It’s worse than that. And understanding this is key to understanding why voting third party will never work in the USA without reforming our electoral system.
Suppose tomorrow, a genie grants one of these posters’ wishes and suddenly it’s Stein with 48.0% of the vote in critical swing states, and Harris and other candidates on the Left sit on 3% of the vote, while Trump has 51% of the vote. Suddenly, it’s Harris who’s the spoiler and we end up with Trump because 10k voters thought Jill was too cosy-cosy with Russia.
I have specific issues with Stein that would definitely have me far less sure of my vote, but I’d still take her over Project 2025 and DJT. I’d still be calling as hard against voting third party as I am in this universe where it’s the Greenie and not the Democrat that would spoil the election.
Exactly, this is not an ideological dispute, this is statistics. And that is the key to understanding why the third party astroturf posts and replies are not credible.
Every time someone helpfully responds with a statistics explanation, these users respond with ideological escalation. It always reframes the debate to be about an entrenched system or Gaza or miming offense or generic DARVO. (All of which coincidentally mirror right-wing talking points or known election disinformation goals - i.e., push deep state conspiracy theories, escalation political divisions to fray unity - if you find that coincidence interesting.)
What they never try to do is explain how a vote for a third party in our FPTP system results in a desirable outcome for their stated “third party” policy priorities.
Which is why none of it is convincing: they cannot be both ideologically so pure that it’s a moral imperative to vote third party, and simultaneously so ideologically aloof that they do not care that that vote can only undermine that outcome. So it’s either bad faith, or reckless ignorance.
It’s worse than that. And understanding this is key to understanding why voting third party will never work in the USA without reforming our electoral system.
Suppose tomorrow, a genie grants one of these posters’ wishes and suddenly it’s Stein with 48.0% of the vote in critical swing states, and Harris and other candidates on the Left sit on 3% of the vote, while Trump has 51% of the vote. Suddenly, it’s Harris who’s the spoiler and we end up with Trump because 10k voters thought Jill was too cosy-cosy with Russia.
I have specific issues with Stein that would definitely have me far less sure of my vote, but I’d still take her over Project 2025 and DJT. I’d still be calling as hard against voting third party as I am in this universe where it’s the Greenie and not the Democrat that would spoil the election.
Exactly, this is not an ideological dispute, this is statistics. And that is the key to understanding why the third party astroturf posts and replies are not credible.
Every time someone helpfully responds with a statistics explanation, these users respond with ideological escalation. It always reframes the debate to be about an entrenched system or Gaza or miming offense or generic DARVO. (All of which coincidentally mirror right-wing talking points or known election disinformation goals - i.e., push deep state conspiracy theories, escalation political divisions to fray unity - if you find that coincidence interesting.)
What they never try to do is explain how a vote for a third party in our FPTP system results in a desirable outcome for their stated “third party” policy priorities.
Which is why none of it is convincing: they cannot be both ideologically so pure that it’s a moral imperative to vote third party, and simultaneously so ideologically aloof that they do not care that that vote can only undermine that outcome. So it’s either bad faith, or reckless ignorance.