cross-posted from: https://feddit.uk/post/21429342
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this post was submitted on 18 Dec 2024
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...and here's the short term effects of failing to resist the greater evil:
Voter apathy just handed us another 4 years of Trump. The lesser evil is looking pretty fucking good right now.
The Left is looking as good as it always did. Look there instead.
You have to go back regardless so why push for an earlier stop?
Because it's a two party system and voting third party isn't how you change that.
That's absolutely not the long term effect of voting for the lesser evil.
That's the effect of more people voting for the greater evil.
Yeah. This whole thing is a shell game to hide the fact that OP is gaming the candidate pool and ignoring the knock-on effects from the worst candidate being shut out every time.
Completely flawed.
Under first-past-the-post systems, as long as there are other people who support the greater evil, and evil's willing to use its power to increase its influence (whether that's removing anti-bias laws that restrict the press, raising limits on campaign donations, or more directly, things like gerrymandering), you'll get the shift towards evil from voting for the lesser evil, as the lesser evil will chase after the voters who vote for evil.
However, plenty of people notice that, and post memes like this one that encourage voting for a third party with no hope of winning or not voting at all, which only serves to accelerate the effect, as the lesser evil has to attract an even greater share of the evil demographic's vote to have any hope of winning. People say that voting third-party demonstrates to the lesser evil that it's worth courting non-evil voters, but that can't have any effect until the next election, and in the meantime, you're stuck with maximum evil for a whole term, and the hurdles to overcome grow larger.
The best hope is to start campaigning for a third party or non-evil candidate for the lesser evil party immediately after an election instead of leaving it until right before an election, as that hopefully gives enough time for support to grow enough that the lesser evil party will see non-evil as a meaningful demographic that's worth aligning with. It's not guaranteed to work, but if it doesn't, either evil is genuinely a majority and the democratic thing is to be evil, or the system isn't a democracy, and there's no way to remove evil by voting, so alternatives need to be considered.
So this image is positing that "left" is lesser evil and "right" is greater evil.
Just before line two, the greater evil has won. Because more people voted for the greater evil.
If more people had voted for the lesser evil, lines two through four would be reversed, and the result would be less evil.
Of course, the whole thing presumes that bOtH sIdEs are some unacceptable level of evil. Now, don't get me wrong, there are problems that need resolving, regardless of what kind of politics is involved. How and whether those problems get solved depends heavily on what kind of politics is involved.
That assumes they're adjusting based on votes, and I don't think they are. I think they chasing the window of public discourse on social issues (which is largely fabricated to start with) and moving as far right as they think they can get away with on governance
if the votes don't matter our society should just get more extreme in both directions and not one, unless the votes only matter for either the left or the right in which case voting would either benefit the left or weaken the right
It's the long term effect of voting for a lesser evil that knows it can get away with being shitty as long as it's better than the greater evil.
So we should vote for the more evil?
No, you should vote for a different lesser evil that they prefer even though it will be even less effective
No, you should band together and grind the system that only presents evil options to a halt.
That is something you do outside of electoral politics. You will not achieve that by not voting for the lesser evil.
Voting for the lesser evil can enable this strategy to be more effective. Is it easier to organize against the system in the streets today or in a future where the military enforces the president's whims via emergency powers? I think the answer is fairly obvious.
Lesser evil voting is a rational response to a broken system, but it also isn't mutually exclusive with fighting against that system in other ways. And I believe it's even synergistic in many cases.
Fuck no. You don't get to pull out "less effective" within a day of Pelosi shuffling a 74 year old cancer patient into the most critical committee position for fighting Trump. That's exactly the effectiveness you get with Democratic establishment habitual losers.
When people have limited choices to vote on, voting for a or b does not make them like a or b.
It just means it’s a “boiling the frog situation” when gradually changing the goalposts makes people not notice the real issues.
The average American really has not changed that much from the past generations, but the candidates that are allowed to run in either party have drifted rightward.
If I want to vote for green, and I can choose only on a greyscale, my interpretation of which shade of gray might be closest to green might be a personal choice, highly disputed.
Yes, what shade of grey is closest to green is unclear, but there are only two shades of grey that can win. I'd be ecstatic about dumping my shade of grey if anybody could explain how it would bring us closer to green.
Don't say that without proposing a better solution.
The better solution people have been proposing (and one recently enacted) is promptly met with jail time. Everybody knows what it is but can't say it without risking getting banned or arrested.
Are you suggesting that a feeling of moral superiority while things get worse isn't a better solution?????
No, this is the long term effect of voting for "eLeCtAbLe" politicians in primaries. Putting a centrist in the general to run against the right in hopes of pulling voters from the right DOES NOT FUCKING WORK. Can we please finally accept that and move on?
then why don't far left candidates work in europe?
Putting a centrist in the general to run against the right in hopes of pulling voters from the right DOES NOT FUCKING WORK.
Which is why the DNC keeps doing it. They'd rather hand the country to fascists than let a leftist into office. Hence OP's post.
In a two-party FTTP system, we really have no choice. Not voting for the “lesser evil” benefit lbs the “greater evil,” every time.
This reminds me of when Trump used the Sharpie to extend the NOAA circle on that map
To all the MFer here claiming "we have no other choice!" "Third parties spoil elections!", etc.: you're not getting it:
The solution is not to disengage, but rather to start building up true political power by mass organizing.
Primaries. Fucking people need to show up for the primaries. I usually only see people coming out and bitching about their shitty choices in the general. It doesn't help that Americans really like to vote for incumbents, and that the fucking parties really like to only support incumbents.
- What primaries? The dems had primaries?
- As if the Dems wouldehave let Bernie won
- {Most important point): Telling people they acted wrong doesn't address any systemic issue.
Quite amazing isn't it how hard it is for workers to "unite". But then at the same time in the years after the great depression, when communism still might have seemed an experiment worth trying, you get people easily giving in to fascism instead.
I know, I know, Reichstag fire etc. But fascist movements were not unique to Germany and even in socially conscious Britain the communist party never got traction.
In short, I think historically speaking people in the Western world are a bit "right of centre", esp concerning scapegoating foreigners and seeing something 'natural' in monopolies being built.
One interpretation of what we're seeing is the slow natural death of the left leaning post war social consensus, which was in some sense "artificially" created by the circumstances of the war, and we're now returning to the historic right leaning trend last seen at the end of the Victorian era.
Obviously it's not like people don't dislike the downsides to being "right of centre" but I've often found that, given the chance to mull the idea of a much more socialist country, people are surprisingly resistant to governments having the kind of monopoly that many companies do. I don't know, perhaps they've seen companies rise and fall, but once you give power to a government there's no going back?
(I'm not talking about your average Fox news intoxicated American, my experience is with regular working people in Britain, Germany, Italy etc)
My take is that there are a lot of people on the Left who would rather lose every election than compromise any of their principles. They consider this noble, but I consider it foolish at best and criminal at worst. Actual human beings are going to die because Donald Trump won the election.
Yep. It's great that they can signal their virtue and ideological purity. What sucks is that they can't show solidarity to actually help people nationally. If they even help people locally. Attacking the people they could reason with. Ignoring/enabling the really bad people. And admonishing the rest of us. Accusing us of enabling genocide for trying to do things that will actually see the less people killed. What were we thinking!
The genocide in Gaza was terrible. Now we get to have one in Gaza, and Ukraine, and parts of the USA.