"Progressives should not make the same mistake that Ernst Thälmann made in 1932. The leader of the German Communist Party, Thälmann saw mainstream liberals as his enemies, and so the center and left never joined forces against the Nazis. Thälmann famously said that ‘some Nazi trees must not be allowed to overshadow a forest’ of social democrats, whom he sneeringly called ‘social fascists.’
After Adolf Hitler gained power in 1933, Thälmann was arrested. He was shot on Hitler’s orders in Buchenwald concentration camp in 1944."
Progressives should not make the same mistake that Ernst Thälmann made in 1932
The mistake Ernst Thälmann made was not throwing his support behind checks notes Paul von Hindenburg, the man who ordered the police massacre of the Spartacus League?
After Adolf Hitler gained power in 1933, Thälmann was arrested.
Who elevated Adolf Hitler to the Chancellorship in 1933?
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They’d have thrown their support behind the centrist, Wilhelm Marx, who lost by about 3%
The Catholic Centre Party was in open - often violent - conflict with the largely atheist-leaning German Communists. The German Catholics were terrified of a repeat of the Spanish Civil War, where Spaniards were revolting against a religious dictatorship and burning down churches.
Von Hindenburg, with the help of the governing coalition formed by the Nazis and DNVP
Wilhelm was aligned with the DNVP as far back as 1923. He was the one who pushed through the Enabling Act of 1923, which the Nazis would ruthlessly exploit a decade later, with their help. And he continued to govern in coalition with the DNVP through 1928, when he was dismissed from the Chancellory by…
Von Hindenburg, with the help of the governing coalition formed by the Nazis and DNVP
So, to answer your question
What point are you trying to make?
My point is that blaming Ernest Thälmann for his minority party position in the German government through 1933 when it would make much more sense to finger Alfred Hugenberg and his DNVP, which abandoned Wilhelm in '28 and aligned with
Von Hindenburg, with the help of the governing coalition formed by the Nazis
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If you live outside the ~5 swing states that decide the election you can go ahead and ignore stuff like this saying you can’t vote third party.
Shoutout PSL
So people who don’t live in swing states should vote third party until there’s enough of them that the state is in danger of going to trump (or whoever)? If they’re successful at some point that’s a threat.
How do we actually get third party candidates to win, not just “oh, Ross Perot Jr got 3% of the vote”?
However you slice it, we’re looking at like a 20 year struggle minimum to get election reform, and it would be at least the same length to elect a third party candidate to the office of president, but that’s a one off thing. (Or more likely that third party would be the new one of two parties)
If we’re committed to the struggle of improving things, we might as well improve a reusable process rather than have a single go at a third party presidential candidate.
If enough people are voting third party that it’s a threat then maybe the other parties should take notice and change to support the popular policies and win back support.
Also we can do more than 1 thing at a time. We should be pushing things like ranked choice voting while also showing our displeasure with the current parties where it makes sense to do so.
Giving support to third parties gives them and the issues they’re promoting more visibility to the general public.
If enough people are voting third party that it’s a threat then maybe the other parties should take notice and change to support the popular policies and win back support.
This does not work in a FPTP system. Every vote you peel off the Democrats just enables the Republicans and sets reform back even farther. The only way telling people to vote 3rd party is helpful is if they were going to vote for the GOP. Peeling votes away from Democrats HURTS the chances of other parties to be viable in the future.
You’re looking at things through there lens of 1 election cycle.
If a third party that’s against the genocide Israel is carrying out gets say 5% of voters in deep blue or deep red states would that not be a signal to the democrats that they should change their stance before the next election?
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Not funding and supplying a genocide seems to be a pretty clear and easy issue to change especially when 60%+ of democrats are in favor of it. We’re already violating our own laws by continuing to do so.
The democrats are already moving to the right even with the left continuing to vote for them. They think they can win over some centrists republicans (even though they can’t in a meaningful number) by adopting right wing policies while not losing the left because at the moment they know votes are guaranteed because “republicans worse”.
Having voters in areas that effectively don’t matter this cycle show there displeasure in the genocide we’re enabling is the least we can do to counter it.
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Republicans are not going to suddenly stop being evil, so what’s the solution? Just endlessly comprise and never accomplish anything? Fuck that. I refuse to be held hostage. If Democrats want leftist votes then they have to deliver leftist policies. Otherwise they’re just as responsible
I’m not voting for Harris. I’m voting against Trump via Harris.
I’m voting for Harris i like the money for middle class people thing
I hope you never suffer an illness or injury that suddenly thrusts you into the group of working poor, living out of the car, couch surfing or sleeping rough.
And they have no clue how close to reality that is for all of them.
There currently is no middle class. There’s people that think they are still middle class, but they are struggling just as much as they poor.
Plus we keep using this outdated first-past-the-post voting system in the 21st century.
Yup. We need ranked choice/instant runoff voting first.
That’s why one should always vote for Democrats who support voting system reform.
Are we talking about the same Democrats that sued to keep ranked choice boating off the DC ballot this year? or the Democrats that chose to keep ranked choice voting that had already been passed by voters off the Alexandria VA ballot?
We could avoid this with ranked choice voting.
in ranked voting there is still the possibility that a fear of a deeper evil driving straight to a bipartisan situation again.
You still have all the same campaigns exacerbating fears with just a different look to the ballot. Ppl could easily fall into the trap of picking their top 1-2 choices based on who they don’t want in power after glued to the screen watching all the drama.
Rcv just seems like the new ev where someone oversells that it fixes all things but hides the cons that we’re all pretty much in the same spot we started.
I agree with this assessment for the most part, but it does seem like the best method for introducing a third party, which the US desperately needs. Do you have a better EV?
Yes, but you’re going to need to find a way to think beyond that, because both parties understand that it’s in their interests to oppose rcv, so “vote democrat until we get rcv” effectively means “vote democrat forever”.
Fundamentally, there is a limit to the extent that a capitalist democracy will tolerate actual democratic power, because eclipsing the power of capitalists obviously means threatening their position. They will not sit idly by and allow their power to be voted away.
Even where there is no prospect of achieving their election the workers must put up their own candidates to preserve their independence, to gauge their own strength and to bring their revolutionary position and party standpoint to public attention. They must not be led astray by the empty phrases of the democrats, who will maintain that the workers’ candidates will split the democratic party and offer the forces of reaction the chance of victory. All such talk means, in the final analysis, that the proletariat is to be swindled. The progress which the proletarian party will make by operating independently in this way is infinitely more important than the disadvantages resulting from the presence of a few reactionaries in the representative body. If the forces of democracy take decisive, terroristic action against the reaction from the very beginning, the reactionary influence in the election will already have been destroyed
Karl Marx 1850
I agree entirely, in regards to politics in 1850’s Germany with its diverse multiparty political ecosystem.
As for current American politics, where we are deeply entrenched in a societal tug-of-war in an ostensible two-party system, where third parties can swing policy in a largely undemocratic direction by spoiling the vote in close elections, I disagree completely. Third parties serve no purpose in a two-party representative democracy.
If we can break the two party political duopoly, then I will never complain about another fringe party voter ever again. Until then, you better fucking vote for the lesser evil, because letting the greater evil win, as we learned in 2017-2020, is really fucking bad.
If anything, letting Democrats win the next few major elections could spell doom for the Republican party as a whole, and give us a chance to introduce some actual competition to the Democratic party.
I wish that I could snap my fingers and have it fixed today, but that’s not how societies work. Accelerationism always requires violence, and violence isn’t how you should uphold democracy, unless you are defending its pillars against a direct threat. A two-party duopoly is something we the people need to defeat.
That means we need to abolish the electoral college, introduce universal mail-in voting, defeat all right-wing disenfranchisement efforts, and introduce ranked-choice voting to all elections. These are radical changes that will take a lot of work to accomplish, and that will face a lot of opposition.
Under Democrat leadership, these things are possible. Under Republican leadership, we’ll be lucky if we still have elections.
If anything, letting Democrats win the next few major elections could spell doom for the Republican party as a whole, and give us a chance to introduce some actual competition to the Democratic party.
This will never happen. The replacement party will be fascist. The Republican Party’s fascism doesn’t exist because of “brainwashing” or “conmen,” it exists because fascism rises from decaying Capitalism. If you don’t get rid of the Capitalism, the conditions for fascism remain.
That means we need to abolish the electoral college, introduce universal mail-in voting, defeat all right-wing disenfranchisement efforts, and introduce ranked-choice voting to all elections. These are radical changes that will take a lot of work to accomplish, and that will face a lot of opposition.
Under Democrat leadership, these things are possible. Under Republican leadership, we’ll be lucky if we still have elections.
The Democrats will never work against their donors. This will never happen.
Especially when their donors are the same donors to the GOP
Your solution to defeating the duopoly is continuing giving them power and participating in it?
Would you like your vote to matter after November?
Then yes, I’m pushing the duopoly this time around.
So if they can’t vote for their views now, and we keep pushing the duopoly, when do we get democracy?
That’s the thing, they never do. They have been pushing the lesser evil splitting the vote bullshit for over 150 years. The only people that benefits is the wealthy
It’s not like your vote matters now. Money has all the power in this country, voters have none. When 1 billionaire has more political influence than entire states you have no power. You’ve surrendered your power to the donor class.
Who do you think has a better chance of fixing that? Putin’s orange Fleshlight? The chick he had dinner with? Brainworm? Some other rando that gets less than 1% of the vote?
I hear you…it’s a problem…
Throwing your vote away this cycle ensures that your vote will never matter again.
The vote thrown away is the vote that’s cast out of fear. The dnc’s entire platform for the last few decades has been. We are not the other guy. You were casting a vote in opposition to the other guy, not in favor of policy or legislation, but not the other guy, that’s a protest vote
No…I’m voting for policy this time around. If I get the state exception for state taxes I get a point and a half back.
Trump’s tariffs should fucking terrify everyone…think shit is expensive now, wait until that goes through.
What’s the 3rd parties offering that has a remote chance of dealing with either of those problems?
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/11/opinion/politicians-voters.html nyt. “Despite extensive public outreach…11%…” The NEW YORK TIMES, of all publications!
This is the epitome of why Democrats hate Trump. He says the quiet things out loud. He has said ‘I dont care about you. I just want your vote.’
This article confirms this, the Princeton study from 2012 confirms this. Several sources have confirmed politicians don’t care about us, only the monied class
Marx didn’t live long enough to see just how ineffectual that line of thinking actually is.
Is the US Socialist? Has Socialism been brought about by establishment parties anywhere in history?
Yes. Look up ‘the New Deal.’
FDR was a Social Democrat, not a Socialist.
If it wasn’t for his Secretary of Labor, Francis Perkins, who was socialist, none of the things that he passed would have ever come to fruition. He gets way too much for credit for the ideology of a female socialist
Same capitalists trying the same failed tactics of voter suppression.
Every one of his perspectives of capitalism and it’s bourgeoisie governments still rings true.
Rings true, isn’t true in actual practice.
Rings true in practice
Are you doing a lot of things exactly the way they did in 1850?
Politics is
