Nobody is confused about the fact that Netanyahu is giving the orders, but Biden kept sending cash and weapons (in violation of US law), kept participating in the coverup, and joined the chorus trying to frame anti-genocide protesters as antisemitic. I’m sure he has some stern words for Netanyahu, but that’s not pressure. Biden ought to be in prison. He’s lucky to just have a nickname.

In 2016 Bernie we was running as an issue candidate. Nobody, including Bernie expected him to become a serious contender against the anointed one. He came far closer than expected, close enough for Hillary to never quit whining about it. There is also no such thing as “close” in a primary because once the media declared a winner, the remaining states all avalanche to the expected nominee.

It’s hilarious that you think Carter and Bernie are all that similar. Carter was the first of the neoliberal Democrats. He had integrity, unlike the Democrats to follow, and he was solidly non-interventionist, but that’s pretty much where the similarities end. Carter never had the popularity that Bernie has maintained for over a decade. No Democrat since FDR can match that.

‘This must be Thursday,’ said Arthur to himself, sinking low over his beer. ‘I never could get the hang of Thursdays.’

With many thousands of state and local elections across the country, I do agree that there have to be niche circumstances where a third party strategy works, or might even be best. Even so, I just don’t see that as something that can be built on to ever start winning at a national level.

Even in the case of Bernie, he runs on an “independent” brand, but it’s understood that he is a Democrat.

There is no doing it the hard way. That’s an adolescent fantasy. The wealthy will just coop any such movement to gain even more control.

Winning has to start with massive reform of American culture, and the wealthy have just consolidated control over social media, making it even harder to reach people. The one thing we have going for us is that the US seems to finally understand that the system is broken.

The US is hardly unique in this. Every nation has a closet full of skeletons, and there is a lot of evil happening in the world today that isn’t the fault of the US.

The inevitable outcome I was referring to was the rise of fascism, and it became inevitable the moment we didn’t take the historic opportunity to overthrow neoliberal control of the Democratic party. That was the window to a better world, and we missed it. A Bernie presidency would never have bowed to Israel and genocide.

It has to be a takeover of the Democratic party. Third party strategies are non-starters in a first past the post election system.

I think your assessment is 100% correct.

Yeah! So we should vote in fascism!

Is that what I said? Anyone who voted for Trump did something they “shouldn’t”. Anyone who stayed home did something they shouldn’t. Israel shouldn’t have done a genocide. Biden shouldn’t have supported Israel in committing a genocide. Yeah!?

I’m just adding that Democratic voters shouldn’t have nominated Biden in 2020. Fascist victory became inevitable because of that mistake. The particulars of losing this election are almost irrelevant. If it wasn’t Trump, it would be someone else. If it wasn’t 2024, then it would be 2028.

The Democratic strategy of being marginally less shitty than Republicans is predicated on the assumption that voters will consistently make the most rational decisions in all circumstances. That was a dumb assumption and one that should die with this election. It’s not good enough to be marginally less enthusiastic about supporting a genocide.

That’s just human nature. If Democrats can’t take that into account in their campaign plans, then they deserve to lose. If Democratic voters keep nominating uninspiring milquetoast neoliberals, then we deserve to lose too.

This outcome belongs to anyone who voted to nominate Biden in 2020, just as much as it belongs to anyone who didn’t show up in 2024. The first outcome was always going to lead to the second. It was totally predictable (and predicted).

Too lazy to assemble a complete thought so someone might know what the fuck you’re talking about?

I’d sure be happy if we were just starting Bernie’s second term. With third way neoliberalism still firmly in control of the Democrats, an eventual fall to fascists was inevitable. It just happened to be this election.

This might come off as funny if it weren’t for the fact that “genocide Joe” is entirely fair.

After literal decades of trying to convince the Democratic establishment that being marginally better than the fascists isn’t “good enough”, I don’t personally have much tolerance for scolding voters. Maybe this election could have been won, but the eventual outcome was inevitable. Neoliberalism is woefully incapable of restraining fascism.

Why ask for examples if your just going to reject them on principle?

On it’s face, the idea that every Republican politician is right of every one of their voters on every issue is ridiculous. Republican voters, like all voters, compromise.

Oh, piss off. You clearly are beyond help of reason. Too bad the rest of us have to live with the consequences of your stubborn stupidity.

I never said Democrats are “good on climate change.”, so why the fuck put it in quotes? They are better than Republicans, and that’s just reality. But no, we get worse so you can take the moral high ground to watch the world burn.

I shouldn’t have to explain that “you” refers to all proponents of the third party strategy, not you personally.

If you want people to do what you say then, yeah, it falls on you to convince them that it makes sense. It doesn’t fall on me to convince people to follow a deeply flawed strategy that I think will only lead to even worse outcomes when it fails yet again.

We both want to put better people in power and remove the people running the Democratic party from power. There is an inside strategy to do that, and an outside strategy to do that. The inside strategy has more of a chance to win, and less of a downside if it fails.

People didn’t vote Democrats this time around, and the world is about to get a whole lot worse. Gaza isn’t the only thing that matters. It isn’t even the worst ongoing genocide. Assuming you didn’t vote for Harris, did you even consider what a Trump win means for those other genocides? What it means for the people of Ukraine? Does it somehow help Gaza that we are about to do ethnic cleansing right here at home? Trump turning back the clock on fighting climate change alone will make Gaza look quaint.

I know who’s implementing the plan for totalitarian disaster. It’s morons who don’t understand politics.

EXACTLY! You do get it! Yes, that is EXACTLY the problem. How do you convince me that if I vote third party that they will too? How do you convince them that I will vote third party?

Here is the brilliant argument you are making put just a bit differently. “If enough people would just vote the way I want them to vote, we could elect who I want to elect!”. Congratulations, on that brilliant observation!

Here is the thing. If you had the power to do that, inside or outside strategy would no longer even matter. You could pick the winning candidates for the Democratic primary then pick them to win the general, or you could pick your third party candidate to win, and it would work fine either way.

But you can’t do that. You actually have to convince people to go your way. I’m still not hearing how you plan to do that for an outside strategy when every attempt to do so has failed miserably. I’ll ask again. How do you plan to run a third party strategy differently in 2028 than in 2024 or prior elections. How do you convince me or anyone else that you have enough people on board? I’m not even convinced that most Democrats even want a third party - nevermind being willing to risk splitting the vote to get there.

The independent party got 18.9% of the vote for one office in 1992, and then dropped to 8.4% in 1996, and then didn’t even get a candidate on the ballot in 2000. That’s hardly a record that’s dispositive of anything I have said, and it’s still focusing on just one office that can’t do much of anything without legislative support. A progressive Democrat might get congressional Democrats to cooperate, but a third party president would face solid opposition from both Democrats and Republicans. If your plan doesn’t include taking congress, then it will fail even if you do get a president.

This isn’t a predictive theory,

I’m not asking for a prediction, I’m asking for a strategy. What do you propose to do differently in the 2028 election from what has failed repeatedly? People aren’t going to risk a third party vote en masse unless they think everyone else is going to do it. Also, up to this point we have been largely acting like most Democratic voters would rather be voting third party, but that’s just not true. Democratic party favorability is at a low right now, but is still at 40% of the electorate. How are you going to convince voters who don’t even desire a third party option to risk electing a Republican?

If the left had enough influence over voters to elect a third party candidate, then they could have nominated Bernie in 2020. The media called Bernie a fringe candidate, and voters became fearful that Bernie would lose. If voters wouldn’t take that risk (imaginary as I personally think it was) they are never going to take the much bigger and more real risk of voting 3rd party in the general - not in the numbers you need.

That’s why I’m out here, saying it, over and over again.

Repeating bullshit over and over doesn’t make it not-bullshit. If we had the influence required to pull off a 3rd party victory then we could just as easily take over the Democratic party with a hell of a lot less risk.

Certain Republicans, yes. The Republican party just won the working class for the first time since Reagan.

It is a carefully cherrypicked subset of the game theory.

LOL wat? Referring to the part of game theory that applies to the question at hand isn’t cherry picking. Sorry.

the PRESUMPTION that the rest of the population is already voting one way, which is NOT a guaranteed premise.

No, it’s not. There is no guarantee required. The evidence, based on 50+ previous years of past elections, is that there will be no mass exodus from the two party system. At the very least you should be putting forward some theory of action for why the next time will be different but you don’t, because you can’t.

I’m not being “defeatist”, I’m saying that your particular plan leads to guaranteed defeat. You appear to have lost the ball. Getting a third party into power is not the goal, it’s a spectacularly ineffective path to the goal. There are other paths that are not guaranteed, but are the only paths that have ever achieved anything.