#that if you're not voting third-party ''when there's a Truly Progressive candidate with a Real Chance For Realsies''

[calliopechild]

For the third-party voters arguing that they're pulling for a better candidate with a genuine chance of winning and not splitting the vote--okay. Let's suspend reality pretend that's true. In that case, please answer the following for me:

Why haven't I heard of your third-party candidate before now if they have such a good platform and they're clearly the better alternative? How good of a candidate can they be if they have no public support outside of your very vehement niche on tumblr and apparently no real skill at/infrastructure for getting their message out?

"Well, because they're a small campaign! They're not corporate shills! They aren't taking Dark Money!" Mkay, so are they taking in any money? If they don't have the finances to support their message, let alone their campaign, that doesn't exactly point to the kind of interest that substantiates your claim that they have A Real Chance, Guys, I Swear of winning the election.

For that matter, Insistent That You're Not Splitting The Vote blog, why is it that there is absolutely nothing on said blog about your candidate prior to this spring? Yeah, that's the time frame of most states' primaries, but like...you'd think that since [candidate] is your ideal political blorbo, you would have been boosting their message before then--you know, to support them and get people to vote for them in the primaries. Kinda weird that you weren't enthusiastic about them any earlier than 5 months before the election. Kinda convenient that you're insistent that this, Year Of The Most Fraught And Partisan Election Part 3: Fascism Boogaloo, is the year a third-party candidate totally has a chance.

On the heels of that, what have you been doing to work toward a future where a third-party candidate actually has a real chance? Because there's a whole lot of nothing on your blog about anything helpfully actionable, like how people can work to get ranked-choice voting on their state's ballot. Instead, your blog is mostly just how important it is to "show the Dems people are tired of choosing between two bad candidates by taking your ball and going home instead."

Does your candidate have any political support on the local, regional, or federal level from either party or independents? Because executive orders aside, they aren't getting shit done in their presidency if they don't have any political allies or a party allegiance to draw on.

For that matter, what has your candidate accomplished politically thus far? What can they point to as proof that they could be a successful president?

And the real question it all boils down to: do you really, full honesty, no bullshit believe your candidate can beat Trump?

"Well, if people just--" Nope. No "well, if these 18 extremely fortuitous and equally unlikely things happen" wish-fulfillment scenarios. As things stand right now, in the real world, can your candidate get the necessary votes? Do they have the kind of appeal that can get even lifelong Republicans to endorse them and the track record to back up their campaign promises? Do 270 Electoral College votes' worth of Americans know them and support their policies?

Because unless you're lying to yourself, I'm willing to bet the answer is no. And yeah, this applies to all of the third-party candidates. Look at this piece from Politico: https://www.politico.com/interactives/2024/where-are-third-party-candidates-ballots/ You'll notice that not one of them has managed to get on the ballot for every single state. Please make the extremely obvious conclusions about their chances.

('But calliope, there's another third-party candidate that isn't on there.' Yes, I'm aware. Politico is no doubt aware too. For some wacky reason they decided not to include the Unicorn Party on their list, idk.)

"I'm still not going to support a genocide--" Even if you don't "support a genocide" by voting, I'm sorry to inform you that you are green-lighting a genocide by not acting to prevent a second Trump presidency. Because the reality is that either Kamala or Trump will be winning the election, regardless of what you'd like to believe. If Kamala doesn't win, we get Trump--the guy who wants Netanyahu to "turn Gaza into a parking lot" and wants internment camps in the U.S. for immigrants. You don't want to support a genocide, so instead you're splitting the vote or talking people out of voting so that we end up with both a genocide abroad and one right here at home. Because if you don't think Trump will take the Supreme Court-ordained right to commit any crime he'd like and, backed by the Heritage Foundation, go after immigrants and the LGBT+ community--like he's explicitly said he'll do all throughout the Project 2025 manifesto--then you haven't been paying attention to anything in the last 8 years.

We can't afford a close election like 2020. The right has been tossing around the phrase "civil war" for the last couple years and is just waiting for an excuse. Unless they lose by an undeniable margin, it'll be "stop the steal" and fascist gun nuts storming state buildings and harassing governors and secretaries of state at their homes all over again. And to make sure that we have the margin we need to make it clear Trump has lost, splitting the vote cannot happen.

It's awesome that you're invested in the idea of eliminating the two-party system, because yeah, it's fucked. No arguments here. The two-party system, the Electoral College, the lack of automatic voter registration, the lack of ranked-choice voting...a lot of things are fucked about the U.S. electoral system. But we will be able to change approximately none of them under a Trump presidency, and no one has any chance of beating him in November other than Kamala Harris.

And full offense, but if you're still trying to insist otherwise, I'm genuinely unable to assume you are anything other than stubbornly naive at best and a bad faith actor/psyop at worst.

[heathersdesk]

I'm done having sophisticated arguments with progressive people who won't vote for Kamala Harris.

I actually voted to stop Donald Trump today. I did so in 2016 and 2020, and I'm doing it again in 2024. For the rest of my life I can say that. I've correctly identified the right thing to do three times now, without fail. And I'll do it as many times as it takes.

If you vote third party, you can't say that. You don't get to say that.

You looked at 30 years of Republicans not winning the popular vote, but still taking elections because of third party voters, and said "But this time it'll work because I'm 🦄different🦄"

Y'all want to know the secret to figuring out who you should vote for in every election? Listen to black women, especially from the South. They're the first bodies on the line in America when it all goes sideways. You can trust them to know the right thing to do. And I've seen them out there endlessly telling you what the right thing to do is. It's not a secret.

You third party voters are looking right in the face of every black woman who has told you Kamala is the right choice for the past 3 months and said "I'm smarter than you and I'm not going to listen." They called you out and called you in to care just as much about the genocide against them here at home as you do about the one in Palestine, and you said "No."

I know because I've watched y'all do it. I've been watching you for months now. And every time I tell you that what they've done to me as a woman in Idaho is what they're planning to do to all of you, you look at me like I'm crazy. You're truly arrogant enough to think this can't happen to you.

You're not special. You're a fool. You're gullible enough to do exactly what Republicans and their Russian bot farms have tricked you into doing. You took the bait.

Some of you can still change your vote. You can stop this doubling down foolishness and pick the person who 1. can actually win, 2. has demonstrated that she knows what the right thing to do is, and 3. can be shamed into actually doing the right thing if it comes to that. You can't ask anything more than that. The candidates you're advocating for can't even meet all of those criteria. You know it, and they know it. The fact that they're willing to continue in their current course, knowing that the risk is Donald Trump winning again because of them, should tell you all you need to know about how much they don't care about you.

So what is making you put all your eggs in the basket of someone who can't meet the basic criteria of a viable candidate? What is making you vote against your own best interests and those you claim to care about, against all reason?

We have many words for the irrational and unjustified mistrust of black women. I'm done pretending that this isn't the real reason y'all are acting like this.