Via Berkeley Mews
this post was submitted on 30 May 2024
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I guess I just don't understand how to square that position with:
I mean voting 3rd part or no-voting. If you want to do that, it is your right. The outcome of doing that is going against your interests. So, you don't really have a political strategy argument for doing it.
I have found a few people that just didn't want to feel bad about voting 3rd party. And that is fine, you don't have feel bad. You can vote how you want. But they felt like they need to create a reason for why they are voting 3rd party or no voting. This is what I think is harming the community. Creating the reason or justifying it when there was no rationality backing it and spreading it like it is a good reason is what irks me. It's spreading misinformation.
I'm so confused by your position.
Ok, I think I understand the confusion. Running for a 3rd party and voting 3rd party are two different things.
I think that running for a 3rd party has good outcomes, it generates news and discussion and gets your ideas out in front of a lot of people. Maybe, when the time is right, you won't be a 3rd party anymore and become one of the mainstream parties.
I think that voting for a 3rd party has bad outcomes. As our previous discussions, thanks to the dumb first past the post. Only the two most popular candidates matter. So you should vote for the lesser evil even if they suck (and they will).
When a 3rd party candidate becomes popular enough they edge out one of the standard party candidates and the voting strategy changes in our favor.
But that doesn't make any sense. Running as a third party candidate means doing a political project in which you're trying to attract supporters to vote for you. If that political project is good, then it's good to vote for, if it's bad, then it's bad to start it in the first place.
If no one voted for a third party, that party would lose relevance and wouldn't be able to accomplish the goal of spreading ideas like you mentioned earlier.
Also, you suggest that once a sort of critical mass of voters prefer a third party candidate, the voting strategy changes and they should vote third party. But it doesn't work that way. How can we tell when we've reached that point, if everyone follows your advice and votes for the less-bad major party? By all appearances, it would seem that the third party has no meaningful support, even if the majority supported it, because they're voting for who they expect to win rather than who they most prefer. For all we know, that could be the situation right now. People can't just all spontaneously decide together to switch, unless you have some means of coordinating it. Enough people have to switch for it to start to seem plausible that it could actually work, and that means those first people would have to act contrary to your rationale.
This has always been a stretch goal of any 3rd party candidate, because it almost never ever happens. You run 3rd party to tank the votes of one of the primary candidates, for a book deal, or to spread information and awareness.
The strategy is to gracefully step down after you have spread information and before any of the voting happens. You can support a 3rd party candidate and plan to not vote for them unless they get popular.
We won't be able to tell the instant it happens, because it's impossible to track all the voters, but signs will start showing up.
You know we are past the point when the democrat or republican candidate starts getting ignored like 3rd party candidates currently do. Remember how Bernie's run looked? Before the Dems did an op and kicked him out, it was looking very interesting.
Maybe, keep your eye on the polls. If your 3rd party candidate has comparable polling to Biden or Trump then we can start talking about the possibility of that happening. We have to overcome the normies.
Disagree, like I said, you can support a 3rd party candidate without planning on voting for them. Everyone knows you have to eat shit on voting day, but before then, you can point out all the good things about a particular candidate, even if you know they are not going to win.
Yes, this is why it may happen an election or two after we get critical mass. It's a limitation of the tools we have.
Remember if the 3rd party candidate has the support, they are no longer a 3rd party. People can say they are 3rd party, but they would be wrong or coping.
This is fundamentally not how things work. It won't just spontaneously happen, just like that, it isn't a trivial issue. Even if every single Democratic voter would prefer the Green Party (for instance), each of them individually would think, "Well, I may want to switch, but nobody else is going to, so it would be a wasted vote." There's no reason this wouldn't continue indefinitely.
This also ignores the fact that certain vote thresholds are necessary to be recognized as a major party and receive things like federal campaign funding and a spot in televised debates. Collecting votes doesn't only help in terms of perceived relevancy, but it also directly helps in spreading the message.
I'd also like to point out that we're not at election day and yet you don't seem to be advocating for a third party, instead criticizing me for doing so. If your position is that you should support a third party up until it comes time to vote, then where is that support?
Wait, what? Why would it continue indefinitely? Lets say we had a Green Party with polling showing 90% of the population interested in that party. In what reason would you not vote for the Green Party (Assuming they are aligned with your goals)? Even if the polls are off we still have an extremely good chance of winning.
You don't technically need money to win an election, it helps, but all that matters is the votes. If you don't debate a popular candidate, your opponent can call you a coward. No one wants to debate anyone, it's just better optics to engage.
Ohhh, maybe you got me, I haven't been paying much attention to the 3rd party polling. Any progressive 3rd party candidates coming close to Biden or Trump? If they are, then you win, and let me know.
Also, let me just say, if it is not too late, that I support all candidates that agree with me. Have any candidates in particular you want me to verify?
The Green Party would not be polling at 90%. When polls ask people who they intend to vote for, they would tell them that they intend to vote for the Democrats, because they consider the Greens nonviable.
You know, like you said you're doing when I asked why you're not supporting them now.
I guess you're expecting people to lie to pollsters or something? Most people aren't going to do that.
This is so absurdly naive that it's hardly worth answering. Money lets you spread your message. Being in a debate lets you spread your message. These are massive advantages that it's virtually impossible to win without. People aren't voting completely divorced from anything campaigns do.
Seriously, this is completely ridiculous and I won't entertain the notion further.
Sounds like we need to organize more to get better information. Also, what is this I found? https://news.gallup.com/poll/512135/support-third-political-party.aspx Looks like a poll that supports 3rd party candidates without committing to vote on them.
I think you misread my statement that you quoted. I didn't say money wasn't helpful. And I never said we don't need to debate. I said the debates will come to us if we are popular (You won't have to doge bullets Neo).
Your call if you want to end on some bad arguments.
Well then, seeing as that poll shows 63%, I assume you're voting third party with everyone else then, right? Because that's apparently how you think the world works.
Stop giving me this nonsense and come back down to reality.
Is that 63% specific candidate? Or is that 63% in general?
Because of its 63% for a specific candidate we can talk. Looks like it's just in general. Which makes sense because the two candidates are particularly bad this upcoming election.
Oh man, looks like you have no good arguments to counter mine, otherwise you would have used them. Looks like I'll have to put you back into the idiot category. Sorry.
> cites poll
> "actually, this poll is meaningless."
Good talk.
Whoa, where did I say the poll was meaningless?
How do you do that thing where you put things I never said in my mouth? Hey, let me try.
Wow, that was easier than I thought it was.
Ad-homing is fun!
That's not not how you spell ad-hominem or what it is.
If the poll is not meaningless to you, then what number would it have to be for it to make you to vote third party?
The poll would have to be about a specific candidate. Not voting third party in general.
Third party in general just means that most people are sick of the two candidates in top. This could mean that we are splitting The 60% between five third-party candidates. This means the Democratic and Republican candidates are still on top?
Now if 60% of the people were interested in voting for the green candidate specifically. Then I'm very interested and a big funny is about to happen to the Republican or Democratic candidate.
Then why did you link it?
It was a counter to this statement.
But I now that I am re-reading it I see that I had misinterpreted it. I thought you were implying that polls only ask questions about voting and not option. This was my bad. Sorry.
It's an important point, because you presented it as a form of evidence that could be used to show when "it's time" for everyone to switch to a third party, and then completely rejected it for that purpose right after. Which leaves us back at square one, which is that there is no means of coordinating a sudden switch or recognizing when such a switch would be viable. And without that, your whole position collapses.
Or a poll that shows favorability over voting.
Your argument boils down to "We would need a thing that easily could exist and maybe currently doesn't exist and that's why this is an unsolvable problem."
So, in your mind, if someone did this favorability poll you want, and it showed, say, 60% favorability for the Green Party, you would vote for them, and you imagine that the majority of Democratic voters would all spontaneous switch their votes over together?
Go ahead and ask that to people you know, irl or people online: "If there was a poll showing a third party with 60% (or higher!) favorability, would that cause you to switch your vote? Would you expect it to cause others to switch their votes?" I can already tell you the answer you'll get.
I hate to say this, but the fact that you think this is such a trivial problem tells me that you must be young, and there are no words I can say that are a substitute for experience. I recognize your mindset because I've had it myself, you want to drive a rational answer and the world can simply bend around to what you come up with. You want an answer that's simply correct, because you don't want to face a difficult decision, you don't want to deal with the fact that both courses of action have some validity to them and either one comes with potential negative repercussions.
Let me give you a piece of advice - there are two types of ideas, ones that are molded around reality, and ones that are molded around psychological needs. The ones molded around psychological needs are always more appealing (assuming you have the needs it's designed for), but they're also not real. The ones molded around reality are often less smooth and neat, and less appealing - because they're not designed for you, they're designed to represent reality. The task of anyone seeking truth is to learn how to recognize what both types of ideas look like, what they're "shaped" like, what they feel like. Your idea that you can get all the benefits of supporting a third party while also getting the benefits of voting Democrat - it's shaped around what you want to be true. Essentially, it's motivated reasoning convincing you that there must be some way for it to work, in order to avoid facing a difficult decision.
Seek truth from facts. Put aside how you think the world ought to operate and look at how it does. You can't make a map before you've seen the territory. When you do that, you'll see that this sudden spontaneous shift as the result of some random poll is never going to happen.
That's all I have to say to you about this topic. I'm sorry if that comes off as condescending, but it's genuinely from the heart. I can't force you to see something you're dead-set on not seeing. I don't see anything productive coming from continuing this.
Not Democratic voters (assuming you mean the party). Just voters.
If you're a Democrat and you feel like the Green Party has a candidate polling at a majority that represents your interests more than the Democratic candidate, why would you vote for the Democratic candidate instead? It goes against your interests. I know some Democrats are brain damaged, but I think that is only a small percentage (1 - 3 %).
This is like saying the majority of the population is leftist and has a chance at a bloodless revolution, but they decide to not take it because of shits and giggles.
Polling as in "intends to vote for" or polling as in "has a favorable opinion of?"
If favorability: Multiple candidates can have positive favorability, so in that case most Democrats would stick with Democrat candidates because they don't expect the third party to win.
If voting intention: The only way for a third party to be polling at a majority in terms of voting intention would be if people really did intend to vote for them (which would require some people to intend to vote for them before it was clear they had a real chance), or if people lied to pollsters about their intentions.
You're not going to find some clever solution that allows you to bypass the problem of coordinating a mass switch, that problem is fundamental. This is tiresome.
We could try "has most favorable opinion of?" or "most ideologically aligned with?"
I feel like you are hinting at the possibility of not only a leftist majority but a majority interest in a specific candidate and we would be too dumb to figure that out. Is that your position?
Hey, ancient wisdom person, you need to be able to explain why the problem is fundamental and not solvable. I don't see it. And all that ancient wisdom does you no good politically if you can't impart it.
I agree, please stop making bad arguments so we can stop this thread or maybe I can learn something.
No. If you'd listened to a single thing I said, you'd understand that it has nothing to do with being "too dumb to figure it out." It's a problem of coordinating a mass switch. It's a collective action problem. Intelligence has nothing to do with it, people acting rationally on an individual level are not necessarily going to arrive at the best collective outcome. Read, like, anything about game theory, I am begging you.
I have shot down half-assed argument after half-assed argument of yours, and you just keep spewing them out without putting any actual consideration into them.
First it was that polls showing the popularity of third party candidates in general could provide the mechanism for coordinating a switch. I disproved that.
Then it was that favorability polls would provide the mechanism for coordinating a switch. I disproved that.
Now it's that polls you just dreamed up that nobody is asking that are supposed to provide the mechanism for coordinating a switch. I suppose this one could go on forever, with each question I prove wouldn't work being replaced by an equally inane question that you spent 5 seconds coming up with. Just over and over again forever.
You might as well be trying to prove Bigfoot exists by asking one by one about every location you can think of, and each time I check one you simply produce a new location to check.
So I'll tell you what - I will address one, final attempt to produce a mechanism for coordinating a switch. Right now you've offered a suggestion, "We could try “has most favorable opinion of?” or “most ideologically aligned with?”" Before I do: are you confident enough in that attempt that you're ok with it being your very last one? Have you actually thought it through and tried on your own to think of reasons why it might not work? If I'm able to address this one, will you finally admit that you are unable to provide any mechanism for solving the collective action problem, and that you cannot defend your position?
Ok, so I don't want to use up my one question, so I will just assume your position is that if we had one fascist leader and everyone else was a leftist who agreed on which candidate they would want to lead them, then the leftists wouldn't be able to do whatever to figure that out and the one and only fascists leader would stay in charge forever. Got it.
You really should vote for the lesser evil, because your opinion of the people you agree with is very low. By your own logic, you're are already screwed.
Hey, if you have a general argument for why polling wont work, why didn't you use that instead of just asserting that it wouldn't without explaining (rhetorical question does not count)? That is why I am trying to figure out why you think that. The only way I know how to do that is by trying to figure out what wording is causing you issues.
Yes, stop edging me. Any question I ask you, you will probably provide another evasive answer to. Anyone reading this thread will see that plainly. Please add more weight to my arguments.
I want to hear your response to this: Why would polls worded like “has most favorable opinion of?” or “most ideologically aligned with?" not work to detect a consensus of a single leftist candidate and why wouldn't people then vote for that candidate?
Again, as I already told you, the problem has nothing to do with intelligence. It isn't some kind of personal failing to be in a collective action problem, that's why it's called "a collective action problem." Again, you're out of your depth here, it's very clear that you don't understand how collective action problems work, and you need to stop asserting your ignorance and learn about them. Go skim the Wikipedia article on Collective Action Problems, particularly the part relating to game theory and maybe something will stick. The concept here is important to understand in general, with plenty of use-cases completely unrelated to politics.
Ok, great. So you're all in on this one and once I've addressed it, you will not propose any other solutions.
First off, let's note that these polls do not currently exist. Therefore, regardless of whether they would work or not, at the very least until they do, my position is justified. No mechanism currently exists to coordinate the switch and, not owning a trusted polling company myself, I don't have the means to bring these or any other polls into existence. So, while they don't exist, I don't need to incorporate them into my decision making calculus.
Second, if these polls did exist, their implications would not be immediately apparent. If these polls showed that a third party candidate was most favored, but every other metric, from polls about intended voting to political endorsements to campaign finance and so on, metrics that have more established track records and that people are used to relying on to predict outcomes, then it would be much more likely that people would see your polls as a statistical anomaly. And if people saw it that way and did not switch, then the next election cycle, they would say, "see, we were right, it was a statistical anomaly, that question is not a reliable predictor of who would win."
Third, which candidates people like and dislike is influenced by the exposure they have to that candidate. A candidate with a lot of funding and air time can more effectively pitch themselves to a wider audience, even if they aren't as good of a candidate or aren't as aligned with their views. Furthermore, the perception that this happens means that even if an ad isn't convincing to you, it will factor into your calculations about who is more likely to win.
Is that enough? Despite your baseless accusations that I'm being "evasive" I have given three crystal clear responses to your latest proposed solution (just as I clearly answered all your prior solutions). I could probably find more, if you like (I didn't even get into the specific questions themselves yet). But at that point you're probably better off reading the Wikipedia article so you can understand the underlying concept.
I could explain it to you myself, going over the Prisoners' Dilemma and all that, but since you're regarding everything I saw in debate-mode, convinced that I'm saying something ridiculous, I think you'd learn more by getting the information from a different source.
Oh, nice link (not sarcastic), I didn't realize these issues had a name. Thanks!
But it doesn't apply to the hypothetical. The first line is "A collective action problem or social dilemma is a situation in which all individuals would be better off cooperating but fail to do so because of conflicting interests between individuals that discourage joint action." The hypothetical was that the majority of people already agree on a specific candidate. So there are no conflicting interests that matter.
I don't understand the point of this paragraph. Do you think the current green candidate has a majority interest? If so, then we should start making polls. Conservatives make polls every day like "Bad Black Man Bad?". I am pretty sure this not a difficult task, especially if we have a majority.
Yes, I agree with this. I understand why this isn't ideal, but humans are messy. Like I said is might be 4 - 8 years before we are able to act on our majority.
I think "immediately" also points out some emotional energy. I think you are weighing the horrors of the current situation (and they are very bad) and are willing to take extreme risk to stop those horrors. An admirable goal, but taking those extremes risks has consequences and not just for you. The risk you are currently taking is trying to convince as many people as possible to vote in such a way to throw a wrench in the system. This can work if you can get a large enough amount of people, but that is like a 1 - 5 percent chance. That leaves a 95% percent chance that the outcomes will be the worst possible. On top of this, as you have said, you currently have no metrics. So you don't know how likely you are to succeed. It's a bad gamble and I haven't seen any evidence to the contrary.
Ok, so we miss once and stop trying? Why is the left so weak in your mind? Why not just keep trying until we get the candidate that everyone wants elected elected?
Where did this come from? I will assume this is a closing argument and not an answer to my question. As I have stated before. Money is very helpful, but not necessary. You can do things like fundraise. Berne proved that it was possible. And the bigger the majority you have, the more of a source you have.
You linked me to an interesting wiki article that didn't apply. You wrote a paragraph about how we currently don't have polls in my hypothetical, then claimed victory. You talked about how my idea wouldn't work right away, then assumed people would just give up. Then you talked about how money was necessary, which was not part of the question.
So your answer boils down to leftist will just give up even if they have the majority, because organizing is hard and not perfect.
I will accept this. I asked a question, you answered to the best of your ability. You and I are both tired of this conversation. I am good with ending it here. I will not be replying to this conversation after this.
I will have to find someone else to convince me that no-voting or 3rd party voting is a good idea, because we are not communicating well.
I wish you well. No hard feelings, have a nice life.