Don’t Fall for the Third-Party Trick

web.archive.org Don’t Fall for the Third-Party Trick

A progressive who stays home on Election Day — or backs Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Cornel West, or No Labels — is voting for Donald Trump.

"Progressives should not make the same mistake that Ernst Thälmann made in 1932. The leader of the German Communist Party, Thälmann saw mainstream liberals as his enemies, and so the center and left never joined forces against the Nazis. Thälmann famously said that 'some Nazi trees must not be allowed to overshadow a forest' of social democrats, whom he sneeringly called 'social fascists.'

After Adolf Hitler gained power in 1933, Thälmann was arrested. He was shot on Hitler’s orders in Buchenwald concentration camp in 1944."

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We could avoid this with ranked choice voting.
- Yes, but you're going to need to find a way to think beyond that, because both parties understand that it's in their interests to oppose rcv, so "vote democrat until we get rcv" effectively means "vote democrat forever".
  Fundamentally, there is a limit to the extent that a capitalist democracy will tolerate actual democratic power, because eclipsing the power of capitalists obviously means threatening their position. They will not sit idly by and allow their power to be voted away.
  
  Oh, you mean like these two Democratic reps and the one Democratic Senator who just introduced a bill to do ranked choice voting for all 2028 congressional races? https://rankthevote.us/raskin-beyer-welch-bill-would-bring-ranked-choice-voting-to-congressional-elections/
  
  There's no need to be so smarmy. Anyway, the individuals may behave in aberrant ways (or perhaps as a red herring, up to your interpretation), but the Democratic Party will reject it just as the Republicans will. I'm talking about classes and political parties, not every person as an individual.
  If it passes, I'll eat my hat, but it doesn't have a snowball's chance in Hell.
  
  So even when Democrats do the right thing, you don’t give them credit? Got it.
  
  Making a declaration is worthless. This is three people saying that they'd like to do something and they will fail just as these attempts have always failed. I can give them as people some amount of credit for trying to make the world better, but that does not exonerate the system! The system -- including the rest of the Democratic Party -- will still put their attempt down regardless.
  Do you not see the difference here? The fact that people can and do propose to do good things now and again and those attempts are shot down even by the so-called left wing party is not a defense of the republic, but an indictment!
  
  How do you think legislation happens? This isn’t just “three people”, this is a sitting Democratic Senator and two Democratic Reps. All with long histories in the party. Hell, Beyer was Lieutenant Governor of Virginia. These aren’t nobodies.
  And they’re not just “saying that they’d like to do something”, this is actual legislation that was submitted in both the House and Senate. These kinds of bills may have to be introduced a number of times before they pass but Dems are the only ones doing the work to at least try and if nothing else keep the issue alive and active as a discussion.
  This is how the legislative process works all over the world, and if you can’t or won’t bother to understand that, than I can’t imagine there’s anything else really for us to talk about.
  
  It has very little support, it's DOA. That's just what happens. Look at all of Bernie's failed bills; they just don't push the needle. You can tell me that at some point in the future the Rapture will definitely happen, the righteous will be saved and the sinners will be cast into perdition and so on, but I don't see any reason to believe it considering the history of the Democrats for the last 40 years and their incredible ability to pretend to want good things while either conspiring with open rightists or making limp gestures like this.
  You will not see the Democratic Party vote its own power away, it just won't happen.
  
  This guy performs material analysis.
  
  Or will they? You see, this is what I don't understand about MAGA congressmen. If they make Donald Trump their dictator, they are abdicating their own power and giving it to him. How is this in their best interests?
  
  Well, two things:
  One, that is a very alarmist view of Trump. He liked slinging around executive orders, but he had neither the ambition nor the audacity to be a Hitler. It simply isn't realistic to think he'll execute his second term by toppling the Republic, he doesn't have visions like that, even if many people have visions like that for him (including Mike Lindel, somewhat hilariously, with his apparent attempt to get Trump to do a false flag and establish emergency powers).
  Second, look at history. Inevitably, some people who release leopards do get their faces eaten, but becoming an executor of a fascist regime isn't a loss of power, it's a change in title at worst and, if anything, something of an increase in power. Imagining Trump becomes a fascist autocrat, that doesn't actually mean that his whim is enough to unilaterally move things however he likes, and that is true of every leader in history. The reason for this is that his power, his authority, doesn't come from himself, it comes from the class (or classes, historically) that support him, so he needs to make sure to keep them on his side or they will absolutely just kill and replace him. The petty Congressmen that support him know this, and are fine with working in a paradigm where they benefit from his support and are left with a broad range of things that he views as acceptable (since Trump won't try to micromanage the whole country) in which to exert their personal agendas as they see fit.
  But again, Fuhrer Trump is a fantasy. Maybe Tom Cotton poses such a threat, but Trump does not.
  Does this all make sense?
  
  Ummm there definitely is evidence against you. First in our current system the president needs Congress to get things done, but we've seen the plans for Project 2025 to get around a lot of this.
  Second, we've seen with the freedom caucus that a small group of congressmen can wield a lot of power.
  Third, I think we definitely can expect a very different Trump in a second term versus his first term and he definitely HAS expressed an interest in this with all of his dictation envy too become Fuhrer and worse there is a large portion of the population that is content to be rolled under a Trump dictatorship.
  If any of this is true, it should lead to less power for congressmen.
  
  First in our current system the president needs Congress to get things done
  There is quite a lot that the President can do independently using Executive Orders. Even tasks that, on paper, require congressional approval can be subverted, and you can look at the US's record of entering undeclared wars as evidence of that.
  Beyond that, see what I already said about how there's no such thing as an autocrat.
  Second, we’ve seen with the freedom caucus that a small group of congressmen can wield a lot of power
  These are people who would do the best in an imaginary Fuhrer Trump political machine. Think of it like getting promoted to a bigger, more powerful Freedom Caucus.
  Third, I think we definitely can expect a very different Trump in a second term versus his first term and he definitely HAS expressed an interest in this with all of his dictation envy too become Fuhrer and worse there is a large portion of the population that is content to be rolled under a Trump dictatorship.
  People have been talking about him admiring dictators before he was elected and all throughout his first term. There's nothing new here, no evidence that suggests something has changed.
  I promise you it's just hysteria. So there's a chance of something beneficial happening in this conversation, I want you to just take note of this conviction you have that Trump will be Hitler and then, if he is elected, just remember it as he blunders his way through being racist and doing war crimes just the same as he did before with no particular change besides Vance leading a new rhetorical tact.
  No, I won't be doing a mirror version of this exercise. I'm a communist, so if I'm wrong and he's a neo-neo-Nazi, I get the wall anyway and it's no harm done.
  
  This is a great post! Well said!
  
  I appreciate the kind words and am glad to see an open socialist on .world
  
  Thanks! I get a LOT of hate and variations of "U must suck Putin's cock" type of comments, but hey it's expected. People are pretty afraid of change and losing their power.
  I'm glad you're here too! We're all gonna make it, brother.
- Ranked choice voting probably leads to two-party domination (see Australia or Malta), and even without that caveat it's otherwise suboptimal. Score voting is the way to ensure voting for your favourite comes with no strategic tradeoffs.
  
  This might work, but in our current situation I don't see the outcome as much different than what I'd expect now. MAGA would give Trump the highest score. Dems would give Harris the highest score and the rest would split.
  I also don't agree with the part of the premise that says our system is prone to fraud. Because each district does things differently, it makes it hard to hack. In Miami for instance they had hanging chad, because they used a punch system. Where I live, we fill in a bubble and in some states only mail in ballots are used. The real hacking takes place before the vote, in social media.
  
  First time around Dems would probably vote Dems 99, GOP 0 and leave every other party blank, but over time people would realise that you can ALSO score your actual favourite (think of all the people that would vote Green if it wasn't a wasted vote) a 99 without hurting the "lesser evil's" chances. Greens 99, Dems 99 and GOP 0 is just as bad for the GOP as Greens blank, Dems 99 and GOP 0. That's the magic of score voting. And people who are really apathetic and refuse to vote because they think all parties are bad could still express an opinion akin to Dems 10, GOP 0, rest empty.
  
  GOP 0? Trump barely lost the last election and the Republicans still control one house of Congress.
  
  These are different ways to fill the same ballot! In score voting you give every party a score (in this case from 0 to 99). This was the example of a die-hard Democrat. A more moderate voter might vote something like Dems 50, GOP 60, or Dems 30, GOP 25
- in ranked voting there is still the possibility that a fear of a deeper evil driving straight to a bipartisan situation again.
  You still have all the same campaigns exacerbating fears with just a different look to the ballot. Ppl could easily fall into the trap of picking their top 1-2 choices based on who they don’t want in power after glued to the screen watching all the drama.
  Rcv just seems like the new ev where someone oversells that it fixes all things but hides the cons that we’re all pretty much in the same spot we started.
  
  I agree with this assessment for the most part, but it does seem like the best method for introducing a third party, which the US desperately needs. Do you have a better EV?
  
  introducing a third party, which the US desperately needs.
  Very much so.
- Sure, but the current duopoly doesn't really want us to have that.

445 comments