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this post was submitted on 10 Oct 2026
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politics
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Voting strategically for the least bad candidate presented by the two major parties is the only thing that has been shown to work. It's how we have the DSA candidates in government that we actually have. None of them have ever won by running as a third party. Not a single one.
Which is why it's so important to turn out during the primaries. Make sure Gavin isn't the candidate by voting for candidates you actually like during the primaries. If he wins the nomination, and I sure hope he doesn't, I'd still vote for him over JD Vance or whatever sick fascist wins the GOP nomination. That's how it works.
If this is the system working then the system is bullshit.
When has this ever worked?
You would, I would, but the 2024 election showed that this doesn’t speak to enough voters to win. If the Democratic Party leadership doesn’t act on that info, I’m not sure what to do
great but he cant win. Dems will just sit on the couch if he runs, same as with Harris.
That doesnt work because always being the side that compromises means you lose ground every time.
The solution to this is electing politicians who promise not to compromise during primary season, NOT allowing your political enemies to win general elections. Even in a worst case scenario where your candidate is prancing around saying, "I love compromise!", it's still preferable to have a candidate who supports 50% of what you want than one who wants nothing you want and everything you don't.
The person I voted for in the primary has won the general exactly once in my 26 years of voting and that person was Fetterman.
don't forget running for office yourself. you can make a really big positive difference in local politics
My dad had that idea and he got roped into a position where he has no power and just receives complaints. He's not running for reelection.
Forgive my oversight. Running for office yourself is certainly one of the best things you can do.
There are a bunch of other actions you can take, of course. Phonebanking, doorknocking, etc. And once whoever wins assumes office, call them every day.
It hasn't worked. It gave us Clinton, the OG Epsteincrat. Then it gave us a string of loser shitlibs who caved to fascism at the first shove. And a long string of corporate cutouts - from Biden to Lieberman to Manchin to Fetterman - who only knew how to obstruct from within the Democratic party.
This strategy is why America is the only country in the industrial world without a public health care policy. It's why we have exploding student debts and a housing crisis. Neoliberalism is a curse.
Not trying to be pedantic but the housing crisis is not specific to the US, it's a problem that exists in a lot of the Western world. The leave the other two as special US issues along with gun violence, incarceration rates along with a whole string of other issues that are American exceptionalism.
The US expanded it's housing model to the rest of the world. The concept of a mortgage - a lifelong debt to some faceless creditors for the privilege of not being homeless - is recent and local. And the hyper-financialization of these debts, resulting in exploding administrative costs, is even more recent and local.
It's a creature of the American economy that has been spread by American banks for the purpose of juicing American profits.
What is your strategy and can you point to it having worked recently? Electing Obama was preferable to electing McCain, was it not? Electing Clinton was preferable to reelecting Bush Sr., was it not? Electing Hillary would have been preferable to Trump. Y/N? Electing Biden was preferable to reelecting Trump. Y/N? Electing Harris would have been preferable to Trump. Y/N?
This isn't complicated. The system is dead simple, and certain people keep making the wrong choices. We are a democracy. We have the government we have not because choices are being forced on us, but because our citizens keep making shitty choices. Can we not? Please?
It's difficult to say. Would a John McCain Presidency with a Dem Congressional majority have produced the kind of progressive compromises that Bush/Pelosi and Reagan/O'Neil gave up?
Would it have all ended like Clinton's second term, with Corporate Dems selling off the farm while crying about how the President made them do it?
In the same way it's difficult to say "Hillary would be better than Trump" without knowing the fresh new horrors her campaign would have inflicted. Or, for that matter, whether a Hillary 2016 just ends in a Trump 2020.
It's all empty speculation. And it's all just predicated on eating what these corrupt organizations churn out.
The system is what it does. If you think the outcomes are wrong, then you either acknowledge the system itself is broken or you give up on the concept of liberal democracy.
Because the US isn't unique. Trumpie candidates have been popping out of neoliberal democratic systems for over a century. "The voters are wrong" is a sentiment directly at odds with the democratic model. The voters can't be wrong, unless you've identified some Guardian Council better suited to select the candidates.
Nope. People are bastard coated bastards with bastard filling and will continually fuck things up for stupid reasons.
The system is incredibly complicated. You've just been too absent to notice, and this is not a good system... Its terrible.
And wow... What a choice we have! Corpo pigs or corpo pigs with sharper teeth. Elections have some effect but that study from Princeton years ago LITERALLY showed that elections are mainly useless. https://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-echochambers-27074746
Organizing, community structuring, mutual aid, decentralizing, educating are all completely necessary alongside it. Honestly, often in replacement of the complete failure our system is.
And I know I'm about to be accused of being a anti-voting shill who has been recruited right before midterms. I'm not, I do vote (very intentionally and informed) every election, but I think we need to do SOOO much more.
Show me the better alternative to voting strategically. I never claimed the US system is great and perfect and directly produces wonderful results. Nobody over age 12 believes that bullshit, especially not lately.
In our deeply, deeply flawed system, consistently voting strategically is one of the most effective things we can do to effect change for good. Not perfect, but good. I urge all my fellow citizens to master the art of holding their noses and voting for the candidate more likely to improve their lives, or less likely to fuck them over. The alternative is accelerationism towards collapse, and the people on the left who say they want that are all woefully unprepared for the consequences. (The accelerationists on the right are also unprepared, but at least they have a lot of guns.)
As for doing more: I agree. AFTER we charitably elect the lesser evil, we should be calling their offices every day. We should be demonstrating. We should be engaging in civil disobedience. Our jobs do not end on election day, but we should never, ever allow the GOP to seize power electorally when it's so easy to keep them out. That is tying both hands behind our backs and making sure the people in power not only disregard us, but despise us.