He also said that the danger posed by another Trump term doesn’t excuse Biden from scrutiny but “actually makes him more subject to scrutiny.”
To leftists and progressives fed up with Biden, particularly his commitment to Israel as it continues to bomb civilians in Gaza, the assessment was not just fair — it was obvious. But more centrist Democrats, including those most likely to have appended “Blue Wave” and “Resistance” labels to their social media accounts in the Trump years, were appalled at what they saw as a betrayal by one of their own.
We’re not talking “literally” a vote for the major candidate you like least. We’re talking “mathematically” a vote for the major candidate you like least.
Since FPTP voting systems like the US employees do not require any candidate to achieve a majority, FPTP systems eventually decay into two major parties, and voting for a third party after that decay is a vote against your own interests.
Here’s a young CGP Grey explaining it beautifully 12 years ago.
mathematically, the vote goes +1 to the candidate for whom you vote. the rest of this is storytelling.
No shit the +1 goes to the candidate for whom you vote. No one is disputing that. The problem is, the third party candidate will not win.
In a FPTP system that has devolved to two parties, without a major political upheaval bringing about the death of one of the two parties, there are, realistically, only two candidates who have a chance of winning the election.
If you vote for neither of those two candidates, the candidate it benefits the most is the major candidate you agree with the least. This is called the “Spoiler Effect.” This is Nader taking sufficient votes from Gore in 2000 to hand the election to Bush, because Green Party voters would have, given something like the Alternative Vote or Ranked Choice Voting, ended up mostly being Gore votes.
This is Teddy Roosevelt running independent in 1912 and getting Woodrow Wilson, an extremely racist shitbag, elected president by taking Republican voters away from Taft.
And we all understand this effect, because when it looked like Trump might lose the primary in 2016 and was threatening to run anyway, Democrats were thrilled because it would guarantee a Democrat win by splitting the conservative vote.
This “Spoiler Effect” is what is meant when someone says that voting third party is a vote against your own interests in a FPTP system. It’s the major reason FPTP is a terrible voting system.
>This is Nader taking sufficient votes from Gore in 2000 to hand the election to Bush, because Green Party voters would have, given something like the Alternative Vote or Ranked Choice
Voting, ended up mostly being Gore votes.
gore won that election. the supreme court appointed bush.
The Supreme Court wouldn’t have been able to do so had Gore more demonstrably won Florida, which he would’ve done without Nader. That’s the point.
>The Supreme Court wouldn’t have been able to do so had Gore more demonstrably won Florida, which he would’ve done without Nader. That’s the point.
there is no way to prove this.
>the third party candidate will not win.
where did you get your crystal ball?
SkyMall, but it’s a bit hazy on predicting the future. My assurance that the third party candidate won’t win instead comes from paying a modicum of attention to US politics and not being disingenuous.
your insinuation of disingenuity is bad faith.
>This “Spoiler Effect” is what is meant when someone says that voting third party is a vote against your own interests in a FPTP system.
voting for biden or trump is explicitly voting against my interest. my interest is in neither of them having power.