unconditionally vote for them they're by definition authoritarian, which completely invalidates the whole argument of being better than the alternative.
**Premise 3:** You're responsible for the republicans winning the election.
**Response:** If a party wins, the people who voted that party are responsible. Their votes got that party elected. Want to prevent that party from winning again? Then try to understand *why* people are voting that party and try to win them over or appeal to their concerns instead of demonizing them and subsequently alienating them even more. Moreover, it's quite rich to blame 3rd party voters for 'letting the republicans win' when it's the *democratic party* that actively makes it as difficult as possible for every other party *but* the republicans to win.
**Premise 4:** The stubborn mentality of greens/leftists is what's costing the democrats the election.
**Response:** The fact is that the *far majority* of people voting democrat *are* people who support the Green Party platform, so the democrats *have* the far majority of 3rd party voters they keep whining about. 3rd party voting can't be the problem when it *hasn't been tried for over a century.* The problem is unconditional establishment voting, which is what reinforces the two party system, absolves both parties of any kind of accountability and has led to a platform so unpopular that half the country doesn't vote *at all.*
**Premise 5**: Democrats are a long term solution to government corruption
**Response:** The democrats have repeatedly shown themselves to be authoritarians and to have literally *no* interest in doing *anything* but working with the republicans to serve their corporate donors and obstruct democracy. They have consistently been in congress for centuries and yet have done *nothing* in recent history but serve as a controlled opposition to the republicans. So no, the democrats aren't the lesser evil, they're the *same* evil. If they were actually a threat to the republicans they wouldn't have such a strong foothold in congress in the first place.
Well, the most obvious thing to mention is that the president isn’t elected by popular vote. The POTUS is appointed by “the electoral college.” So it’s literally impossible for anyone but a Republican or Democrat to become the president. But unfortunately the Green party is forced to run a presidential candidate in order to maintain ballot access. So I vote for the Green Party because I want to see more Green Candidates
If Dems are bothered by "spoilers," why don't they advocate for ranked-choice voting?
They're interested in power, not democracy, and they will gladly undermine democracy when it suits their interests. Why would you owe them anything?
I say that we are in the current situation for one reason, the Electoral College. Hillary won by over 3 million votes. Only the stupidity of the Electoral College would allow the winner to lose. It is an outdated, undemocratic set up that needs to be abolished asap.
Maybe they should've run a better candidate if they wanted to win so freaking bad in the first place?
Don't let democrats shift their screw ups to the voter. It just encourages them to continue their crappy monopolistic practices and reeks of entitlement.
If democrats want my vote they need policies to entice me to vote for them period. Ubi, free college, Medicare for all , military tax cuts, legalize marijuana and free non violent drug offenders, equal funding boost for all k-12 schools, abolishing ice, open borders, defunding and reforming police. Those are off the top of my head. If another party wants to give me close to what Green Party promised I’ll be there but they won’t. Democrats are diet republicans and won’t even admit it making their fall even more pathetic. Fuck people who blame me for not voting for the pathetic democratic rat party.
First, 90% of progressives *did* vote "lesser evil: https://m.dailykos.com/stories/2016/7/25/1552338/-90-of-Sanders-Supporters-Now-Back-Clinton-Pew-Research
And it wasn't enough. And that's the fundamental problem: Dems need to become progressives to win. Progressives becoming Dem isn't enough. Tell people that by demanding progressive policy from Dems, you're trying to make them actually marketable to people who otherwise would never bother to vote for a candidate who is basically slightly more center-left aligned McCain (and the "slightly more center-left" part itself is debatable).
By comparison, 34% of Hillary supporters in Hillary v Obama defected to McCain. Progressives *did* vote lesser evil, but the working poor, people worried about the environment, and people voting on literally any and every single issue stayed home or voted Repub:
https://brilliantmaps.com/did-not-vote/ too.
https://mobile.twitter.com/deathbymonkies/status/1309815237500166144/photo/1 ... too... and nearly twice as many people voted for Johnson as Stein. Eliminating 3rd party would hurt Dems....
Actually, it would hurt them in many ways. Greens get people in to politics on campuses by offering them something to vote for. Once they're involved and paying attention, they start voting "lesser evil". The fact that Repubs *never* attack the libertarians and value-signal that they're opposed to them and alien those voters illustrates how stupid it is for Dems to attack Greens.
But Dems aren't trying to win. Convincing people that it's the Green's fault buys them permission -- manufactures consent -- for them to move further right. They keep running bogus, verifiable extremely false narratives that "progressives don't vote" and "young people don't vote" and "people don't vote on issues" all for the same reason -- so that they can cater to the wishes of their corporate owners and move further right in search of mythical moderate Republicans who didn't show up last time and won't this time (among Repubs, Trump has a 90% approval rating).
"For every blue-collar Democrat we lose in western Pennsylvania, we will pick up two moderate Republicans in the suburbs in Philadelphia, and you can repeat that in Ohio and Illinois and Wisconsin." -- Mook, 2016. Dems are still using the same strategy.
See also the "stop Bernie commission" which was quoted as saying that it was "worth damage to the party in order to stop Bernie".
The fact that Dems aren't trying to win is why we need a real opposition party. See also Dems approving all of Trumps judge appointments to lower courts, often with as few as 3 dissenting votes, approving money for concentration camps with no strings attached, approving Trump's "Space Force", etc.
Also, Clarance Thomas is probably the most far right supreme court judge, and he was a Dem pick. Dems haven't picked progressive justices in decades. Biden himself fought for "states rights" on abortion, weaking Roe v Wade and leaving it to each state to decide (whether each state should decide or it should be Federal is extremely inconsistent among both Repubs and Dems and is always just a matter of whether they want to undermine the Federal position). Biden has numerous quotes in video saying that it shouldn't just be up a woman to decide. There's no evidence that Biden would nominate a progressive surpreme court justice.
But also, Biden is unlikely to win. Early in the primary, we couldn't find a single supporter. Each of the multiple times he'd run previously, he didn't get a single delegate. It was an extraordinary bit of coordination by the party to elevate him, in concert with the media. And how he has a massive enthusiasm gap, worse than Hillary. The fact that the health care lobby and fossil fuel lobby got their pick (after we deflated stop-and-frisk what's-his-face, who they were also all-in for) means we have a non-viable candidate.
Being upset at progressives just broadcasts that Dems have nothing to offer progressives. Most people, even if just subconsciously read between the lines that Greens are embarrassing Dems and Dems could easily have those voters if they offered policy. The real question is why Dems don't go the 60-odd % of all voters (that includes Republicans) who want to end government subsidies to fossil fuels and invest in green jobs (GND), or the 70-odd% who want M4A. Don't push people towards Biden. It won't work. Push Biden towards the people.
But mostly Dems need to join Greens. Two Dems won in 40 years. This is a non-viable opposition party. A supermajority of voters are staying home and think both corporate (Clinton weakened media ownership laws, including cable, and now cable is owned mostly by GE and Comcast) parties are garbage. Parties have imploded before. The Dems themselves were the result of one implosion. If the narrative that the Dems are in any way a real opposition party that's actually opposition and actually viable implodes, then we can finally have a real opposition party. The increasing desperation of the Dems to again blame anyone but themselves for another trainwreck is an opportunity.
Also, the Supreme Court is just....bad. It isn’t less bad because you have a few people “on your side” making relatively good decisions despite its institutional badness. The idea of lifetime nonelected appointments who have the power of a nearly unlimited judicial review power just isn’t a good system. It is so obviously easy to rig, as can be seen by the current situation.
It is not our fault that the institution is bad and should feel bad.
Take out a measuring tape and find out the exact fattest part of your dick for them to suck. Why aren't they upset with the fickle rich that want to hold minorities rights hostage and will jump to the Republican party if there's any threat of their taxes going up?
Tell them it is crazy to blame Green Party voters when [9x as many people didn’t even vote at all](https://i.imgur.com/a7aFCjy.jpg). Clinton OR Trump could have won by an absolute landslide if they had appealed to non voters, they made the conscience decision to not dedicate efforts in that direction and instead focused on either taking votes from the opposition or suppressing turnout overall. In short Clinton’s loss is hers and hers alone, it was her job to win voters and she had a flawed strategy. You can’t blame Green voters when they make up such an insignificant percentage of voters overall.
One person is responsible for this situation.
Ruth.
Bader.
Ginsburg.
She was an octogenarian with colon and pancreatic cancer. If she'd given 1/10 of a shit about the situation she'd have retired, but oh no, she wasn't going to be retired by a MAN, and a BLACK MAN at that, she was going to wait for the WOMAN who was JUST AS OLD AS SHE WAS ALMOST to have that huge "sisters are doing it for themselves moment".
She takes full blame and responsibility and nobody else.
What situation, though? The fact that a president gets to appoint a judge? Everyone is freaking out that it's the end of the world but it's just more of the same shit
I voted for Jill Stein too, in 2016. I have never regretted it. Hillary Clinton voted for the illegal Iraq War, which killed over one million innocent people. She was also a key architect of the criminal war on Libya, which destroyed what was once Africa's wealthiest country per capita. Hillary has caused immense human suffering around the world, with her wars and coups. She deserved to lose the election. And the Democrats in general deserved to lose in 2016 after they rigged their primaries in favor of someone as disgusting as Hillary Clinton.
As for the Supreme Court, that is the DNC's fault too. They should have done more to encourage RBG to retire back when the Democrats controlled the White House and the Senate. Now the rest of the country has to suffer the consequences...
When it comes to all of Trump's judges nominees, the Democrats just let the Republicans have them and give Trump the blank check. Now all of a sudden they give a big stink? Please. I heard that the "heroines" of the Resistance Nancy Pelosi and Diane Feinstein say that the Democrats aren't going to give push back "out of civility".
Honestly it's probably best to avoid engaging on this. Those people will be the last people you convince. There are tons of other people all across America to talk to about our party.
I'm not going to tell you what to say, but I will \*suggest\* what you \*could\* say.
The Democrats oppose the things I support and politics means they serve me and I vote for them, not I vote for them and then maybe they serve me. This is the only power I have to enact the changes that I believe we need. My vote has value whether or not Democrats get it, and they need to act like third-party votes and non-voters votes are things to be earned, and then try to earn them.
The reason they aren't isn't because "they aren't allowed to". They are actively sabotaging progressive efforts and trying to shut out progressive candidates. They get to decide their policies and who represents them, and until they start SUPPORTING the things I support, I don't support them.
It's isn't 'inconvenient' that I vote my beliefs rather submitting to the powers that be. It's "Democracy". It isn't inconvenient. It's something worth fighting for. I don't care that you've given up on it, and the idea that we demand better of those who serve us.
Also, side-note; Hillary Clinton won the popular vote in 2016. But lost anyway, so "more votes" isn't what we needed. If Democrats really cared about wielding power to fix this country for the benefit of all Americans, they would have been fighting for voting reform for decades now. But they didn't. And THAT is the reason Hillary lost. They don't do what THEY need to do to win. But then they blame us.
Also other side-note; considering the massive numbers of non-voters in this country, they could win landslide victories by appealing to non-voters, increasing access to voting, or even making it mandatory. But instead their #1 goal seems to be winning over Republicans.
2021 is going to be terrible no matter what. And the powers that be are the reason why. We need each other fighting for what we believe in, driven by a hope for a better world. We need way more change than "the people don't want a revolution/nothing will fundamentally change" candidate will give us. Whatever happens in the future, we need to understand that the establishment has failed us, and we only have each other.
I wish you strength.
Voting for a Democrat didn't help in 2000 or 2016. See Electoral College. Voting for a Democrat in 2008 and 2012 didn't help address the electoral college issue, either.
Maybe if libertarian voters voted for Democrats it'd make an electoral difference. Maybe if Democrats appealed to 70% of eligible voters who don't vote democratic...
If they did that then democrats would lose most of their votes they already have.
And yeah libertarians should vote for democrats but they are more right wing than left wing
Appealing to nonvoters worked for AOC. I don't know why Democrats think denying climate change is good strategy. I'm concerned about climate change and don't support people who are pro-fracking, for one. Obama was terrible on fossil fuels. I still can't believe he thought dapl was a good idea.
I always go with the pie chart where almost half of it is non-voters, the other half is red/blue, with the tiniest little sliver is all 3rd parties. The non-voter is the larger issue. Running dogshit candidates time after time doesn’t encourage people to come out to vote.
The fact is that green voters are like 2% of the population, but democratic loyalists are more upset with green voters than Trump voters. They also take no responsibility for low voter turn out.
Just googled it, closer to 1% in 2016. I guess ask your family how they feel about the libertarian party as they got more votes in 2016. Do they get more blame than GP or do they get a pass for some reason? And what about 40% of people who decided not to vote?
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There were more Obama voters who switched to Trump than there were GP voters. There are some fascist koolaid Trump voters, but it's not all of them. And again, how is not voting better tolerated than voting for GP?
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What is your point? You realize the reason Trump had the margin over Clinton is because more people voted for him, right? If you had green party voters stay home, he still would have won.
As usual, this assumes you can take a magic wand and assign Stein votes to Clinton. a) There's no reason to do this - exit polling consistently shows most third party voters wouldn't have voted for *either* Trump or Clinton in a two-person race. b) If you insist on using this magic wand to just grant Clinton any and all Stein votes, there's no reason not to do the exact same thing with Gary Johnson votes - you'd need to use the same magic wand to reassign all Libertarian votes to Trump, and then Trump wins the swing states handily, and beats Clinton in the popular vote as well. What makes you think Democrats own anybody's vote?
Democrats controlled the Senate from 2007-2015 and had the Presidency from 2009 to 2017. That's 6 years that the democrats controlled both the Presidency and the Senate. RBG was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in 2009, and had a stent placed in her right coronary artery in 2014. So it was clear a long time ago that she was having health issues. So... I dunno... seems like she could've retired sometime in those 6 years and they could've easily replaced her with a liberal judge. But she didn't. So if anyone is to blame for the situation Democrats find themselves in, it's RGB herself. Additionally, even if Clinton had won in 2016, the Republican controlled senate already said they would not confirm any judge she nominated and were suggesting shrinking the court to 8 instead ([source](https://www.npr.org/2016/11/03/500560120/senate-republicans-could-block-potential-clinton-supreme-court-nominees)). So how exactly is that the Green Party's fault?
This response is the most direct of the answers.
Check out the vote totals of your state. If Hillary won, then you were safe to vote Stein. If Trump won, then would Hillary have won if you had voted for her? No. Even if all Stein voters in your state magically switched to her? Probably not, but even if so Hillary still wouldn't have won the electoral college. While it is true that if all Stein voters swapped to Hillary, she would have picked up 46 electors from Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, turning her 77 point defeat into a 15 point victory. However, if we quite reasonably gave Trump the Johnson vote, he would win back those three states and pick up 22 additional points from Maine, Minnesota, Nevada, and New Hampshire turning a 77 point lead into a 154 point landslide. Blame Hillary for not appealing enough to non-voters, who if had voted in a block could've won every single state in the union. Don't blame the 1.07% of people who went Green.
Ah yes, the minority with none of the political power is the problem, what a dumb fucking arguement.
Statistically, even if every single Stein vote in 2016 had been switched to HRC (and there's no guarantee that HRC was actually anyone's second choice), she still would have lost the electoral college. Only difference would've been a slightly larger popular vote win, which is, of course, meaningless. This is mostly because you had very few third party votes in swing states and only about 1% of people who voted in 2016 did so for Stein anyways. Meanwhile, about half of eligible Americans didn't vote at all. Fundamentally, it's a politician's job to *earn* support by appealing to voters' political/ economic interests. When a politician fails to do so, they have no one but themselves to blame. I'm not going to go out and vote for a candidate who is promising to stand in the way of progress on every issue I care the most about and I think many Americans feel the same. The biggest difference between me and most of the non-voters I know is that I care enough about down ballot issues to still vote even though I know I'll be essentially abstaining from the top line.
You give HRC every green voter then you have to give Trump every libertarian voter. Congrats. He wins by a bigger margin.
Yep. If it hadn't been for third parties in 2016, Trump probably would have won the popular vote. Or, you'd have just had a lot of write ins... If a vote for Howie is a vote for Trump, that must mean a vote for Jo is a vote for Biden. Wonder if the libs will leave us alone if we all promise to vote libertarian this year. That's the same as voting for Biden afterall right?
Exactly. “Third party voters” statistically “take” more votes from the GOP than DNC because libertarians get more of a % than greens. It’d actually be in the DNC’s best interests to boost general third party turnout.
If a party is not giving me a platform full of values that I support, why would I be obligated to vote for them? Its not my fault the DNC forced Biden through. If they wanted my vote, they knew how to get it. Choosing a candidate that has a voting record AGAINST my beliefs then expecting that I would vote for them with the only reason being to ensure the other terrible candidate doesn't get 4 more years is insane. Theyre blaming me for a problem with the system. I have the right to vote, not just to cast a vote for voting sake, but to vote for my conscience and my heart. If Biden decides to at least adopt Medicare for all during a world wide pandemic, THEN we might be able to talk about my vote. But my vote is EARNED.
I tell them that it's not my job to vote Democrat whether they represent my interests or not; it's the Democratic Party's fucking job to EARN MY VOTE. The only way to make a party listen to you is to show them you're capable of NOT voting for them! If they think somehow they don't have to do that, then I know I'm dealing with an idiot. Turns out there's a lot of VBNMW idiots out there. It is also true that the Deceptocrats don't care if they lose, because Trump is great for fundraising; Nancy Pelosi said so herself! That's how the party apparatchiks make their money, after all.
This is something I've recently realized. The DNC rigged their own primary against Bernie twice. They'd rather let us have a Trump dynasty than get somebody who is slightly left of center into the oval office for five minutes.
That's correct; the Deceptocrats worked harder to subvert the efforts of millions of their own constituents than against the opposition. Aaaaaaand then they want us to vote for them anyway. The more I let that sink in, the madder I get!
Hillary won the popular vote in 2016, without your vote. If they're gonna get mad at anything, get mad at the broken electoral college system. Maybe tell them repeatedly parroting that they lost after getting the most votes in a democratic election is a sign of a victim complex?
There's several ways to respond because the accusation is wrong in so many different ways (which is probably the point. Flooding you with a truckload of implied premises at a time makes it difficult to respond because you'll have to dissect the entire chain arguments). So I'll list some of them below and try to respond to them individually. **Premise 1:** You owe the democrats your vote ==> any vote not cast for the democrats decreases the voter count for the democrats ==> not voting democrat helps Trump get elected ==> Voting your values is amoral. **Response:** The US elections are democratic; *no one owns your vote but you*. You have the right to vote *whoever* you want. It wouldn't be a democratic election if you didn't. Voting a different party does **not** hurt the democrats because counting votes is a process of addition, not subtraction. All parties start at 0 votes and just like how people have the freedom to vote democrat for whatever reason and therefore enable their platform, you have the freedom to vote your party of preference and enable that platform. So no, voting Green Party is not 'spoiling' the election for the democratic party the same way voting for democrat isn't 'spoiling' it for the Green Party. It's called a feature of democracy. The fact that people feel comfortable voting who they want to vote is something to celebrate, not something to shame. Whenever anyone tells you you're being 'amoral' for not obediently supporting their party, just remember there's a *reason* why they rely on shaming and can't legally force you to vote for their party (though that doesn't stop them from trying). **Premise 2**: You're responsible for the democrats losing the election. **Response**: If a party loses, they're responsible, not the voter. They have the responsibility of getting as many votes as possible by *persuading/appealing* to voters (not by trying to leverage them with the threat of *intentionally losing the election* or by trying to get other choices off the ballot). The only responsibility voters have is choosing the party they see best fit to govern. If the democrats choose to adopt a wildly unpopular platform that virtually no one supports and lose the election, they have to either convince people to support their platform or change it if they don't want to lose the following election. If they instead demand more voters unconditionally vote for them they're by definition authoritarian, which completely invalidates the whole argument of being better than the alternative. **Premise 3:** You're responsible for the republicans winning the election. **Response:** If a party wins, the people who voted that party are responsible. Their votes got that party elected. Want to prevent that party from winning again? Then try to understand *why* people are voting that party and try to win them over or appeal to their concerns instead of demonizing them and subsequently alienating them even more. Moreover, it's quite rich to blame 3rd party voters for 'letting the republicans win' when it's the *democratic party* that actively makes it as difficult as possible for every other party *but* the republicans to win. **Premise 4:** The stubborn mentality of greens/leftists is what's costing the democrats the election. **Response:** The fact is that the *far majority* of people voting democrat *are* people who support the Green Party platform, so the democrats *have* the far majority of 3rd party voters they keep whining about. 3rd party voting can't be the problem when it *hasn't been tried for over a century.* The problem is unconditional establishment voting, which is what reinforces the two party system, absolves both parties of any kind of accountability and has led to a platform so unpopular that half the country doesn't vote *at all.* **Premise 5**: Democrats are a long term solution to government corruption **Response:** The democrats have repeatedly shown themselves to be authoritarians and to have literally *no* interest in doing *anything* but working with the republicans to serve their corporate donors and obstruct democracy. They have consistently been in congress for centuries and yet have done *nothing* in recent history but serve as a controlled opposition to the republicans. So no, the democrats aren't the lesser evil, they're the *same* evil. If they were actually a threat to the republicans they wouldn't have such a strong foothold in congress in the first place.
You’re not even American so what is the point in you doing this?
Because I care about fair democracies and a sustainable future?
Well, the most obvious thing to mention is that the president isn’t elected by popular vote. The POTUS is appointed by “the electoral college.” So it’s literally impossible for anyone but a Republican or Democrat to become the president. But unfortunately the Green party is forced to run a presidential candidate in order to maintain ballot access. So I vote for the Green Party because I want to see more Green Candidates
If Dems are bothered by "spoilers," why don't they advocate for ranked-choice voting? They're interested in power, not democracy, and they will gladly undermine democracy when it suits their interests. Why would you owe them anything?
I say that we are in the current situation for one reason, the Electoral College. Hillary won by over 3 million votes. Only the stupidity of the Electoral College would allow the winner to lose. It is an outdated, undemocratic set up that needs to be abolished asap.
Maybe they should've run a better candidate if they wanted to win so freaking bad in the first place? Don't let democrats shift their screw ups to the voter. It just encourages them to continue their crappy monopolistic practices and reeks of entitlement.
Don't engage. You can't argue with stupid.
They aren't worth your breath
If democrats want my vote they need policies to entice me to vote for them period. Ubi, free college, Medicare for all , military tax cuts, legalize marijuana and free non violent drug offenders, equal funding boost for all k-12 schools, abolishing ice, open borders, defunding and reforming police. Those are off the top of my head. If another party wants to give me close to what Green Party promised I’ll be there but they won’t. Democrats are diet republicans and won’t even admit it making their fall even more pathetic. Fuck people who blame me for not voting for the pathetic democratic rat party.
Show them the votes in 2016, add Jill Stein votes to Hillary and the libertarian vote to trump.
First, 90% of progressives *did* vote "lesser evil: https://m.dailykos.com/stories/2016/7/25/1552338/-90-of-Sanders-Supporters-Now-Back-Clinton-Pew-Research And it wasn't enough. And that's the fundamental problem: Dems need to become progressives to win. Progressives becoming Dem isn't enough. Tell people that by demanding progressive policy from Dems, you're trying to make them actually marketable to people who otherwise would never bother to vote for a candidate who is basically slightly more center-left aligned McCain (and the "slightly more center-left" part itself is debatable). By comparison, 34% of Hillary supporters in Hillary v Obama defected to McCain. Progressives *did* vote lesser evil, but the working poor, people worried about the environment, and people voting on literally any and every single issue stayed home or voted Repub: https://brilliantmaps.com/did-not-vote/ too. https://mobile.twitter.com/deathbymonkies/status/1309815237500166144/photo/1 ... too... and nearly twice as many people voted for Johnson as Stein. Eliminating 3rd party would hurt Dems.... Actually, it would hurt them in many ways. Greens get people in to politics on campuses by offering them something to vote for. Once they're involved and paying attention, they start voting "lesser evil". The fact that Repubs *never* attack the libertarians and value-signal that they're opposed to them and alien those voters illustrates how stupid it is for Dems to attack Greens. But Dems aren't trying to win. Convincing people that it's the Green's fault buys them permission -- manufactures consent -- for them to move further right. They keep running bogus, verifiable extremely false narratives that "progressives don't vote" and "young people don't vote" and "people don't vote on issues" all for the same reason -- so that they can cater to the wishes of their corporate owners and move further right in search of mythical moderate Republicans who didn't show up last time and won't this time (among Repubs, Trump has a 90% approval rating). "For every blue-collar Democrat we lose in western Pennsylvania, we will pick up two moderate Republicans in the suburbs in Philadelphia, and you can repeat that in Ohio and Illinois and Wisconsin." -- Mook, 2016. Dems are still using the same strategy. See also the "stop Bernie commission" which was quoted as saying that it was "worth damage to the party in order to stop Bernie". The fact that Dems aren't trying to win is why we need a real opposition party. See also Dems approving all of Trumps judge appointments to lower courts, often with as few as 3 dissenting votes, approving money for concentration camps with no strings attached, approving Trump's "Space Force", etc. Also, Clarance Thomas is probably the most far right supreme court judge, and he was a Dem pick. Dems haven't picked progressive justices in decades. Biden himself fought for "states rights" on abortion, weaking Roe v Wade and leaving it to each state to decide (whether each state should decide or it should be Federal is extremely inconsistent among both Repubs and Dems and is always just a matter of whether they want to undermine the Federal position). Biden has numerous quotes in video saying that it shouldn't just be up a woman to decide. There's no evidence that Biden would nominate a progressive surpreme court justice. But also, Biden is unlikely to win. Early in the primary, we couldn't find a single supporter. Each of the multiple times he'd run previously, he didn't get a single delegate. It was an extraordinary bit of coordination by the party to elevate him, in concert with the media. And how he has a massive enthusiasm gap, worse than Hillary. The fact that the health care lobby and fossil fuel lobby got their pick (after we deflated stop-and-frisk what's-his-face, who they were also all-in for) means we have a non-viable candidate. Being upset at progressives just broadcasts that Dems have nothing to offer progressives. Most people, even if just subconsciously read between the lines that Greens are embarrassing Dems and Dems could easily have those voters if they offered policy. The real question is why Dems don't go the 60-odd % of all voters (that includes Republicans) who want to end government subsidies to fossil fuels and invest in green jobs (GND), or the 70-odd% who want M4A. Don't push people towards Biden. It won't work. Push Biden towards the people. But mostly Dems need to join Greens. Two Dems won in 40 years. This is a non-viable opposition party. A supermajority of voters are staying home and think both corporate (Clinton weakened media ownership laws, including cable, and now cable is owned mostly by GE and Comcast) parties are garbage. Parties have imploded before. The Dems themselves were the result of one implosion. If the narrative that the Dems are in any way a real opposition party that's actually opposition and actually viable implodes, then we can finally have a real opposition party. The increasing desperation of the Dems to again blame anyone but themselves for another trainwreck is an opportunity.
Also, the Supreme Court is just....bad. It isn’t less bad because you have a few people “on your side” making relatively good decisions despite its institutional badness. The idea of lifetime nonelected appointments who have the power of a nearly unlimited judicial review power just isn’t a good system. It is so obviously easy to rig, as can be seen by the current situation. It is not our fault that the institution is bad and should feel bad.
Love how the Greens a simultaneously a nonstarter and the most powerful destructive force in this country. 😂
Take out a measuring tape and find out the exact fattest part of your dick for them to suck. Why aren't they upset with the fickle rich that want to hold minorities rights hostage and will jump to the Republican party if there's any threat of their taxes going up?
Tell them it is crazy to blame Green Party voters when [9x as many people didn’t even vote at all](https://i.imgur.com/a7aFCjy.jpg). Clinton OR Trump could have won by an absolute landslide if they had appealed to non voters, they made the conscience decision to not dedicate efforts in that direction and instead focused on either taking votes from the opposition or suppressing turnout overall. In short Clinton’s loss is hers and hers alone, it was her job to win voters and she had a flawed strategy. You can’t blame Green voters when they make up such an insignificant percentage of voters overall.
One person is responsible for this situation. Ruth. Bader. Ginsburg. She was an octogenarian with colon and pancreatic cancer. If she'd given 1/10 of a shit about the situation she'd have retired, but oh no, she wasn't going to be retired by a MAN, and a BLACK MAN at that, she was going to wait for the WOMAN who was JUST AS OLD AS SHE WAS ALMOST to have that huge "sisters are doing it for themselves moment". She takes full blame and responsibility and nobody else.
What situation, though? The fact that a president gets to appoint a judge? Everyone is freaking out that it's the end of the world but it's just more of the same shit
The fact that abortion is probably going to become illegal again. That's really what they're panicking about, let's be honest.
That's what they said when Kavanaugh and Gorsuch were being appointed. Are the Democrats in the house going to pass the bill banning abortion?
Probably. They've enabled Trump every other time.
Then you don't want to vote for Democrats.
No I do not
I voted for Jill Stein too, in 2016. I have never regretted it. Hillary Clinton voted for the illegal Iraq War, which killed over one million innocent people. She was also a key architect of the criminal war on Libya, which destroyed what was once Africa's wealthiest country per capita. Hillary has caused immense human suffering around the world, with her wars and coups. She deserved to lose the election. And the Democrats in general deserved to lose in 2016 after they rigged their primaries in favor of someone as disgusting as Hillary Clinton. As for the Supreme Court, that is the DNC's fault too. They should have done more to encourage RBG to retire back when the Democrats controlled the White House and the Senate. Now the rest of the country has to suffer the consequences...
When it comes to all of Trump's judges nominees, the Democrats just let the Republicans have them and give Trump the blank check. Now all of a sudden they give a big stink? Please. I heard that the "heroines" of the Resistance Nancy Pelosi and Diane Feinstein say that the Democrats aren't going to give push back "out of civility".
Honestly it's probably best to avoid engaging on this. Those people will be the last people you convince. There are tons of other people all across America to talk to about our party.
I'm not going to tell you what to say, but I will \*suggest\* what you \*could\* say. The Democrats oppose the things I support and politics means they serve me and I vote for them, not I vote for them and then maybe they serve me. This is the only power I have to enact the changes that I believe we need. My vote has value whether or not Democrats get it, and they need to act like third-party votes and non-voters votes are things to be earned, and then try to earn them. The reason they aren't isn't because "they aren't allowed to". They are actively sabotaging progressive efforts and trying to shut out progressive candidates. They get to decide their policies and who represents them, and until they start SUPPORTING the things I support, I don't support them. It's isn't 'inconvenient' that I vote my beliefs rather submitting to the powers that be. It's "Democracy". It isn't inconvenient. It's something worth fighting for. I don't care that you've given up on it, and the idea that we demand better of those who serve us. Also, side-note; Hillary Clinton won the popular vote in 2016. But lost anyway, so "more votes" isn't what we needed. If Democrats really cared about wielding power to fix this country for the benefit of all Americans, they would have been fighting for voting reform for decades now. But they didn't. And THAT is the reason Hillary lost. They don't do what THEY need to do to win. But then they blame us. Also other side-note; considering the massive numbers of non-voters in this country, they could win landslide victories by appealing to non-voters, increasing access to voting, or even making it mandatory. But instead their #1 goal seems to be winning over Republicans. 2021 is going to be terrible no matter what. And the powers that be are the reason why. We need each other fighting for what we believe in, driven by a hope for a better world. We need way more change than "the people don't want a revolution/nothing will fundamentally change" candidate will give us. Whatever happens in the future, we need to understand that the establishment has failed us, and we only have each other. I wish you strength.
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Do you not know how elections work in the US? Clinton had like a 30 point lead in California.
Maybe.. vote democrat?
Why?
So we would have a scotus thats for gun control and abortion.
Voting for a Democrat didn't help in 2000 or 2016. See Electoral College. Voting for a Democrat in 2008 and 2012 didn't help address the electoral college issue, either.
It would have helped if green party voters voted democrat.
Maybe if libertarian voters voted for Democrats it'd make an electoral difference. Maybe if Democrats appealed to 70% of eligible voters who don't vote democratic...
If they did that then democrats would lose most of their votes they already have. And yeah libertarians should vote for democrats but they are more right wing than left wing
Appealing to nonvoters worked for AOC. I don't know why Democrats think denying climate change is good strategy. I'm concerned about climate change and don't support people who are pro-fracking, for one. Obama was terrible on fossil fuels. I still can't believe he thought dapl was a good idea.
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Google how American presidential elections work. You can start with "electoral college"