Time is not on our side. In four years, no matter who wins, the rich will be richer, the poor will be poorer, the climate crisis will be worse, and more and more money will be funneled into the military.
Correct!
"Buying time" is not a valid goal, especially not when it comes at the expense of efforts to actually build an alternative.
That logic does not follow. Buying time is an imperative intermediate goal.
In four years, anyone looking to build an alternative is going to face the exact same criticisms you're using now, it will again be "the most important election of our lives" and there's a good chance that the republican candidate will be worse than Trump, and more people will have turned to the right out of dissatisfaction with deteriorating conditions.
Yes, that's the meme. The time to be talking about third parties is not 2 weeks before the election, it's the day after the election, and consistently for the next 3 years. Anyone trying to build an alternative in 4 years deserves the criticism they get. Build the alternative the whole time.
Why on earth should we put off building an alternative when future conditions will just make it worse and harder without removing any of the issues that make you say that right now is "an inconvenient time?" When will it be the right time to start building a third party?
No one said to put off building alternatives. The current alternatives aren't viable, and voting for them not only doesn't help, it hurts. Again, as per the meme, the right time is any time except right before an election without any viable third parties. Buy time in 2024, build in 2025-2027, buy time in 2028, build in 2029-2031, repeat until we have a candidate with Governor/Senator experience and enough of Congress to get past gridlock.
It's precarious enough that I insist on taking a strategy that has a nonzero chance of actually stopping fascism rather than accepting it as an inevitability.
Incorrect unfortunately, your strategy's chance of stopping fascism is much closer to zero than mine. In fact, the strategy you insist on taking actually has a much higher chance of enabling fascism than stopping it.
there are only three possibilities: the democrats move left to meet us, or, people move to a new party, or, the system decays into fascism.
Correct! Now let's consider these possibilities, from the perspective of a person who wants to accomplish a goal with their actions:
A new party is the best option, but it will take time to build. That's gonna look like several election cycles of local and state elections.
I'm the meantime, there is the immediate threat of the system decaying into fascism. If that happens, the new party is doomed anyway, so we need to delay the fascism as much as possible while we get members of the new party elected to lower offices so they can build the experience, skills, and connections necessary to implement their superior policies.
Naturally, we come again to the only rational strategy for a disgruntled leftist: vote Dem every election to buy time until the new party is viable. Jill Stein is not a serious candidate and very possibly an deliberate spoiler bankrolled by Russia. West is not a serious candidate. De la Cruz seems sincere, but she lacks the experience to be a serious candidate; try Governor or Congress first before applying for President.
The democrats will never move to meet us if we support them unconditionally, so the way I see it, voting third party works towards both of those aims at once.
I didn't see it the way you see it, in fact I think you might have something in your eye because there is no evidence that voting third party accomplished any stated goal, and in fact makes the problems worse.
The country is in decline and has been for quite some time. The policies that I advocate for are necessary to stop that decline.
I sympathize, but your strategy does not implement your policies faster, it in fact pushes them further away. You're right that we need a new party, but it's too late this cycle, and the fascists winning may mean it never happens. A vote for Harris is a vote for 4 more years of status quo while we do the real work locally.
In any case, I will not be moved from my position by any amount of words. Either the Dems can give the concessions necessary to move me, or the 80 million can join me over here, or they can win or lose without me. Am I being obstinate? Yes. But I am being obstinate for a reason
Yikes. I'm glad your life is stable enough to gamble with fascism to appease your own obstinance, but however noble your reasons, this strategy is counterproductive. People will suffer so you can say you were stubborn in the face of overwhelming evidence against your strategy.
that might be less convenient
Bit of an understatement there, don't you think? That convincing 80 million people to switch their vote to an inexperienced and unproven spoiler candidate with questionable motives and vague policy proposals, with 2 weeks before the election, might be less convenient than convincing a rounding error of voters to vote strategically according to their own stated goals? It would be fair then to say that planets might be a bit bigger than protons, and WWII may have been a bit of a kerfuffle.
Don't get me wrong, I've been known to indulge, recreationally, in impossibly improbable fantasies. I think we all do from time to time. I'm no lover of the status quo, I yearn unironically for fully automated luxury gay space communism. It's certainly titillating to imagine the people collectively gaining class consciousness and walking to the polls arm in arm to vote "The Proletariat" for President in a landslide. Buuut...
I've worked various customer service roles, I believe anyone who has can corroborate the surprising prevalence of, shall I say, simpletons in the general population. As valid as your policy positions may be, the average American has the attention span of a TV ad and the political depth of a celebrity tweet.
Do you have an actionable plan to spontaneously educate and persuade 80 million people in under 2 weeks? If so, why have you waited until now to suggest it? We could've had the revolution years ago.
As fun as the fantasies are, there are lives at stake. In serious circumstances, I prefer not to gamble on historically unsuccessful schemes. Identify the options available to you and their consequences. What levers of power do you hold, how long are they and where is their fulcrum?
It's not enough to just try stuff that sounds good and hope it works, well-intended actions have unintended consequences. What evidence suggests converting half the voting population in 2 weeks is remotely conceivable?
That was the intended implication. Fascism is not known for reservation.
Most of the ones I've interacted with.
The undecided voters who keep finding reasons that the appeasement isn't good enough?
That's the 3 blocks
A hypothesis worth considering to be sure, but let's not be hasty
No, just browbeating anyone who thinks the genocide wouldn't get worse under the worse candidate
Homie, I do not control who the DNC fields. I am basing my strategy on the facts of the situation as they are presented to me. Where's your popular candidate?
Looks innocuous enough at first glance right? Let's zoom in on the problem:
These don't go together. If the semicircle on the left is correct, then this is showing moon phases, and the symbol on the right should be of a gibbous moon:
If the cookie-with-a-bite-taken-out in the right is correct, then this is showing an eclipse, and the symbol on the left should be of a 50% partial eclipse:
It drives me crazy every time I look at it.
To get a candidate 3 years closer to being viable, you know you don't have to start over every 4 years. It's going to take several election cycles before we have a qualified third party candidate.
That's a silly thing to do, and not something I recommended. Don't do that. Do promote third parties in local races they can actually win, as well as state elections in solid states where they can actually win. Once you have enough of those to have presidential candidates with actual experience, then, with sufficiently positive polling data, start pushing for a popular third party candidate.
That's going to be at least 3 election cycles though, and if you fill around like this every 4 years it may well be a moot point. What good is a third party if the fascists end elections? Any other strategy is incoherent. Unless of course your goal is to split the vote for the benefit of the fascists, then promoting a spoiler candidate is exactly aligned with your goal.
My strategy is to buy time while we build a functional and electable third party that has the means to change the status quo. Your strategy is to throw away views on a non-functional candidate, and in the process accelerating the fascist takeover.
I'm not gonna nuh-uh-yuh-huh with someone who doesn't understand elections, or the trolley problem.