>A leftist won abminor election in a 90% blue state
>Thinks the rest of the country will follow
Trump and MAGA republicans won because dem voters believed the above to be true. That’s why we got two Trump terms, three MAGA SCOTUS picks, and a Congress that flipped twice.
Leftist are like that pretentious rich kid that thinks he’s spiritual because he lived in Bali for three months.
these two statements are not contradictory.
Otherwise they would have to admit that the reason they lose is because they’re unwilling to do what politicians in Democracy are supposed to do to get votes: offer voters the policies that they want.
Same reason Democrat Party apparatchiks deploy an army of useful idiots to go around blaming voters for Democrat Party losses instead of blaming Democrat Party Candidates for not making an effort to appeal to voters. You can always spot the arse-licking, grovelling, worm-like useful idiots because they blame failures on those with little or no decision power instead of blaming the ones with the most power.
The D and R positions are a reflection of the average opinion of people who bother to vote.
I don’t live in the US but If only I and the people I hang out with voted the local political landscape would be the the complete opposite of what the actual election results are. I suspect you have some kind of similar situation going on.
All it takes is to check the US vote allocation system to see that’s not at all a system which Mathematically yields an average.
In fact any voting system where there is “tactical” or “useful” vote means that people are having to vote to those who do not represent them hence the final result will be distorted by that - this is something you see a bit of in most of Europe but is extreme in the US (because of its First Past The Post system and Gerrymandering).
That “average” theory would only work in an opinion space where there was only 1 dimension were everybody’s opinion fit with AND one party was at one end and the other at the other. That’s not actually even close to true - there are so many little things that people have different opinions on (tiny sample: policing, housing policies, inflation, education, public spaces) and which within them contain yet more elements were people have different opinions (says, some want children playgrounds in public spaces, others car parks, others green areas and so on) that in practice every single individual out there has their own unique combination of likes and dislikes in terms of policies they want enacted, how far and in which ways (even when they’re members of a political party they always disagree with some of their party’s policies)
In other words, political views is an N-dimensional space of opinions with N being an extremelly high number and you can’t get an average of an N-dimensional space with with a result with fewer dimensions.
The fewer possible representatives for each person’s unique’s opinion of policies, the biggest the error.
America has de facto 2 main strains of policies for 340 million people each with their own individual combination of favored policies. There is some variance of favored politicies between parliamentary representatives, but they’re mainly constrained with 2 big independent “blobs” in that N-dimensional space so they’re far from spreading all over the opinions space.
The closest you can Mathematically get to what you describe is the Dutch 2nd chamber election which is Proportional vote were there could theoretically be 150 totally independent representatives for 18 million people which there aren’t as there are less that 150 parties in the 2nd chamber so the opinions represented there are also aggregated into “blobs”, just much smaller and more dispersed than in the US.
The D and R positions are a reflection of the average opinion of people who bother to vote.
Hard disagree. I know polling is flawed and doesn’t focus on actual voters but it very much contradicts you. Exit polling also doesn’t support you, especially considering issues campaigned on vs. issue driving votes.
The D and R positions are just reflections of different groups of people with money and power.
The most vocal people you can imagine with the most radiant ideas have troubles finding stamps for voting. “Why would I vote, it’s all rigged man” is the prevailing attitude. Motherfucker, you’re doing the rigging by not showing up.
Nobody would vote for leftists, they’re not electable.
And that’s why you go and fucking vote, in every fucking election starting from school boards.
Isn’t that how suddenly critical race theory and trans people bathrooms become a hot topic in schools and then turned into a national culture war topic for the right. The Teaparty and Maga put people on the ballot for school board positions and the people that actually show up to the voting booths voted them in.
Excellent point! MAGA didn’t just happen, it was carefully cultivated group of angry people. And angry people engage, even the algorithms know that. If only the people who claim your vote doesn’t count got angry enough to do something about it.
The smaller elections are, the more your vote matters. But there is no elections where it doesn’t. Yes, even in your “deep [color]” state.
Right-leaning people vote libertarian etc. more than left people vote green etc. So no.
Bye bye America
Their corporate overlords won’t let Democrats select anyone who doesn’t play the bribery game
Lemmy leftists, after having the spoiler effect patiently explained to them, and how even a 2% vote for a 3rd party candidate (nowhere near enough to win) can tip the vote against the second-choice party, using 100% of their brain:
The 2% claim is wild. Among the counted are “Libertarians” and “None of these candidates” voters. Assuming third party and non-voters would vote Democrat is silly.
I know about the spoiler effect. I voted Biden in 2020. He ended a railroad strike by mandate. The best Democrats could offer in 2024 was “at least we aren’t Trump”.
Vote, maybe for a Democrat even. Then workers need to stop doing their jobs generally to see consolations under representative democracy. Take care of your fellow workers.
That people subscribe to this batshit stupidity is what got us here. We could have elected someone that maybe sucked, but at least could have been reasoned with, while we shored up and pushed for real change in 2028 as a stronger collective….
But the divisionist non-voters and throwaway votes got us trump.
And now here they all are, salivating while climbing over one another to pat themselves on the back for a job well done-
Meanwhile the LGBTQ+ is suffering and we’re all losing rights. America is currently seeing its absolute dumbest version of itself.
absolutely. absolutely what happened. the dems didn’t throw any sort of election in any way. the party cannot fail, only be failed.
You just described Biden in 2020. Among his trash heap of accomplishments are ending a rail strike by mandate. I wish he had moved left.
Democrats do not move left without actions like those in France or Serbia. Said actions are consolations to control the fires.
Vote. It is a simple activity. Don’t expect leftist change without discomfort and a fight.
ending a rail strike by mandate
He ended a rail strike because railworkers union agreed on negotiations.
do you need some pumpkin spice for that boot? or is it fine plain? you’re obviously the expert.
Your country deserves exactly what it’s getting
We can all acknowledge that the United States, as a nation, is a giant, steaming turd, while also acknowledging that the people who are experiencing the worst consequences of living under the Trump regime are also the most historically oppressed people.
I would also hazard a guess that your country also has a shitty history, as well as a shitty present.
The shitty history and shitty present of my country are almost completely the fault of the fucking yanks. I enjoy watching them suffer
Cool! Hey, while you’re up there on that pedestal getting baked off the smell of your own farts. Maybe take a moment and learn what nuance means and how it applies to pretty much all things in life.
Because you see, nuance would have you understand that there’s several million people that didn’t ask for this shit, and several million more that aren’t even of voting age that don’t deserve this shit.
And your edgy little teenage-angst ridden manufactured outage bullshit doesn’t expres what I believe you intended but instead, what it expressed is your complete and total inability to separate the guilty from the innocent.
I hope that whatever shallow and compassionless education system your county has gets the funding they so despeyneed to avoid producing people like you in the future.
I’m sure the innocents that live there deserve better.
You sound angry
I don’t care, I am enjoying watching your country die. You and your people have fucked my country over for a century, you are getting exactly what you deserve. Now you get to experience a little bit of what the rest of us experience.
Oh sweetie, dumbest version? This is its PEAK self. It’s only down from here.
Did you read/watch handmainds tale? Expect that coup. Soon. Get out.
Kinda takes some mental gymnastics to even pretend these two ideas are at odds. It takes a small percentage to win or lose an election… If you know you’re already basically guaranteed to get a large percentage of the vote. Something zero third parties have ever been in a position to claim.
Or, more likely, op is pretending not to understand this extremely simple reality.
Indeed. In pirate circles there is a saying about not paying for the product even if piracy was not an option. Thereby, I would not vote for you even if there were truly only two options.
Assuming third party and non-voters vote Democrat is silly. To become a silly goose, assume all votes carry the same weight in the USA. Even sillier geese scapegoat others for their losses instead of reflecting on why they lost.
No one is telling people what they would’ve done. It’s what they should’ve done. Unless the goal is to help Republicans, in which case they’re getting the exact desired outcome. Which, from the way people talk about this extremely simple reality like they just cannot get it, seems the most likely truth of the matter.
Always on the side of nuanced ideas and rational thinking. I’m getting to the point that I can tell it’s you without having looked the the name.
Love it!!
What? The risk of an unelectable third party is that it bleeds enough votes to cause the majority party to lose. It’s kind of the main drawback of the two party system.
yeah we have a nasty case of commie maths going on in this post
This is just more of the braindead hot take from the political communities on Lemmy that they just need to get people voting to the left of Dems but yeah under the current system that just hands Republicans elections and makes everything worse. Idiots still lap it up though
sucks it would be literally impossible for a dem to move left
Not only that. But those unelectable people are unelectable for a reason. These kids don’t listen to the experts that say what these clowns are promising is fucking impossible.
Every election. It’s the same thing. Some starry-eyed third party clown with no name comes along and says shit that makes the kids squeeeeee! And then they vanish when the election is over, knowing the kids will blame those that actually could have won.
This level of mentally handicapped logic is virtually impossible to comprehend, let alone correct.
We’re so fucked.
I literally had to explain the spoiler effect to a third party candidate who texted me.
It was embarrassing to keep talking to them…
You’re far more patient than I. They don’t deserve the respect they keep demanding. That time is over. We asked nicely in 2024. I was here. I was one of them.
They want to run their purity test that cannot be passed. And then play victim to the mean liberals. I’m done playing nice. Good on you for trying through.
And if enough voters go for a leftist third party making the Democratic candidate lose then that kind of contradicts the claim that nobody votes for a leftist candidate.
Under ranked choice voting this would be safe, under FPTP it’s suicide
There are no serious third parties who are on the left. Thats why DSA runs as Democrats. The two party system is the problem.
Sure, but they’re still not electable.
The implication of the meme is that they wouldn’t be unelectable as the Democratic nominee.
How do you figure? The implication is pretty clear, that the volume of third party voters affecting which major party wins means that the volume is sufficient to win the election. It’s a ridiculous implication that suggests either severe ignorance or willful misinformation, but the implication is clear.
such a beautiful perfect creature. never put anything in your head, you would be ruined.
If liberals would only Vote Blue No Matter Who, the way they hypocritically demand of leftists, then a leftist Democratic candidate would have as good a chance as a liberal Democratic candidate.
Or even a better chance, if it turns out that the Democratic base is actually more leftist than liberal, which seems increasingly likely given how much more excited people are about candidates like Mamdani and Talerico than they have been about “status quo” libs…
And I’d love to see more leftists winning Democratic primaries. But that’s a completely different argument than the meme seems to be making.
If nobody votes for a leftist candidate then a leftist 3rd party candidate shouldn’t tip an election. The meme is suggesting that if the leftist candidate ran in the Democratic primary and won the nomination then the regular Democratic voters and the leftist voters who would have voted third party will all vote together for the leftist Democratic candidate and win.
Gotta love how hard people pretend to believe things. No, the only numbers that exist aren’t 0 and infinity. And I don’t believe you needed to be told that, but you did need to have your bullshit called out in a way that sufficiently indicates what you’re expecting people to believe.
Where do you see the meme suggesting that? It seems like you’re projecting an entire narrative which is not actually reflected in the content. It’s a convoluted interpretation. The “nobody” is a hyperbolic straw man, obviously Democrats know that some people will vote for leftists. It’s just that that number, while large enough to tip a close race, is nowhere near large enough to win a race alone.
Hits the button to support Republicans
Vote blue no matter who, liberals!
The reason you’re lonely is because you’re revolting.
