I don’t know what country you are from or how your voting system works. But I will guess that your country has many parties and after the election, a governing coalition is formed.

In the US voting system, similar parties get punished by stealing votes from each other. So, in effect, we have to form our coalitions before the election and choose the single candidate that will stand for all of us. So, you can think of the Democratic Party as the Democratic Coalition, made up of some truly left-wing factions, as well as some not very left-wing or even centrist factions, and so our candidate will be much more watered down than what you’d see in a different system.

It is genuinely amazing. I have watched it multiple times since I first saw it! It feels like something that would be funny but should get old after a few minutes, and yet it never does.

The whole talk appears to be done in one continuous take!

Forget telling you, they should just start playing the movie and bill you

Yeah but your eyes are right next to your brain also

Calling the Democratic Party the Democrat Party is a right-wing pejorative

How often do you see toppled democracies get replaced with something awesome? That seems like a pretty big risk.

It’s the container that count, not the content

That’s not what Mr Rogers taught me

My post exactly decried a broken system. I called it a systemic problem! And in fact, it is the people who try to solve it by voting third party who are not realizing the system is broken such that doing so only hurts themselves. The only way to fix it is to figure out a way to have a new voting system. I even gave an example of an alternative one!

I think your response really underscores how we got to the situation where everything in politics is just soundbites and insults and pithy slogans. Actual reality can be wordy to talk about, but people like you can’t be bothered to read it! And then you reply with a new pithy insult like “Blue MAGA”. Take a second to think before you react!

If that dude’s outfit was animated and played noise, and the guy jumped in front of whatever I was looking at and wouldn’t go away, and sometimes he put random shit in my pockets or got me sick, then I’d hate that guy just as much as internet ads

Here is the nuance that is missing:

First-past-the-post voting systems inevitably trend to two-party systems over time. We see it play out in election models and we see it play out in real life.

One reason this happens is because, in this sort of system, voting for a third party candidate that aligns more closely with your views rather than the best choice of the major party candidates statistically increases the likelihood that the candidate furthest from your views will win. A significant, sustained third party that is more to your liking than the Democratic Party would ensure easy GOP victories for as long as all three parties ran their own candidates, even if the GOP never won an actual majority of votes. (We saw Bill Clinton win both elections in the 90s with much less than 50% and no candidate getting 50% due to a major third party candidate).

Another reason is that even if societal circumstances lead to a third party doing well enough to win it all, what you would end up with is having one of the existing major parties collapse, you’d be back to two parties, and the new third party would become watered down into ultimately the same thing it replaced. We’ve also seen this in American history.

In summary, there is tremendous systemic pressure that causes the two-party system. It’s not that our politicians are tricking us and politicians in Europe under different election systems can’t or won’t do the same. If we changed our voting system to e.g. Ranked Choice, not only would third parties be possible, they would be inevitable. But if we don’t change the system, then voting third party is like forcing two strong magnets together that are trying to repel. Even if you’re able to do it briefly, it’s completely unstable and will correct itself as soon as possible.

The oversimplified version of all this is “voting third party is voting for Trump”. I can see why it’s frustrating because it’s not literally true — however, anyone who is interested in maximizing their best interests, i.e. by having the winner be someone as good as possible, is statistically increasing the chances of the worst candidate winning by voting third party over preferred major party, while our voting system remains in place.

So ultimately, a slight rephrase to “voting third party instead of Democrat helps Trump win” is true.

Re-read the thread. CAREFULLY.

Well that plus my last comment where I straight up said “I didn’t say it was the worst take”. I feel like you’ve gotten totally confused

If you want to be pedantic, I also didn’t say it was the worst take, and you didn’t actually say it was the dumbest

It’s not a perfect take, but I’ve seen so many takes insanely worse than this one that I am genuinely unsure what evoked such a strong reaction to it. (Particularly since you provided no explanation.)

And women

I’m not saying that, rather I’m saying that I don’t see how either thing is clearly morally superior.

And of course we can rest assured that nobody profiting off bitcoin is morally questionable

The OED has been like this for at least 15 years (possibly longer but that’s when I first encountered it). So I wouldn’t consider this an appropriate example of the enshittification that’s been taking place of late.

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I mean you could put dashes on either side of “all of them” potentially instead of commas, but commas also work, especially in more poetic prose. Where would you straight-up remove a comma from the line?