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‘We lose the midterms’: Republicans worry Iran might have already cost them Congress
(www.politico.com)
this post was submitted on 09 Apr 2026
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Which is why I'll keep voting third party. I'm not gonna support a party with no spine.
But but but you voted for Trump then! You want Trump to win again! We promise we're not as bad as the Republicans! Neo-liberals argue much like MAGA does, loaded questions and bad faith.
Exactly why I will never reward them with my vote. Unless they pic AOC, cuz I like her.
I was told Lemmy was a place with fewer conservatives. I'm sadden to see there's a strong neo-liberal contingent and their apologizers who blame the left for their failure.
You do you, it's your vote obviously. I hope you're in a safely blue state, though; know that any time the republicans win your state / county / town / whatever, you contributed to that outcome.
Never gonna hold my nose to vote. Never gonna vote for "lesser" evil. I vote for who I want to win, regardless of odds. As is my American right.
Sure. Not arguing against the fact that it's your right to vote for whomever you want. However, if we look at the most recent US election, there were a lot of principled people holding that same belief either abstaining or declining to vote strategically, and now we have Trump. If you were one of those people, thinking you are not in small part responsible for the current administration is refusal to take responsibility for your own actions. Just like it would have been in small part my responsibility if Harris had won and decided to do what Trump is doing now.
I guess the Democrats should get a good enough candidate to offset that.
I guess the Democrats should have a good enough candidate to offset that. I proudly voted third party and will do again in upcoming elections unless the Dems choose AOC to run for president.
You know as well as I do they'd never let anyone left of a neo-liberal actually run for President. They went crazy over Madamni and he was just a mayor candidate.
Again, that's fine - you've got every right to do that. Is Trump closer to what you want in a president than Harris would have been, do you imagine?
I didn't vote for either one and they are both equally bad. Yes, let me say that again so you don't have to try a "gotcha" moment and try to repeat my words back to me. Yes, they are both equally bad. Yes, I think Harris would have done just as badly. Yes, I think both sides suck and in fact, I think they are practically the same.
The Democratic party lost to Trump, twice. Twice. That's on you all, not me. Maybe the party should come up with a better candidate this time around.
It's up the Dem party to inspire people to vote for them. the whole "but, but, but it's not Trump!" strategy didn't work. Either time. So are they gonna do better this time? Or are they just gonna write some harshly-worded press releases again?
If the Dem party nominates AOC, I'll vote for them. If not, I'm voting third party. No amount of "gotcha" or "what if" scenarios that you are thinking of throwing at me will change my mind. You can throw all the hitler-nazi-fascist-emperor-pedo-king-wwIII-civilwar shit at me all you want. I don't like either party and they both suck.
AOC or third party. Yep, I'm black and white that way. No, you aren't going to change my mind. And that's ok.
See, this right here is what I take issue with. You're grouping me in with the group that "lost to trump", but you're not acknowledging that you contributed to that loss by not voting strategically. You're putting blame on people who voted for Harris despite her not being our ideal candidate, but not accepting any yourself. Your shit stinks, too, just like everyone else's.
To put it another way, your candidate, or "you all", to use your terms, also lost to Trump, and in fact performed even worse.
Well, I think this is a delusional take, but you're welcome to your opinion.
Why would I vote "strategically"? I voted for who I wanted to win, as everyone should. And yep, my candidate lost to Trump too. I have never thought, nor said, any different. But I don't go around blaming everyone else for my candidates loss, yet I see a lot of Democrats do that.
Ya know why your candidate lost? Not enough people voted for her. Know why my candidate lost? Not enough people voted for her.
Let me put it another way, using your logic: Should I blame you for my candidates loss, since you voted for Harris instead of my candidate? Should I say that Trump only won because of people like you not voting for my candidate?
Because that's exactly what you are trying to do to me.
Because our (deeply flawed) voting system necessitates it to get good outcomes.
What you should be doing is pushing hard for your 3rd party of preference to run (and win) elections on the local and state level, not the presidency. You'd see far more actual, tangible change if you started getting those folks elected in smaller elections than just losing the presidential election with 2% of the votes every 4 years. Look at Zohran Mamdami - he's doing a great job in NYC and actually doing a lot of positive things. If he'd run for president, do you think he'd have won? Not a chance in hell.
However, once candidates like that start doing good things at the local level, then they become more palatable candidates to elect to the House / Senate. And once we start getting Senators / House Reps from those parties, they become more palatable candidates on the national level.
There were exactly 2 candidates who had a chance of winning that election. You know that. Pretending otherwise is disingenuous. See the above for how to change that.
They do. My party has won local elections and state elections and hold office.
Dems and Repubs teamed up in 1987 to create the Commission on Presidential Debates. They set strict rules that have excluded virtually every third-party candidate from the national stage ever since.
It’s one of the rare things they publicly agree on: maintaining the two-party lock on the biggest platform in politics.
IMHO, if you vote for Dems, you support that. Harris voters and the non-voters, not voting for my candidate are why Trump won. You know that. Pretending otherwise is disingenuous.
Great! So the next step, then, would be to push those candidates into senate / house seats, while protecting the presidency from the candidates who are interested in a fascist takeover of the country and its voting process, because that isn't going to help your candidates get elected anywhere.
We already do that. And we have 9 candidates running (or actively trying to run) for governor in the 2026 elections.
And I do my part to protect the presidency from bad people, by voting who I want to win. And during the last election it was 3rd party. Proud of my vote then, proud of my vote now.
And I'll gladly vote 3rd party in future elections too. Harris voters and the non-voters not voting for my candidate are why Trump won.
I'm right there with you but until there's an alternative voting system (like RCV, STV, or STAR or something), a vote for a 3rd party is as good as a vote for the opposition party. It sucks but that's the price of a ridiculous divided 2 party system. Well, there's many prices to pay for that actually but that's one of them...
But if people keep thinking and what you are saying, then it never happens. Trust me, if everyone would suddenly vote for a third party, shit would. The duopoly wants you to keep being afraid to vote for at third party. Which is why I'll keep voting third party.
I mean yeah of course. But look at how many people in the country actually are 3rd party. Like I said if the country wasn't very clearly and decisively divided into 2 parties it would be different. But the fact is people in the US now are typically either pretty far left or pretty far right. The amount of people in the middle (like truly in the middle) is absolutely miniscule - less than 3% last I checked. If 100% of the 3rd party people voted 3rd party, it wouldn't amount to much sadly. I would absolutely love for that to change but we are wedged so far into these two parties that it will be a loooong time before that happens.
Your opposition party would be absolutely thrilled if you voted 3rd party. There is no conspiracy to stop you from doing so. I'd argue the bigger conspiracy is against changing how we vote and how a winner gets chosen as that would make it much easier for a 3rd party candidate to make headway. As it stands, the more people they can get to throw their votes away instead of voting for someone that actually has a chance of winning (unless it's their party of course) the happier they'll be.
I would be so happy to be wrong here but over the years this has only gotten worse and worse, exacerbating the problem and pushing us farther into this hellhole of diametrically opposed political theatre. But at least we are HOT HOT HOT as a country now right?! 🔥🚒 🔥
This is interesting. From the outside it looks like you have a lot of far right groups - the Republicans being the biggest example of an organised political presence. The Democrats are centre-right at best, but presumably you're talking about the people, not the political parties? In which case, surely it's on the Democrats to move left to meet the people? And if as many people are as far left as you say, that should be simple...
I'm not going to pretend I'm a political expert but from everything I can tell you are spot on. The right here is moving farther right at a much faster rate than the left is moving left. The other interesting (and depressing) caveat is that people that lean right, at least recently, tend to be much more staunchly right in their beliefs. People that lean left are often times more splintered. Which is why you get people like Bernie Sanders that are outspokenly independent but run as a left Democrat because they have a much better chance of winning if they join up with one of the two parties and they find a good amount of support on the left but virtually none on the right.
And yes! From the rooftops yes! I agree with you that it's on the Democrats (or either party really but since the Democrats have ground to make up we'll go with them) to move the party and meet the voters but so far they absolutely refuse to do so. This is why you are seeing such a high degree of dissatisfaction within the democratic voter base. The party is forcing candidates out that the people in their own party don't really want, much less people that are undecided. It is truly surprising how out of touch they are with their own voter base. Which stinks because the right is (at least until very recently) very strongly united behind their movement.
Because people like you keep repeating it and people get scared and don't wanna take the chance.
Even if every single person who voted for 3rd party in 2024 voted for Harris, she still would have lost. That's how big her margin of loss was. Look it up.
It wasn't 3rd party voters that destroyed her chances, it was non-voters.
Again, because people like you keep saying that and scaring people. Let me piggback on your conspiracy theory: Both major parties actively work to keep third-party candidates from having a real shot.
And one of the clearest examples is how they teamed up in 1987 to create the Commission on Presidential Debates. They set strict rules that have excluded virtually every third-party candidate from the national stage ever since.
It’s one of the rare things they publicly agree on: maintaining the two-party lock on the biggest platform in politics.
Add every time you vote for them, you support them doing that. I refuse.
Okay, I did. Harris lost the popular vote by roughly 2.285 million votes.
Green Party (Stein/Aware): 862,000 votes. Independent (Kennedy/Shanahan): 756,000 votes.
Libertarian (Oliver/Maat): 650,000 votes.
Other: 650,000 votes. Combined: 2.919 million.
Disproving your point technically, but your point is still taken.
But the popular vote doesn't decide the election, you say.
In Trump's three largest swing states, that if lost would've meant he lost the election, 31k greater votes went to a third party (260k) than his eventual margin (230k).
I'm not here to say there's no place for voting 3rd party, but rather to refute your point that Trump would've won without the third party voters. Demonstratively not necessary true.
Popular vote doesn't decide the election and NEVER has decided the presidential election. U.S. Constitution (Article II, Section 1) has always required the president to be chosen by the Electoral College or by the House of Representatives in rare cases where no one gets a majority of electoral votes.
The popular vote is only used by states to help choose their electors. It has never overridden or replaced the Electoral College.
Your popular-vote math is correct about shifting all ~2.92 million actual third-party votes to Harris flips the popular vote. But the presidency is decided by the Electoral College.
In the three big swing states you mentioned:
Pennsylvania: Trump’s margin (120,266) > third-party votes (~68k–92k) → PA does not flip.
Michigan + Wisconsin: yes, they flip (+25 EV).
Result: Harris ends at 251 EV, Trump at 287 EV. Trump still wins the presidency.
So the numbers actually confirm my point: even if every person who voted third-party had voted for Harris instead, Trump still becomes president.
All of this is straight from the official FEC certified results.
The popular vote does not matter, and has not mattered for a while. The Electoral vote decides the election. Which by the way, BOTH parties refuse to change.
It's essentially unknowable, because the moment we remove third party votes, we can't say for certain that margins the major parties would've ended up with. There's too many variables to say with certainty. I'll concede that all else being equal third party votes wouldn't have shifted any EC votes, but my point is that all else isn't equal in this hypothetical. What is true third party voting could've shifted the popular vote, and if it did and Trump still won we'd be looking at the third time the popular vote didn't match the popular vote in the last seven elections, all benefiting republicans. I'm not saying those wins weren't valid (except maybe 2000), but it does highlight something worth reevaluating.
The [National Popular Vote Interstate Compact](National Popular Vote Interstate Compact) would like a word. Just because there isn't support in Congress for an amendment abolishing the EC, doesn't mean there isn't bipartisan support for overriding it.
But you didnd't say that in your reply to me. You specifically said, "Disproving your point technically" and "but rather to refute your point that Trump would’ve won without the third party voters."
Also, I think it is knowable by numbers. I specifically said that if all the people who voted third party in 2024 prez election had voted for Harris instead, she still would have lost the election. The numbers show it.
We don't base it on popular vote and NEVER have. It's Electoral votes. Now I wish we went by popular vote. And I'm all for going by popular vote. But that hasn't happened yet, and wasn't a reality in 2024, which is the time frame for my example.
I'm behind ya on wanting popular vote. But you were incorrect in you orginal reply by implying that my statement was wrong. The numbers prove it.
The popular vote/electoral vote argument has been happening during every election in my lifetime. I ready for that to change, but that doesn't make my statement or facts incorrect.
Harris lost to Trump by such a large margin, that even if 3rd party voters had voted for her instead, Trump still would have won.
If you wanna point fingers, point them at non-voters. That's what would have changed the election.
Ah damn. I thought there was a decent chance at a constructive political discourse. But I see I we're just skipping straight to finger pointing (which is quite entertaining as all signs point to us being at least ostensibly politically aligned). But you are right. I concede. This is all because of me and evil people like me. You're 100% right. Surely it has nothing to do with the system that has all of us boxed into nicely manicured corners.
Just remember the 1st and only rule of political finger pointing in the US. Keep it eye level or lower. Don't look up.
That's totally the reason for most of the problems. I just refuse to stay in those corners.
And like I said, even if every single person who voted for 3rd party in 2024 voted for Harris, she still would have lost. That’s how big her margin of loss was.
It wasn’t 3rd party voters that destroyed her chances, it was non-voters.
Be mad at them, not me.