Nah, they can have it. It’s always been a symbol of white supremacy and subjugation. I don’t want it.

I think trying to both primary Vichy Democrats and run a 3rd party bid at the same time would be enormously counter-productive.

If people start campaigning and supporting a third-party right now, there’s actually a shot to win some house seats and local elections next year.

No, there isn’t. We’re heading into a midterm where a lot of the typically disengaged public will be afraid and in strong opposition to the incumbent party. That’s going to draw a lot of people towards the Democrats, and there will be a strong “Blue no matter who” push to convince people to vote strategically. The Democratic establishment will be fighting even harder against any third parties they might see as spoilers than they will be against the GOP.

You’re right that the upcoming midterms present a great opportunity, but it’s not in a third party. It’s in a primary push. Rather than talking about a 3rd party that has almost no chance at materializing and even less chance at winning, all our effort should be put towards convincing people they need to show up in the primaries and vote for the most anti-establishment, most left-wing Democratic primary candidates they can.

That’s where the real opportunity lies. Primaries get such an incredibly small voter turnout that a relative handful of voters can swing primaries. Then, once a real leftist progressive wins the primary, the whole force of anti-fascist electoral politics will be behind them in the general. It’ll be easy to paint any Republican as a fascist, which will make it easy to frame any Democrat as a rational choice, regardless how far left they may be. When that progressive is the ONLY alternative to GOP fascists on the ballot, they’ll have a much easier time of winning.

Get people who don’t normally vote and who hate Democratic leadership/establishment to vote in the primaries. Run progressives in the primaries. Take over the party. That’s the only way this could work.

I don’t think systems are immutable. That’s exactly my point. They are, but you have to have a strategy that can actually accomplish it. Systems aren’t changed by people just dreaming of a better one. They’re changed by motivated people executing a successful strategy.

Imma press ‘x’ to doubt…

Again, you’re missing the point. I’m not debating the overall end goal. I’m talking about the strategy to achieve it.

Just saying “the Electoral College is bad, so let’s get rid of it” is fine, but it’s not a strategy to make it happen. That’s a goal. What is the strategy to make it happen?

Likewise, just listing off a set of popular policies and saying “let’s make a new party” isn’t a strategy to actually achieving those goals. I’m not saying that voting for a 3rd party is bad because it “steals” votes from a major party. I’m saying it’s bad because it’s an effectual strategy to achieving the goal of enacting the policies in OP’s post.

You’re absolutely right that the 2 party system sucks and that the Democrats are awful. But, again, that’s not a strategy to achieve your goals. Like it or not, but none of us will ever break the 2-party system by forming a new party or complaining about how bad it is.

If you compare, say, the Democratic Party of the 1920s to the Democratic Party of the 1960s, they’re drastically different, almost diametrically opposed to each other on nearly every policy. Likewise if you compare the GOP of the 1950s to the GOP of the 1980s. Or the Democratic Party of the 1970s to the Democratic Party of the 200s. Or the GOP of the 2000s to the GOP today. How did those changes happen?

In every single instance it happened not by a new 3rd party forming or outside agitators pushing the parties. It happened because a fringe element of the party enacted an organized push in the primaries to co-opt the party, won a convincing general election victory, then strongarmed the rest of the party into ideological compliance. That’s how parties change in the US, not by being supplanted by a new party. You want a real, left-wing progressive party? Get behind a massive push to primary key Democratic leadership (I call them the Vichy caucus), win a general election, then strongarm the party into compliance.

The data in the poll is correct, but people don’t vote on policy. The problem is that OP is framing voters as hyper rational people who sit down to form a long list of their policy preferences, then examine each candidate and select the one that best aligns with themself.

Nobody, and I mean NOBODY, votes like that, and they never have. They look at the candidates and pick the one that’s more entertaining/has better vibes, then justify their support by either changing or disregarding their personal policy preferences, or (more often) convincing themself that the candidate supports whatever they support, regardless of the candidate’s stated positions.

That’s not what I’m saying at all. I’m saying play the game to win. Don’t start with a losing strategy.

Because people don’t vote on policy, they vote on personality and vibes. It’s how it’s always been. This list of policies is (mostly) just a copypasta of the Democratic platform. But people have never voted that way. The Democrats put forth the crypt keeper, then replaced him with one of the most boring public speakers to come out of the Democratic Party in a generation. And they were running against someone who is a horrific fascist, yes, but also has stage presences and charisma and knows how to play to an audience. As much as he’s one of the worst people on the planet, Trump knows how to make himself entertaining to watch.

That’s what drives votes for politically disengaged people who don’t pay attention to politics until the middle of October every 4 years. They listen to who is more entertaining and pretend like that candidate is telling them what they want to hear, regardless of whether or not he is.

Which will never happen unless at least 1 of the 2 major parties is co-opted and taken over by people who specifically want to eliminate Citizen’s United, put a strong, enforceable cap on private political donations, and block corporations from donating to campaigns.

A 3rd party is never going to be successful enough to accomplish any, let alone all of that. Republicans will never get money out of politics because it benefits them too much. It hurts the Democratic Party overall, but it directly benefits the Vichy wing of collaborationists leading the party, so they won’t back campaign finance reform unless the Democratic Party is wholly overtaken.

Naïveté or willful ignorance. Either way, a new 3rd party won’t accomplish anything useful.

That’s just my point. It wasn’t a party like OP here is calling for. It was a movement within the Republican Party.

What OP is calling for here is kinda the exact opposite. The Tea Party movement successfully got a bunch of people who typically don’t engage in politics to join and vote for Republicans. The never had a problem of ballot access or competing with an ideologically similar opponent in general elections because they weren’t a different party. OP here is calling for people to vote for a new third party. That’s a completely different thing.

What 3rd party did they create? The last significant (and I use that word very loosely here) new US 3rd party was the Green Party formed in the 90s.

I appreciate and agree with the sentiment, but I think a call to form an entirely new political party demonstrates a naivety with regards to how the American political system works. It’s just not going to happen. A third party will NEVER displace one of the two major parties without massive changes to the electoral system that would likely require a Constitutional Amendment.

Our system and political culture is just not structured to allow for 3rd parties. What’s more, the 2 major parties have ingrained themselves into the system so much that they have MASSIVE institutional advantages over a 3rd party.

This will never be a successful effort. I think a better goal would be to co-opt and take over the Democratic Party, booting out all the Vichy collaborationists like Schumer, Jefferies, Newsom, Adams, Pelosi, etc, and remaking the party.

With a new 3rd party, best case scenario is it has 0 impact. If it does get any votes, it’ll just divide the anti-fascist vote with the Democrats (and any other 3rd parties) making it even more difficult to win.

Given how the American political system works, I think their impact would be even more limited if they did not work within the Democratic Party. I think the only hope for a real national progressive/leftist party is to takeover and co-opt the Democratic Party, much like Trump did with the Republican Party.

Most didn’t. Only ~23% of the population voted for him.