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this post was submitted on 04 Apr 2026
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Leopards Ate My Face
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The number of combinations of choices in social and human affairs is pretty much infinite so politics in a real Democracy could theoretically be infinite-sided (though only if there were no "representatives" of citizens and people directly voted on everything - i.e. direct Democracy)
Because the US isn't really a proper Democracy (more like an attempt at one), the vote itself in American has only 2 real options, but there are other ways to expand the number of choices because the two main parties in America are umbrellas for ranges of possibilities and they do have somewhat democratic (rigged, but still with more choices than the actual vote) internal selection systems in the form of Primaries.
If one properly analyses it, it turns out the presidential selection system in the US is really a multi-stage affair in which two of the stages - the Primaries and the actual vote - are open to the public (though there is quite a lot of selecting going on behind closed doors even before the Primaries).
So if people participate in both Primaries and the actual vote, they de facto have more choices than 2.
Also another thing to keep in mind is that this is a cyclical process and the outcomes in one cycle - i.e. who won and by how much - influence what happens in the next cycle so the vote itself defines not just what happens in one election, but also which choices will be made available - i.e. which candidates will be fielded - in the next.
All this means that if one actually cares and makes an effort, there's more "Democracy" to be had than it might seem at first sight and the vote itself has more influence than just that immediate choice, so anybody claiming that "you have no choice but to vote lesser evil" either has a simplistic view of things or are purposefully trying to deceive others.
This is without going down into the whole local politics and civil society participation, which in the US is almost as livelly Democratic as in Europe.
This assumes honest primaries. Or primaries at all.
We get what party leadership decides.
Oh yeah, as I mentioned there is a lot of closed-doors choosing going on before the Primaries.
Then the Primaries are rigged (with things like super-voters in Democratic Primaries).
All, of course, all assuming there are Primaries.
This does not add up to Democracy, IMHO, it's just slightly better than only having a 2-choices Vote with no Primaries at all.
I think that at the very first hint of fuckery, everyone should vote in the green party's primaries and write in the progressive candidate that the party is exerting influence to block. Democrats don't deserve voters ever again if they're not going to listen to them.
We can just walk in and take over the green party. They're tiny and have tiny primaries.
That doesn't alter the fact that the entire electoral system in the US is Mathematically rigged to make it pretty much impossible to succeed in a candidate from a 3rd party being elected as president - the level of difficulty is that of getting over 100 million people to switch their vote in a single election (you can try it over multiple election cycles, but what happens is that after years of trying and failing, most people give up, so it has to happen quickly or it won't work).
As I see it, for a 3rd party to grow in the US it has to start by winning local elections since the number of people who need to change their vote to it is much less and then build on such victories to win seats in Congress, then build on that for the Senate, and only then for the President.
Anyways, my original post was about what can be done and how things should looked at "in the context of how the election system is in the US" (as fucked up as it is) and what it is realistically possible in it, rather than what it should be.
If democrats aren't going to be a second party, we should select a different party to be our second party.
Agree.
Just pointing out that the entire system is designed to make that almost impossible.
So how can this nightmare cycle be broken?
Vote blue no matter who hasn't worked. Even when a democrat wins, it's some genocidal shitlib like biden. And when democrats lose, they blame the left they refuse to listen to and move to the right because they want to and pretend that they're chasing the votes of republicans, even though they know that's not going to happen and even though they know no one's actually buying the pretense.
Not an American, but as I see it, the only chance for a big change is to build things from the ground up block by block starting at the local elections level.
Another option is to bypass traditional politics as much as possible by using the power of civil society groups which are independent of political parties, such as Unions and politically independent single subject groups (for example, groups of people formed to combat setting up a data center in a specific region) - as shown in Europe a couple of General Strikes tend to focus politicians back into actually working for the interests of voters, at least temporarilly.
Yet another option, though weaker and much more indirect, is to consider that the vote in one electoral cycle affects which candidates are fielded in the next cycle, which is my main counterpoint to the OP's point of view since such a perspective justifies not voting for the lesser evil to send a message to Democrats that they need to field better candidates.
That said, personally I think Americans are seriously fucked and I doubt any change will happen before things properly break in terms of quality of life (I'm thinking proper dystopia with widespread starvation and homelessness) and people rebel and even then the reaction of the powerful will probably be to turn the place into and overt Autocracy rather than the current Oligarchy with some Theatre of Democracy.
I don't think this is effective. I consider the centrist messaging that progressives stayed home to "teach democrats a lesson" to be how centrists frame their unwillingness to appeal to an electorate they want to rule instead of serve.
Why would progressives stay home to “teach democrats a lesson”?
I mean, people don't just do things for no reason at all, unless they're crazy.
The most logical explanation is that they did it ultimately because centrists (i.e. the DNC) were unwilling to appeal to an electorate they want to ruie instead of serve.
A simple logical analysis shows that framing from "centrists" (I added quotes because they're not in the political center, but rather are hard-right) as actually being an indirect admission of their own guilt - they did not do what politicians are supposed to do, which is appeal to the electorate, hence the electorate did not vote for them.
In Democracy the blame for politicians not being appealing to voters and hence failing to get their votes lies not with the voters, it lies with the politicians.
Sure, "centrists" and their useful idiots loudly cry that people have an obligation to vote for them, but that's not a mindset of Democracy it's a mindset of Autocracy.