this post was submitted on 18 Mar 2025
125 points (91.9% liked)
Progressive Politics
2197 readers
629 users here now
Welcome to Progressive Politics! A place for news updates and political discussion from a left perspective. Conservatives and centrists are welcome just try and keep it civil :)
(Sidebar still a work in progress post recommendations if you have them such as reading lists)
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
In a perfect world, you’re 100% right on. But here’s the thing: there are more than two political parties in America.
Yeah, our political and voting system both leave so much to be desired. But that’s not where the problem ends. A lot of it comes down to mainstream media and a political party’s ability to reach their constituents.
It would also help if third parties weren’t tools for Republicans to steal votes from Democrats.
But it does all come down to how we’ve somehow let two parties rule over our election system. It wasn’t always this way.
Democrats are tools to steal votes from third parties.
You are also ignoring the Libertarians which the Republicans compromised with to get votes instead of ignoring their voters.
To be fair, Republican compromises with Libertarians were practically meaningless. Trump made a big deal about pardoning Ross Ulbricht for Libertarians and then left all the other drug dealers in prison. His biggest initiatives right now are tariffs and deporting all the cheap labor.
But you know what, it would work with Greens too. Democrats could just say they'll "push for" M4A and RCV, change nothing, and get half the Green votes.
Also a problem of having too much dark money. I don't know about the rest of the Greens but Jill Stein was 100% Russian-backed.
The Democrats investigated the Greens extensively. If they had Russian funding it would have come out.
The parties having too much dark foreign money are those beholden to AIPAC.
I don't know about direct Russian funding, but it seems like the Russians have long used propaganda tools to generate false support on social media for Jill Stein https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/national-security/russians-launched-pro-jill-stein-social-media-blitz-help-trump-n951166 And she has repeatedly chosen to hire/work with people very tightly tied with the MAGA movement https://www.salon.com/2024/09/23/jill-stein-paid-100000-to-a-consulting-firm-led-by-a-suspected-january-6-rioter/
While the two party system is a huge problem, it doesn't seem controversial to say that a very conscious and long-term strategy for getting away from it is necessary, especially now. Why wouldn't anti-democratic forces try to exploit third parties to siphon off and neutralize anti-fascist opinions? I get that the Democrats have loooads of issues, but that doesn't mean just anything else is better. Unfortunately smaller parties can oftentimes be even easier to influence. And even in the most ideal case where all third parties would be good-faith actors you still have the fundamental issue that splintering into smaller groups doesn't work unless they would all agree on supporting the same candidate to win in the current American system. Very frustrating and by design, yes!
Democrats spend funds for the Libertarian party to syphon votes from Republicans.
Hell, Democrats funded Donald Trump.
Republicans spend funds for the Green party to syphon votes from Democrats. Because they think Greens will not overtake Democrats,
This is not a case of corruption from the Greens but both the biggest parties trying to fund eachothers enemies.
It is also a tad ironic to accuse the Greens of corruption when top Democrats and Republicans are both actually directly heavily bribed by foreign AIPAC funds.
She probably was, she was a vote stealer candidate like Ralph Nader which made sense for a scumbag Russia to support. So easy to exploit a 2 party country.