If Sanders doesn’t get the nomination, and you can’t see yourself voting for Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump, then don’t. Vote third party.
Consider the Libertarian or Green Party.
Don’t feed the establishment by voting for Clinton, and don’t feed authoritarian isolationism by voting for Trump.
No. The absolute largest chunk of people considering changing their votes at the moment are disappointed non-conservatives. There was barely any competition among republicans; from the get-go, the voter base united behind Trump. If non-conservatives split their votes across multiple fronts, they WILL lose.
Voting third party in America throws your vote directly into the garbage. Our system does not work like Australia’s. You don’t get a second or third choice, and candidates who win aren’t going to look at the numbers and say “I see 25% of Americans voted Green, I should implement Green policies.” That’s not how it works. Conservative voters overwhelmingly back a single party, the GOP, while non-conservative voters are the ones that scatter across multiple, weak fronts when faced with an unappealing Democratic party nominee. Think about it like this:
The majority of Republican voters support Trump and are not changing their vote even though party leaders and figureheads are universally decrying him. They’ve been groomed for decades by the GOP to be this way, and now party leaders have lost control of the impressionable voter base they created for themselves. There’s nothing they can do about it at this point. While a small number of Republicans can and are switching parties, it’s not very much. Meanwhile, Democrats are floundering, trying to decide which front to unite under. Some of them go to the Green party or Libertarians, sure; the rest stay with the Democratic party in the hopes that even with people leaving, they will have enough to block Trump. But Trump doesn’t need a majority of total Americans to vote for him; he only needs more than the other candidates have. Do you understand what I’m saying? Trump could get 10% of the vote, but as long as no other party has more than 10%, he still wins. The second you split the left and middle across three or four fronts, the right seizes control. This is how it goes down every single fucking time we go through this.
The other thing to consider is that the electoral college is NOT going to weigh in favor of a third party. Doing so would be political suicide. They are paid to vote certain ways, and not doing so would fuck up their careers. Even if an entire state votes in favor of a third party, the electoral college is going to vote for whichever primary party matches up the closest, and sometimes not even that. Their votes are counted when making the actual choice of president; ours are not. They proved that with Gore. The majority of Americans voted for him; the electoral college installed Bush anyway and told us to suck it up. The question at this point is whether they’d risk it a second time, and we have to hope that they won’t, which is why we have to unite under a single front to block Trump.
DON’T THINK THIS IS LEGIT? do some research on ralph nader and his affect on the 2000 election. to this day, my dad still says that’s one of his biggest regrets. voting third party may feel rebellious and cool while you do it, but you’re effectively letting the two-party system win by trying to protest it.
The Republican Party is about to approve its 2016 platform, and their proposed draft takes a stronger stance against LGBT rights than ever before.
Among many other backwards views on social issues, the platform says:
Marriage equality should be overturned with a constitutional amendment
Judges to be appointed (ahem, SCOTUS) should be advocates for “traditional family values”
Parents should have the right to put their LGBT children through conversion therapy
States should be able to dictate which bathrooms trans people use
Kids who have one mom and one dad are less likely to be drug addicts or “otherwise damaged”
Religious principles should guide lawmaking: “man-made law must be consistent with God-given, natural rights”
Please do not vote Republican in this election. This platform could literally mean life or death for LGBT youth, transgender people, and so many others who will be targeted – strategically and legally – for being who they are.
Just a reminder to every fucking person going ‘BERNIE OR BUST!!!’ or telling people to write in, or just thinking your vote doesn’t matter,
not voting for the democrat nominee regardless of whoever it fucking is will result in the people who support this being in power. When you waste your vote you’re basically handing it over to the people who agree with these bigoted ideas.
Vote in every election you’re eligible for. Don’t let your country push LGBT rights back when it’s taken this long to get the barest fucking minimum.
Me! On why we hate The Devil-Woman Hillary when she’s on the campaign trail, then turn around and laud Bad-Ass Cool Hillary when she gets the job – and what it says about how we view women with ambition and confidence in the world. (Hint: NOT GREAT THINGS.)
I’m gonna just drop in the expanded version of the quote above:
“Campaigning is not succeeding. It’s asking for success, and for power. To campaign is to publicly claim that you are better than the others (usually white men) who want the same job, and that a whole lot of people should work to place you in a more powerful position. In other words, campaigning is a transgressive act for women.”
This is actually v important and needs to be reblogged
Gonna just share this:
My European Studies professor decided a few weeks ago to take a Friday and instead of following the syllabus, he spent the entire hour and a half comparing Hitler’s actions from a European perspective to that of what Trump is doing in America. He never repeated a single point, and even used video and photos like this to show the comparison.
To make things better, he had us do an in class assignment for participation points. He first played a clip on youtube of one of Hilter’s speeches, subtitled and 3 minutes long. He then played a clip of one of Trump’s rallies. Our assignment? Copy down every single sentence that matched in translation down on a sheet of paper or a word document that wasn’t repeated. The person with the closest amount to what my professor found got a candy bar.
My professor found, in just three minutes of a speech, that Trump matched 65 different phrases/sentences to that of Hitler’s translation.
65 nearly identical phrases used in his speeches. Take a moment to think about that.
Like, according to Trump’s first wife Ivana he kept a book of Hitler’s speeches in his nightstand and would read it periodically… so the overlap is not at all surprising given his obsession with Hitler’s propaganda.
I know that so many people will be upset if(when-depending on who you talk to) Hilary gets the nom. But pleeeeeeeeeeeeaaaassssse lord do not let Trump win. In no world is Hilary worse than trump
now that donald trump is the actual GOP nominee this is your reminder that voting for a Democrat You Hate is still a useful harm reduction procedure that will cancel out a vote for Trump. please practice harm reduction. please, even more importantly in small/red states, vote all the way down in your local races where the margins of victory can be 100 votes or 10 votes, so your state legislature/governor/etc will be strong, if/when everything on the national level goes to hell
believe what you want about your vote not having the intended or ideal level of power, believe what you want about the electoral college or the modern role of voting in a democratic society, believe what you want about american centrism or flawed systems, but don’t let anyone tell you there’s “no difference” in the general election, please don’t let anyone tell you voting does nothing. your vote CAN and WILL protect vulnerable people and help you stand in for people whose votes are being taken away by a gutted VRA and gerrymandering
hey team!! cruz went down like the titanic, trump’s got the gop nom locked up, so this seems like a Good Time to remind you:
regardless of your particular feelings about sanders or clinton or sanders/clinton (…ew) or socialism or the zodiac killer, on november 8 2016 you gotta
VOTE DOWN THE TICKET
what does this mean?
it means that the presidential vote is not the most important vote you’ll be doing this november!
cos a WHOLE LOTTA PEOPLE go into the poll booth, mark “dem” or “gop” in the presidential box, and take off. which means that YOUR VOTE FOR
senator
house of representatives member
governor
state senator or house of representatives member
mayor
local judge
city council member
school board member
local referendum
(a.k.a., every vote DOWN THE TICKET)
COUNTS MORE
even if you HATE EVERYONE RUNNING FOR PRESIDENT, there is a high chance that there will be someone you don’t hate on the ticket, and you can vote for the lesser of two evils in A FEW RACES and your actual positive favorite in A FEW OTHER RACES
and if you vote DOWN THE TICKET enough then there may be a DEMOCRATIC MAJORITY or even DEMOCRATIC SUPERMAJORITY at the federal level, or a DEMOCRATIC MAJORITY or SUPERMAJORITY in your state government, or a SOCIALIST MAYOR, or LEGALIZATION OF AN IMPORTANT THING, or CRIMINALIZATION OF AN IMPORTANT THING
and things will be a hell of a lot more fun than they were from 2000-2016 (with a brief break for the 2008-2010 democratic majority)!!!!
Voting in down-ticket races is just as (or more!) important as voting for President. The President is not a magic dictator who can do whatever they want. They need Congress to work with them. So even if you decide you can’t vote for the presidential nominee, show up to vote anyway. You can skip the box for president and vote for all the other races.
Voting matters. Show the fuck up.
Please vote.
Basic shit people likely already know, but stands repeating:
Donald Trump has a horrifying chance to ACTUALLY BECOME PRESIDENT.
As it stands, the congress is p. darn republican, and if it stays that way, it means a whole fuckload of ultra shitty conservative bills will get passed, likely in the same vein as ‘NO TRANSGENDER PEOPLE CAN USE PUBLIC BATHROOMS, PERIOD’
We honestly must render him completely fucking useless in office by electing in as far left a congress as we possibly can.
eirenical17 