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You'd think midterms would be a great time to get your name out there and run high profile candidates to win House districts led by charlatans...
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this post was submitted on 30 Jun 2024
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Political Memes
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If third parties were more effective then the screaming about them "stealing votes" that are supposedly owed to the two main parties would just be louder.
Just like the two main parties are not owed votes, neither are third parties owed votes. If a Democrat has to earn my vote, then so too do third party candidates. And they've done an incredibly poor job of doing so.
Don't get me wrong, you have a good point. I just find the third parties to be completely unserious and not at all focused on actually making a difference. I would prefer for them to be more effective and to actually try to earn my vote instead of just running on "I'm not the other two!".
It's my opinion that the FPTP system not only disadvantages third parties with game theory, but it also leads to batshit insane third parties that really aren't serious.
When third parties start winning races, you see states and other election institutions finding new ways to exclude them.
I'm reminded of the Commission on Presidential Debates, which was created to freeze out the League of Women Voters (who had been running debates since '72) by transferring governance of the debates to the heads of the RNC and DNC. This effectively cartelized the debate process.
After 1996, when Republicans blamed the third party contender Ross Perot of throwing the election to Clinton one too many times, the CPD raised the criteria for participating in debates to each candidate needing 15% support in national polling, functionally excluding all non-major parties.
But this pushed the more radical elements into the primaries, as we witnessed in 2008, 2012, 2016, 2020, and 2024. Long-shot candidates could find a podium on the stage with as little as 2% national support in the Dem or Republican primaries. The primaries have become a de facto third party venue, as a result. And this has created a crisis of "elect-ability" that party leaders are attempting to tame in their own way, by freezing out challengers through their own arcane procedures and rules.
It feels increasingly like we're going back to the old Smoke Filled Room model of candidate selection.
Democracy. The most functional kind. Trust me, I've tried every democracy ever and this is the one that works. I'm that guy
The interesting thing is, the US has helped setup several democracies over the years. Not once did they encourage a US style system.
That's mainly because the U.S. system is antiquated in all sorts of ways and basically everyone understands that, iirc Ruth Bader Ginsburg specifically said the constitution was outdated and that modern framers of a constitution would be much better off looking at Germany's and South Africa's than the United State's for inspiration.
Also getting sued into the ground.
If this lame post from OP was accurate it would say "Isn't it kinda weird that I only think about third parties every 4 years?"
Because they do exist during all of the other years, if you're paying attention
Oh I think about them a lot more often, especially when I look at my midterm ballots and see the occasional third party candidate for a local race, and there's been absolutely no campaigning nor advertising effort. Or, when I see a race that a Republican is running unopposed, and third parties have wasted a perfectly good opportunity in running a candidate there.
If third parties want to win, they cannot rely on people doing personal research beforehand. I like to do so, but I'm certainly in the minority.
That has been a big issue that led us here, that people started taking Memes at face value.
You're spot on. There's far more I'd like to say about third parties (and have been in the comments). Memes don't lend themselves well to longform opinions, and most discussions need to be longform.
They're better as a starting point for conversation instead of actual conversation.