Comment by spicymaki
8 hours ago
This is correct. That is why I changed from independent to an actual political party. There is no point, it is highly improbable that I would ever vote for the party that is against my values. The two main US political parties are diametrically opposed.
No, they each manufacture consent for capital interests in a race to the bottom for everybody else, using time-tested good cop / bad cop, revolving door corruption, etc.
So, vote for a third party. If you don't actually like the candidate you vote for, you're engaging in political negligence. When I vote, I almost never vote for a Republican or Democrat candidate because they are, by and large, not people I want representing me. So I vote for someone I do want representing me.
I understand this logic, but voting third-party should be reserved for democracies that are healthier than the US’s. When the only choice is a flawed but sane person or an extremist, a third-party vote is effectively a vote for the extremist. Your conscience is not as clean as you think it is, because you had the option to stop an extremist and didn’t take it.
That can work, if you are strategic about it. If your candidate is polling at 5%, you might as well have not voted at all.
Something I read once, probably 50 years ago now: you may not see a candidate you want to vote for, but you will probably see a candidate you want to vote against.