Baron Von J

Ballotpedia makes it even more bleak than I thought: “Three minor parties were recognized in more than 10 states as of January 2025”

https://ballotpedia.org/List_of_political_parties_in_the_United_States

I thought the Libertarians were on the ballot in all 50 states. Just crazy when you consider Perot had just shy of 20% of the popular vote in 1992 (and still received zero electoral votes).

3rd party for anything beyond county level just isn’t happening without ranked choice.

also think the 2020 primaries is complicated in just that the moderates that dropped out weren’t polling super well anyway so them dropping out didn’t give Biden as much of a boost as much as just him being Biden.

It’s an interesting event to think about. Because if it did solidify numbers that weren’t they with all the candidates still in, then that means a ranked choice system still should have put Biden as the winner. And if it didn’t really provide Biden extra numbers he needed to win, then it was coordinated messaging against the rising movement, and it worked but also turned away voters they needed to hold onto in the long run.

Started a Tea Party like movement? Or started saying we need one? Because he did not start one at all.

The Republican Tea party movement started with Ron Paul running in the 2008 Republican primaries, and that having an impact on the kinds of Republicans who won the 2010 primaries and became part of the House flipping that year. Bernie started a progressive movement for the Democratic party by … running in the 2016 Democratic party. And that had an impact of more progressives running in the 2018 primaries (hello Squad) and helping flip the House that year.

If he had we would have Democrat voters coming out in primaries more, and kicking out establishment Dems more if they don’t adhere to the parties core beliefs. He may have wanted to start one back then, but it was a false start because people lost a lot of steam when he wasn’t the candidate. Sure there were a lot of progressives elected in the next midterm, but that should have been a continuing trend, instead of something that plateaus.

Well maybe progressive voters should have kept at it, then. It’s a long road to change an organization that big. I would actually put the moment as being in the 2020 primaries when a bunch of the moderates dropped out to coalesce for Biden before super Tuesday when it looked like FPTP was helping Bernie. But that just again speaks to the fact that not enough progressives were coming out to vote.

The Left has lost steam with their movement because they don’t keep their eye on the ball, we get distracted with infighting and splitting our votes with third parties instead of relentlessly pursuing our goal of remaking the party, something the Tea Party movement did extremely well at.

Ok we’re on the same page mostly. The Tea Parties continued momentum was, in no insignificant part, thanks to the billionaire Koch brothers co-opting it by funding a bazillion primary challenges to win over state legislatures towards their goal of calling a Constitutional Convention to rewrite it in their anarcho-capitalist ideals. They weren’t quite as interested in the US Congress or the presidency.

So, I still maintain that Bernie already started the movement in much the same way that Ron Paul started theirs. Just by running in the primary and inspiring both voters and candidates to go out to the primaries.

Dunno if running in the Republican primary would be worth anything because Republican primaries are very MAGA and if you aren’t that then you won’t get the nom at all.

Sometimes just getting a platform to speak your ideas is enough to get things going. Progressive ballot measures did well in 2024. Conservative voters can change their minds when confronted with first hand experience. Bernie convinced a Fox News studio audience to like Medicare for all. And even losing the primary after that, the exposure could very well help you get the signatures to appear on the general ballot as an independent.

Dude should be saying we need our own tea party movement where we take over the Democrat party. Not that we need to fracture ourselves even more.

He already started it in 2016.

That said, I think there is an argument for independent runs in purely local politics in areas that only have Republicans run for things and have a hatred for Democrats they can’t seem to move past.

Yes. Or even run in the Republican primary (might be easier to get on the primary ballot than to get on the general election ballot).

After how 40 years of operation, the Green Party still isn’t on the ballot in 10 states. Less than 1% of the legislative offices around the country (state and federal) are held by 3rd party or independents. You need to either make ranked choice voting the state-wide method in your state first, or put that energy into taking over your state’s Democratic party via the primaries and the internal leadership elections.

But we still need a DNC and state parties if only to facilitate primaries, that’s a very important function. a month ago when we got a DNC chair who will let a fair primary happen… Now is the time to rally around the new Dem party, not make a new one

Totally agree here with emphasis on the new part. Surge the turnout in the primaries. Without ballot access in every state it’s just not realistic to expect a 3rd party can rise up and replace the Democratic party in 2026 or 2028. Except in states with direct ballot initiatives to switch to ranked choice voting, but even that is only a solution for at best the election after getting that voted into existence.

It’s not just having the money and national organizing capacity to run a primary in every state. Each state-level organization has to get, at a minimum, enough non-contestable signatures for the Secretary of State to even put the party on the ballots. And then they need to win enough of a percentage of the popular vote in that one next election to retain ballot access without having to get all those signatures again next time. The Green Party doesn’t even actively operate in 10 states. That’s why people like me insist that the only way to effectively shift left is to flood the Democratic Primaries with progressive candidates and voters, -or- (if your state allows it) get a direct voter ballot initiative to adopt some kind of ranked choice voting.

I don’t think they will this time. Republican representatives have already had to stop holding town halls because their districts are so pissed off at Musk and DOGE.

She was deeply unpopular with Republicans

Deeply unpopular with MAGA Republicans. In the wake of the insurrection there was a real chance to pull the Republican party out of MAGA voters’ hands and they blew it.

So what did bringing her, and the other Republicans that the campaign chose to platform, into the tent; what did the campaign get for it?

I think they wanted to show that it was ok for Republican-leaning voters to abandon Trump and that they (the Harris campaign) welcomed Republicans shifting left (serving on the select committee and supporting Trump’s impeachment was certainly a shift left for an otherwise pro-MAGA politician). They clearly didn’t get anything for it.

You think platforming her says this thing over here.

No the Harris/Walz campaign thought that.

If you can just break down further why you think the Cheney example doesn’t support, I’m interested.

I don’t disagree with your overall point about platforming Cheney or the Harris campaign shifting right. I just think Cheney lost her primary because she was perceived by the MAGA voters to have shifted left on policy.

Liz Cheney, an incumbent who lost her primary with 27% of the vote.

Just to put that in context, she lost her primary because she dared to side with both the public and the Democratic party in opposition to the insurrection. She lost her primary because MAGA hates her. I’m not defending the choice to bring her up on stage on the campaign trail, but I don’t think this particular fact really helps your argument.

Voters rejected Biden during a primary so hard he dropped out

No they didn’t. The primaries were over and he won them. He dropped out like 6 weeks after the primaries were over, and he won them (second place was Uncommitted with 4.25% of the votes). Credible candidates just generally don’t contest an incumbent president, and contested conventions generally don’t produce a winning nominee.

I think if all the non-voters put this much fervor and conviction into voting in primaries (all primaries, I’m not just assuming all non-voters would show up to vote left) we’d be much better off as a nation.

I guess the show isn’t popular enough in the community for the reference to be recognized.

Inequality is the point. Education only for the wealthy and approved. Techno-feudalism.

I’ll let you know when we finally have it.

That ruling did say the courts decide what is an official duty, at least.

You have three tools in your instance settings at https://lemmy.world/settings: the Show/Blur NSFW Content options in , and blocking users/communities/instances, setting your feed to only view Subscribed communities and just don’t subscribe to any NSFW ones. The first is dependent on posters ticking the box to mark their post as NSFW. If you see a NSFW post that is not marked as such, report it. Admins on their instance should address the matter. The second option isn’t NSFW-focused in any way but you’re in control of it. You could block instances that are primarily intended for NSFW content, such as lemmynsfw.com, and then block any individual communities on other instances, and lastly if there are specific users who just seem to refuse to stop posting unmarked NSFW content and their instance admins won’t do anything about them you block those users.

You probably can’t expect to fully pre-emptively block all NSFW content, because someone might post something without marking it correctly. Could be by accident, could be they just don’t care. But reporting them gives a chance to fix it rather than blocking an otherwise safe community or user.

Your proof that we didn’t have primaries is to link a source that shows that not only did 48 states have a primary (I wasn’t aware that Florida and Delaware did not, so TIL, and thank you for that), but also that all of them had at least one challenger on the ballot? Show me who qualified to be on the primary ballot in their state, showed up to register for it, and was denied.

We did, in fact, have primaries. There were like 9 choices for the Democratic nominee in my state. Better challengers could have run but didn’t. Yes I know the DNC using funding to “encourage” or “discourage” but that doesn’t change the fact that challengers could have, and did, run in the primaries.

Primaries are only competitive if the people show up to them.