taurusowner said:
In real life, a third party candidate will never win. … It's wagering everything you have for the hope of something better, but you will inevitably lose everything you have even faster. In 2008, and in 2012, and 2016, and 2020, etc, the President of the United States of America will be a member of either the Republican Party, or the Democratic Party. … It's a pointless gesture to vote for anyone but the 2 main parties in the general election. … When you vote third party in a general election, you are gambling with all of our futures. Don't end up owing more than you have.
In real life, third party candidates do win. People focus on the Presidential election like it is the only one that matters, and the party composition of the House of Representatives is a sign of how much support the populace is showing for the President. Presidents are not kings—they are figureheads because the founders of this country realized that people need the yummy-spicy feeling of being able to focus on a specific leader sometimes. I will bet my checking account that a third-party candidate will not win any of the next four Presidential elections, as you listed above. I will not gamble on a single election for any candidate at the state level or more local. Third party candidates do win.
Humans have the natural, biological tendency to think myopically. What the hell does that mean? We focus on near periods of time in the future. We think about tomorrow, next week, sometimes next year. And there’s this fuzzy same-ol'-thing will happen beyond that time period, for most people. It takes training and practice to consider long-term investments. Small example: you own stock in a publicly traded company, and its price has dropped 2% for three days in a row. Do you sell? Stop, look back at the historical patterns. Stop, look forward using predictor variables. You should not make the decision to sell until you have considered the long-term advantages and disadvantages.
Derek Zeanah said:
I don't understand why you think I'd be voting Republican if I weren't voting third party.
Thank you for expressing my sentiments on that so succinctly.
Dan from MI said:
For the forseeable [sic] future, we have a two party system.
Dan, you are correct, at the national level. But if we consider beyond our naturally myopic limits, we’ll find that this can be overcome. You do have good points about encouraging those involved in the two major parties to attend meetings and use the primaries to make changes within those parties.
Dan from MI said:
However, let's do our best to make sure those aren't the two choices in the first place. And that should go for ALL offices, not just president.
Cheers to that!
JohnL2 said:
The LP makes the Democrats look like organizational geniuses and that is not a good thing.
Yeah, I can’t argue against that one. I have greater confidence in the new Executive Director, Shane Cory. And the Ballot Base program has been a move in the right direction.
Cuda said:
IMHO, a third party president is almost impossible until such time as the liberals don't control the education system in this country.
There's an excellent point. School systems are, by nature and admission, means for indoctrination, and every teachers union I have heard of in the news endorses Democrats. Getting a little off-topic, but my personal opinion is that elementary schools need to prepare students for logical discussion, not emotional. After that, discussions are necessary about logical fallasies and traps. Once students have a good understanding of what a logical argument looks like, it's a lot harder to pull the wool over their eyes.