this post was submitted on 03 Sep 2023
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I think you have a lot more faith in people who don't vote than I do if you think it's about political idealism and not just good old American laziness.
I do, yeah. You can say a lot about the American people, but laziness is absolutely NOT a defining trait of the population.
The mainstream (both the neoliberal part and the fascist mainstream like Faux News) gaslighting people of good will into THINKING that anyone victimized by the system and/or the people supposed to represent their best interests are just lazy or otherwise to blame for their disenfranchisement, though? THAT'S as American as apple pie!
Are you joking? Have you seen the number of obese people we have? They aren't getting out there and working hard.
Yeah, because it's just a coincidence that a disproportionately big (no pun intended) share of obese people are poor and live in food deserts where fresh fruit and veg are unavailable and fast food costs less than what healthy food IS available.
It's also just a coincidence that millions if not tens of millions work the equivalent of two or more full time jobs at ridiculously low wages, leaving no time, money or energy for exercise, healthy food and cooking.
You need to get your head out of the ass of corporate stooge media and read more about the greed and abuse that's ACTUALLY the main causes behind most of the country's biggest problems, INCLUDING the obesity epidemic.
Ah, so these people working two full time jobs are suddenly going to take the time to vote if there's a third party. I see.
One of the top priorities of that third party would be to make voting more accessible to everyone. It's one of the many things the Dem leadership have been fundraising on doing for decades without actually doing it. Sorta like enshrining reproductive rights in law.
Anyways, I'm getting pretty tired of spelling out the obvious to you, so unless you have something other than glib demonstrations of your ignorance and slavish devotion to a corporation that doesn't love you back, I think we're done here.
When they don't have the power? How?
Same way all honest politicians get their powers: by showing what they stand for before running for office and then staying true to that once they've been elected.
Even now, the dozen or so actual progressive Democrats in Congress could band together and be a check on the leadership rather than automatically going along with the lesser evil. If Manchin, Sinema and the Freedumb Caucus can use their positions to stand in the way of progress (or in the case of the latter, ensure even worse regression), progressives can wield theirs to stand in the way of stagnation regression.
How did that work out for Ralph Nader? Because that was what he did. He got a tiny percentage of the vote. You are making a lot of assumptions and you don't seem to be basing them on any evidence.
Guess what? Contrary to the convictions of Dem strategists, the year is 2023, NOT 1996. Millenials are the first generation not to become more conservative with age and gen Z are following that trend.
In 1996 where traditional mass media controlled the entirety of the political narrative, there was no way someone could win on the left, but guess what? They don't get to decide the news any more and partly because of that, almost every progressive policy position has 60%+ popular backing even as lesser evil neoliberals call it wishful thinking.
Anyways, we're done here. Neither of us are convincing the other of anything and I have better things to waste my time on than you and your locked in ways. Have the day you deserve.
Basically, as far as I can tell, your argument is that as long as there is an honest candidate running third party, all the people who are not voting now will vote and vote for this person, along with a lot of the people who would normally vote Democrat and/or Republican, giving them enough votes to beat both the Democratic and the Republican candidate and thus gain the presidency. And then they will change the voting laws, presumably somehow unilaterally, to ensure that people like this candidate will get voted into office, which is a 'future influences the past' thing I don't understand.
This is based on so many evidence-free assumptions that I agree, I can't argue with your faith. So I guess we are, in fact, done here.