478
‘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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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.