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The problem with strategic voting arguments are several: 1) There is a clear value to voting Green in terms of building the party. The more people vote Green,

The problem with strategic voting arguments are several: 1) There is a clear value to voting Green in terms of building the party. The more people vote Green, the more visible the success of the party, the better they do in future elections. Not all of what happens in an election need be about winning the current contest. 2) The idea of a linear political spectrum with candidates neatly arranged from 'good' to 'worse' to 'bad' is bunkum. In particular Libertarians are an obvious divergence from this model (and often emphasize this), and this strategic voting argument makes zero sense in their case. Greens also are generally quite different from Democrats ideologically (notably on war); the idea that a Democrat is a 'better compromise' is vulgar to many. 3) If a party wants your votes, generally they should take up the positions you favor, not refuse to countenance them on the belief that duty requires you to vote for them. 4) Mitt Romney is looking pretty good right now, even compared to Clinton.

PhasmaFelis 10y ago
> 1) There is a clear value to voting Green in terms of building the party. The more people vote Green, the more visible the success of the party, the better they do in future elections. Not all of what happens in an election need be about winning the current contest. That makes sense in the abstract. In concrete reality, Trump is going to do his best to persecute hundreds of thousands of Americans, notably Hispanics and Arabs. (I don't say "Muslims" because I don't think his policies, or the people carrying them out, will recognize a functional distinction.) Shall we tell those people as they're being persecuted and deported that their suffering is okay, because they're contributing to the Greens possibly having a chance at winning in 20 years? I don't think we can reasonably ask that of people.
- astazangasta 10y ago
  This is exactly the same thing we hear every election. You can't climb a hill if you don't ever try to go up. Of course I don't believe in elections so this whole debate is academic to me. In a world with ALEC and WPP, elections have nothing to do with governance.
  - PhasmaFelis 10y ago
    Presumably you're not Hispanic or Arab, so you don't have much to be afraid of personally? It's easy to tell other people to sacrifice for your goals.
    - xlxlxlx 10y ago
      You could say the same of Syrians and Libyans, who would have undoubtedly enjoyed a better fate under a 2012 Jill Stein presidency.
    - astazangasta 10y ago
      I'm Indian, though not Muslim, but certainly frequently mistaken as such by racists. One of my close friends is a Muslim with three daughters she fears for daily. I have much to fear for personally. But the idea that we have nothing to fear except Trump is bullshit. Trump didn't bring us here. Bush, Clinton and Obama did. Fifteen years of terror and violence in the Mideast did. Actually sixty years if you want. I fought hard to stop the Iraq war that Clinton voted for. She has nothing to be afraid of personally. I've been afraid too long.
delecti 10y ago
2) Answering first to set up some points. Political beliefs can't be neatly arranged on a linear spectrum, but certainly far fewer people who might really prefer Green are going to instead settle for Trump. I agree that it's less clear about the Libertarian party, as they seem to draw a bit from "both ends of the spectrum", but I think it's safe to say that the Green party isn't spoiling things for the GOP to the same extent that they are for the Dems. 1) I agree that there is value in building strong third parties, but that value comes at the cost of the risk of the spoiler effect as I described. If presidential elections happened every year, or if there was a bigger push from the bottom (State and Legislative elections) to elect more third parties, then maybe the risk would be worth it to establish the base, but that's not the case, and a President can do a lot of damage in 4 years. 3) I think both Trump and Bernie have demonstrated a more viable way to accomplish that this election. Both have moved the Overton Window in a direction that the entrenched party candidates were unwilling to prior to this election. For example, Bernie pushed the Dem platform adopt "raise the minimum wage to $12, or maybe more", when they weren't strongly pushing for it prior. 4) I think that 2016 Romney sounds pretty good, but pandering 2012 Romney still sounds pretty awful. Similarly 2000 McCain sounds great in retrospect, but 2008 or even 2016 McCain sounds pretty awful as well.
- astazangasta 10y ago
  I object to the whole term 'spoiler'. These people are not obliged to vote for you if they believe you to be the devil incarnate. For many the alternative to voting Democrat would be to not vote. Is this, also, unacceptable? Nay, any who doesn't vote to stop the dread spectre of Trump and advance the rule of Clinton is a traitor? My feeling on Clinton is that she, and many of the other people in government, are horrifying murderers and traitors. Obama has two main roles: fundraise for the Democrats and sell weapons to Saudi Arabia. Clinton has been paid millions of dollars by Goldman Sachs, a company that had a major hand in constructing the housing bubble whose bursting blanked $24 trillion in wealth from America. I am just giving you a bare illustration of my disagreements with Clinton. I held my nose and voted for Sanders in the primary. I probably won't even vote for Jill Stein. There is no way for someone like me to even begin to express my antipathy to the current form of American political process and system of government. To many people like me, you are asking them to vote for Al Capone because John Wayne Gacy is worse. Perhaps you think people like me don't matter. But the truth is there are probably a lot of people like me. And there are probably a lot of people of a similar bent on the right (though with different stories for why we should hate and fear the same elites). And this political system doesn't reflect our desires, and, as you're arguing in this thread, by design it cannot; it seems lunatic to me to attempt to engage with it. So, I won't be voting Clinton, nor Trump. But I am not a spoiler; the barrel is fully rotten.
Spoom 10y ago
I'm not trying to argue that you should never vote third party. If you are so ideologically opposed to the Democratic and Republican platforms that you truly see no difference between them in terms of the success of their governance, then sure, vote for a third party. I don't personally think that way, and I believe there would be a huge difference between a Clinton and a Trump presidency, so I will vote strategically because I want to have an impact on the real election happening here, that between the two front-runners.

PhasmaFelis 10y ago

> 1) There is a clear value to voting Green in terms of building the party. The more people vote Green, the more visible the success of the party, the better they do in future elections. Not all of what happens in an election need be about winning the current contest. That makes sense in the abstract. In concrete reality, Trump is going to do his best to persecute hundreds of thousands of Americans, notably Hispanics and Arabs. (I don't say "Muslims" because I don't think his policies, or the people carrying them out, will recognize a functional distinction.) Shall we tell those people as they're being persecuted and deported that their suffering is okay, because they're contributing to the Greens possibly having a chance at winning in 20 years? I don't think we can reasonably ask that of people.

astazangasta 10y ago
This is exactly the same thing we hear every election. You can't climb a hill if you don't ever try to go up. Of course I don't believe in elections so this whole debate is academic to me. In a world with ALEC and WPP, elections have nothing to do with governance.
- PhasmaFelis 10y ago
  Presumably you're not Hispanic or Arab, so you don't have much to be afraid of personally? It's easy to tell other people to sacrifice for your goals.
  - xlxlxlx 10y ago
    You could say the same of Syrians and Libyans, who would have undoubtedly enjoyed a better fate under a 2012 Jill Stein presidency.
  - astazangasta 10y ago
    I'm Indian, though not Muslim, but certainly frequently mistaken as such by racists. One of my close friends is a Muslim with three daughters she fears for daily. I have much to fear for personally. But the idea that we have nothing to fear except Trump is bullshit. Trump didn't bring us here. Bush, Clinton and Obama did. Fifteen years of terror and violence in the Mideast did. Actually sixty years if you want. I fought hard to stop the Iraq war that Clinton voted for. She has nothing to be afraid of personally. I've been afraid too long.

delecti 10y ago

2) Answering first to set up some points. Political beliefs can't be neatly arranged on a linear spectrum, but certainly far fewer people who might really prefer Green are going to instead settle for Trump. I agree that it's less clear about the Libertarian party, as they seem to draw a bit from "both ends of the spectrum", but I think it's safe to say that the Green party isn't spoiling things for the GOP to the same extent that they are for the Dems. 1) I agree that there is value in building strong third parties, but that value comes at the cost of the risk of the spoiler effect as I described. If presidential elections happened every year, or if there was a bigger push from the bottom (State and Legislative elections) to elect more third parties, then maybe the risk would be worth it to establish the base, but that's not the case, and a President can do a lot of damage in 4 years. 3) I think both Trump and Bernie have demonstrated a more viable way to accomplish that this election. Both have moved the Overton Window in a direction that the entrenched party candidates were unwilling to prior to this election. For example, Bernie pushed the Dem platform adopt "raise the minimum wage to $12, or maybe more", when they weren't strongly pushing for it prior. 4) I think that 2016 Romney sounds pretty good, but pandering 2012 Romney still sounds pretty awful. Similarly 2000 McCain sounds great in retrospect, but 2008 or even 2016 McCain sounds pretty awful as well.

astazangasta 10y ago
I object to the whole term 'spoiler'. These people are not obliged to vote for you if they believe you to be the devil incarnate. For many the alternative to voting Democrat would be to not vote. Is this, also, unacceptable? Nay, any who doesn't vote to stop the dread spectre of Trump and advance the rule of Clinton is a traitor? My feeling on Clinton is that she, and many of the other people in government, are horrifying murderers and traitors. Obama has two main roles: fundraise for the Democrats and sell weapons to Saudi Arabia. Clinton has been paid millions of dollars by Goldman Sachs, a company that had a major hand in constructing the housing bubble whose bursting blanked $24 trillion in wealth from America. I am just giving you a bare illustration of my disagreements with Clinton. I held my nose and voted for Sanders in the primary. I probably won't even vote for Jill Stein. There is no way for someone like me to even begin to express my antipathy to the current form of American political process and system of government. To many people like me, you are asking them to vote for Al Capone because John Wayne Gacy is worse. Perhaps you think people like me don't matter. But the truth is there are probably a lot of people like me. And there are probably a lot of people of a similar bent on the right (though with different stories for why we should hate and fear the same elites). And this political system doesn't reflect our desires, and, as you're arguing in this thread, by design it cannot; it seems lunatic to me to attempt to engage with it. So, I won't be voting Clinton, nor Trump. But I am not a spoiler; the barrel is fully rotten.

Spoom 10y ago

I'm not trying to argue that you should never vote third party. If you are so ideologically opposed to the Democratic and Republican platforms that you truly see no difference between them in terms of the success of their governance, then sure, vote for a third party. I don't personally think that way, and I believe there would be a huge difference between a Clinton and a Trump presidency, so I will vote strategically because I want to have an impact on the real election happening here, that between the two front-runners.