2020 was… truly unique. It was so hard to stay away from doom scrolling, and I (and many others) were pretty disillusioned by the sad fact that so much of our country legitimately supported the Orange Man. I didn’t get a wink of sleep the night of the election because I genuinely considered it to be a make or break decision for America.
My point is that looking back on it, in the end the only real difference I made was at the ballet box. This year I’m going for the Head-in-the-Sand approach. I’m done with the political memes. Done with the Twitter screenshots. It just riles me up and this year I’m gonna do my best to fight that.
Unless he dies, I’m voting Biden. I don’t like him, but, best option.
Truly hoping Cheeto chimp gets thrown in jail and disqualified.
I’ve tried to avoid news well before anyway.
It can be easy to feel like a drop of water in a large ocean when it comes to national elections. But you should also vote in your county and state elections; you can probably make more of a difference there.
I’m not saying “don’t vote in the national election”, but just know that there are other elections to vote in, and thry are just as important as the nationals.
I’m voting for the most progressive candidate possible in the primary, and then whoever’s not the Republican in the general, and I fully intend to do that for the rest of my life.
The Republican Party has some plans they’re putting together, and between that and the rhetoric that most major Republican politicians and candidates spout these days (very specifically including Trump), it’s abundantly clear they’ve more or less completely given up on democracy, and are planning on dismantling a significant proportion of the core institutions of our country and government, which will effectively usher in the American Empire (as in: a possibly theocratic, but definitely authoritarian and likely outright fascist dictatorship). To be clear: that would be a Very Bad Thing. You think Russia is troublesome now? Wait until Trump or someone similar starts treating them like an ally, emulating as much of Putin’s power structure as possible just because they think it’s cool and would make them look powerful, and potentially teaming up to do shitty things to the rest of the world because we have something like 95% of the nuclear weapons ever produced, and while Russian ones are in a questionable state, ours definitely work.
If Republicans win this next election - and especially if they are able to secure the presidency and both houses of Congress - I genuinely don’t think things will recover without significant domestic political violence, which may ultimately result in a civil war. I’m doing my best to prepare for some “GTFO” contingencies that could be executed in the next few years, but it’s not an easy thing to do, and there’s still a huge number of unknowns in a ton of dimensions.
If you think I’m being hyperbolic, you’re not paying attention.
Oh hey look, it’s the only rational voting strategy in a FPTP elective structure! Anyone who thinks different is just more evidence we need Civics back in our schools.
more evidence we need Civics back in our schools
Maybe we need more math as well - have you heard of the Ultimatum Game? Sometimes the rational strategy is to reject unfair split offers, even if that makes it a guarantee that you both get nothing.
I’ve taught game theory. Voting isn’t the Ultimatum game, because the most a third party is going to do is shave off a few percentage points, resulting in the main party losing, resulting in the main party generally becoming more conservative. Look who ran after Reagan - the entire Democratic Party shifted right with the third way. Look who we ran after Trump.
In voting the way it’s currently configured, there are two elements from game theory that apply. The first is minimax strategy - minimize the maximum damage your enemy can do. Above all that means keeping republicans out of office if you care about minimizing harm to women, minorities and immigrants, the poor, and the LGBT community.
The second concept that applies is the BATNA - the best alternative to a negotiated agreement. If the negotiated agreement fails (we get a left democrat on the ballot) our next best alternative is to get a Democrat elected.
We came within a hair’s breadth of not having another election, and at the very least we will be looking at a roll back of LGBT rights, a nationwide abortion ban, and a massive crackdown that will make sure they don’t lose any more elections.
the most a third party is going to do is shave off a few percentage points, resulting in the main party losing
If the third party can force the main party to lose, then it holds ultimatum power and game theory rules apply. The main party irrationally keeps rejecting the ultimatum and as a result keeps losing. To execute the threat of the ultimatum even after the unfair split has already been offered is the paradox of game theory. You have to appear credible enough to carry out such a threat, but the only reliable way to appear credible is to actually follow through on such threats every time.
The Democratic party keeps losing and shifting right because it acts irrationally and fails to execute optimal game theory strategy. It could have offered the left a fair split and we could have all had guaranteed single-payer medical care, food, and housing, but instead none of us will have women’s rights, and the immigrants and gays among us will be herded into cages.
That is literally not how it works. That’s how people think it should work, but when you see that it doesn’t, you have to turn back and review your premises and your model. I know the way you think it should work and how you want it to work, but when it doesn’t work you need to revise.
The problem is this - the feedback loop is insufficient and the correlation is unclear. If you are directly negotiating with someone, then you can play Ultimatum. If you are one of a hundred million people casting a vote for one person or another, you cannot. Perot cost Bush I the election, and Nader cost Kerry the election. Neither party decided that they needed to move in the direction of the spoiler candidate. They’re especially not going to do so for 3p candidates who pull in the low single digits, even if they lose by low single digits, because they’ll think they can get more by moving towards the center.
You can vote however you want, but don’t base it on a theoretical foundation that has less than zero application to the scenario you’re modeling. It really, honestly is a minimax choice, and if you are truly an ally for those of us in marginalized communities, you have to recognize it.
I’m not being a right winger here - I’m a member of the DSA and this is in line with what they (and people like Chomsky) advise. But I’m not talking about even that angle. I’m just talking minimax and BATNA. If negotiations fail (ie we didn’t get Bernie), the best alternative is Hillary. At least Roe wouldn’t have been overturned and we wouldn’t have states suing to make ten year olds give birth to their rapist’s babies.
So I am proposing that the Democratic party is acting irrationally and suboptimally, but you claim that the Democrats are acting most optimally, and it is the fringe left that is acting irrationally instead by refusing to accept a unfair split against all game theory guidance, causing all of us to eat shit (despite them making up only low single digits). Yet if the Democrats are so rational, how come they keep losing? Shouldn’t they have found an optimal strategy to get around the irrational ultimatum of the left? Yet here we are.
I do not mean this to come off as blunt as it sounds, but I’m trying to be both clear and concise.
What you’re talking about is not how game theory works. What you’re doing is taking the most basic, highly abstracted representation of a generic idea and expecting it to correlate with reality. It’s the same thing people do when they ascribe some kind of wish fulfillment to the free market or to evolutionary dynamics. It’s not even a platonic ideal - it’s drawing a supply/demand curve and thinking you understand how prices work in a market economy. Here’s the main issues you’re running into when you try to play Ultimatum with something the size of the Democratic Party:
- Noise. There is a permanent base of 3-5% of the electorate that’s going to vote Green, or whatever. The protest voters almost never rise above that noise floor. Focus on a single (potentially complex) issue would help. Green rallies (and others) often have everything from antivax to prison reform to the environment to voting rights to BDS and BLM. All of those things (except the antivax) might be important, but there needs to be a central focus. IMO it’s voting rights - I’d love DSA to drop everything to just start suing states and protesting for voting rights, because everything else is lost without that. We can even both/and, as long as there’s a vision and a focus on a main first objective. Right now we’re coming off like a bunch of verses from We Didn’t Start the Fire. Ultimatum with multiplayer and a noise function is a completely different game.
- Feedback loop. The consequences for actions needs to be tightened up, and they need a wide base. There needs to be visible and constant representation out in front of both cameras and politicians. This can be people like the Squad or figures like Robert Reich, but there needs to be a uniform voice that doesn’t wait for the election cycle. Groups like Moms for Liberty have this kind of thing on lock. They have a brand and spokespersons and will host and endorse, or else attack on Fox News within hours of a political decision. They’re shit in every way, but they can work the machine. Ultimatum with a delayed feedback loop is a completely different game because the failure of the deal is less attributable.
- Solidarity and messaging. The majority of Americans want universal health care. The majority of Americans want green energy. The majority of Americans want a cease fire in Gaza. By spreading opinions across multiple realizations of this top level policy objectives, we dilute the message. Ultimatum requires identifiable players with identifiable agendas.
We as voters aren’t playing Ultimatum. Instead, we are playing minimax as an emergent strategy to defend the rights of marginalized populations.
Not having another sham election sounds like a great outcome to me.
Sounds great, but then the genie grants it and you don’t get any more elections, sham or otherwise. I’ll take the illusion of democracy over blatant mask-off fascism, personally.
If you live in the “illusion of democracy” then the elections don’t matter in the first place, so we may as well forego the mask so taht even blind people like you can see it. And polite fascism is actually worse because then liberals like you will support it and chastise others for pointing out the emperor has no clothes.
For example, do you know who started using drones to bomb civilians? Do you know who first started putting kids in cages? Because liberals like you think he was the greatest president to ever president, and you gleefully supported him since he was polite with his fascism.
Lotta unsubstantiated assumptions about me there. Maybe reassess your own biases before offering analysis.
Is there a neutral review of project 2025 that you can point to? That site is ass and either points to a book you can buy or a thousand links to PDFs.
Please define “neutral review” in this context.
The whole thing is unrepentantly and deeply biased, and it’s intentional.
I don’t know if this matches your definition of “neutral”, but it must be said that “neutral” is not synonymous with “unbiased”.
Yes I meant unbiased, but I was unsure if even using that word would be taken the wrong way. I don’t want to be taken as a centrist or anything like that, because I’m not even close.
I just want a flat clinical review of what it says versus what it actually means without clickbait sensationalism. It is plainly bad, that much is obvious. But what are the real-life, bureaucratic implications of its potential execution?
Thanks for the link, I’ll definitely check it out.
The Constitution needs to be rewritten anyway and we are overdue, preserving the status quo is enabling American fascism.
Voting straight Democrat. The republican party is the biggest threat to the US right now.
While I agree in my dislike for the current Republican Party, the attitude of blindly voting for your team because the other is evil is exactly what my (late) fox-addicted grandfather used to uphold. I loved the man, but I think we ought to do better and do the hard work of researching every candidate and choosing the best, be it democrat, republican, or independent.
Gave you and upvote to get you back off zero and agree with your general sentiment.
But - the elections since Trump took the ROC convention have all been different - we must get rid of all the R’s we can no matter what at the local, state and national level as soon as possible now that the have proven to be an existential threat to democracy itself.
American Democracy is fucked. It needs to go away.
Well I won’t be voting for the fascist party…
Ah, a third party supporter I see
Fuck off.
We don’t like that we are only allowed to have two choices.
The problem is that a moderately small number of people and corporations who combined have more money than god have decided it’s a great idea to execute regulatory capture of the entire US government.
I just hope guillotine season starts before the world catches on fire.
We don’t like that we are only allowed to have two choices.
You chose it and chastised someone for telling you to stop choosing it lmao
Do you genuinely think that the population of the United States likes only having two neoliberal political parties that have been able to get laws enacted that make it effectively impossible for any 3rd political party to exist in an effective fashion?
Pull your head out of your ass.
I think they keep voting for it, so if they don’t like it they must be pretty fucking stupid.
able to get laws enacted
What laws have they passed that force you to vote A or B?
Tell me you don’t know how FPtP voting systems work by not telling me you don’t know how FPtP voting works. Please read up on it and the “spoiler effect.”
Any vote for a third party is a vote against your preferred candidate. It happens with any first-past-the-post voting and two parties is the eventual end result. Eventually multiple parties get eliminated by voters who don’t want their vote to go to waste.
It happens with any first-past-the-post voting and two parties is the eventual end result.
39 parties are represented in my country’s Parliament. The UK has 10, Canada and Russia 5 each. Electoral systems like FPTP that produce a single winner tend to favour a two-party system (Duverger’s law), but it is not inevitable.
it’s FFtP that does that. It’s your attitude that does that. You’d rather throw your hands up and whine about the situation than make even a tiny effort to change it.
Vote DNC and hate it.
Oh, who told you the 2024 campaign slogan?
I like the Green Party’s eco-socialism, but their anti-vaccine lunacy and inability to do anything electorally beyond run a presidential candidate every four years doesn’t give me the warm fuzzies.
I like Cornel West, and I appreciate his long-standing commitment to left-wing and anti-racist values.
That said, I live in the real world, where Donald Trump is running as an open fascist promising to make America a dictatorship if elected, and Joe Biden is the only candidate running with a realistic chance of beating him.
So I’ll be voting for every Democrat I possibly can, while wishing they were better than they are, as always.
I see a lot of people here frustrated with our two party system. I too am frustrated. Donate to FairVote to get ranked choice on the ballot in more states. Ranked choice voting allows voters to express actual preferences between more than two parties and it is a win no matter who you normally vote for. Many states have a ballot measure system that can be used to pass legislation without requiring the agreement of the state legislature. Several US states have implemented ranked choice voting already. http://fairvote.org
Preferential voting is a far superior system.
For those unfamiliar, here’s an example:
If you like a minor party, say, the Green party, hate another minor party, say, Libertarian, more than you hate the Republicans and would settle for Democrats if you had to, then your vote would look like:
- Green
- Democrat
- Republican
- Libertarian
And if your (1) Green candidate didn’t have enough votes to win outright, and no-one else did either, then your vote would go to the (2) democrat, who has all the (1) democrat and (2) democrat votes added together. If the democrat didn’t have enough votes to win, then it would go to the Republican.
This is simplified, but should be enough to give the idea of how your vote always matters, and allows a better variety of ideas to flourish.
ALSO: post-election, say the democrats won, but only did because they got a lot of second round preferential votes from the Greens voters, that would help convince them that if they want to stay in power, they need to adopt more Green policies.
If parties get elected with no help and just because the other option is orange meltdown, it does little to encourage improvement. All they have to be is better than the other side (who lies all the time anyway, making “better” appear more subjective than objective).
How to help fix voting in the USA:
- Preferential voting
- Nonpartisan government body to create voting districts (remove Gerrymandering completely)
- Fix the money: Caps on political donations. Full transparencies on all political donations and spending. Corporations aren’t people.
- Standardised ballots
- Disband the electoral college
- Change the size of the house/senate
Even some of the best countries’ voting methods are being constantly tweaked and improved. Nothing is perfect, but it’s an embarrassment how far behind the USA is.
Right now, the choices are between boring corporatists and 100% concentrated evil. It’s not that hard a choice.
Third Reich 100% glitchless speedrun (NO WARPS) vs a plate of room-temperature ketchup.
Stuck between a rock and a hard place. It sucks.
I’m tired of the 2 party system. I don’t think I really have a party or political ideology that aligns with Democrats or Republicans and third party candidates are all over the place. I want to start voting on issues and not just politicians.
I don’t care what my politician’s feelings are. They represent a constituency and the only things they should be speaking about and for are exactly what they’re being asked for. Instead we have this political machine that takes every issues and gives it a red spin and a blue spin and then it’s force fed to the people.
Congress should not be creating our ideologies they should create the laws that structure the things the citizens want.
The Supreme Courr overturned Roe v Wade, put it on the ballet and let the people decide.
Gun control, put it on the ballet
Universal health care, put it on the ballet
Abandoning fossil fuels, put it on the ballet
Stop forcing your political and personal ideologies on us and start listing to the people. If we vote “Yes” on universal health care, the politicians must then go and figure out how to make it happen.
Let it truly be a government of the people, by the people, for the people.
Preach!! That’s how a democracy should operate!
In 2016, I was an Independent. Straight down the middle. Would consider reasonable Democrats, Republicans, and 3rd party candidates.
In 2020, I was an Independent leaning Democratic. Would not consider Trump. Biden was locked in. Would hesitantly consider reasonable Republicans or Independents on a split ticket.
In 2024, I’m a Democrat. Will only consider Democrats up and down the ballot. No 3rd parties.
I dont think republicans have been reasonable on the whole at any point in my lifetime. Even Mccain was questionable and he was the best the republicans had.
Imo, there used to be a few reasonable individual Republican candidates here and there. But now they litmus test into these insane issues and they don’t adapt when things change in society. They just dig in their heels and start mud-slinging. I’m not even bothering with them anymore.
Vote against Republicans.
Well, I’ve had to remove multiple people that used to just be right leaning for outright fascist statements and ideas in the last few months as they’ve deteriorated into hate speech and ethnic cleansing…so while I grew up conservative…yeah, I can’t support that shit.
Democrats are a mild improvement at best but at least they aren’t constantly being approved of by the KKK and being touted by mass shooters.
I’d like a proper left-leaning candidate, but with America’s history. They’ll end up assassinated.
but at least they aren’t constantly being approved of by the KKK and being touted by mass shooters.
Just the IDF and Likud, which shares nothing in ideology or methodology with them.
Yeah… heavy sarcasm I’m loving the two terrorist groups slugging at each other right now. So good.
Probably vote blue all the way down the line but I’m going to be shitting on the democratic party publicly and loudly for all the fucked and/or cowardly shit they do because not as bad != not bad.
Very fair and measured approach. I wish more Americans would adopt this strategy.
I emigrated. I’ll vote by mail and hope for the best, but the two party system America has will inevitably produce horrible results.
Choosing between only two options is not freedom by any means.
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It’s why we have primaries. People’s inability to understand the importance of primaries simultaneously means they don’t vote in them and hate the results. (On average)
The primaries are just a smoke screen. You want to get rid of all the shitty parts of the US voting system? Get rid of the Electoral College. Get rid of the First-Past-the-Post voting system we have been shackled to and all the issues disappear.
CGP Gray did a great series of videos in YouTube like a decade ago about our voting system, alternatives, and how many issues are created from just the Electoral College alone. Unfortunately, those elected stand to lose the most if the process changed so it never will.
CGP Grey didn’t cover primaries.
Didn’t the democrat party say they wouldn’t allow primary debates this election, because Biden was the clear winner?
Yeah, I think that’s dumb but debates aren’t inherently required for elections.
They are not required, but it doesn’t sound like a free democracy, if there’s no debate.
Are any of these debates really debates?
