Minor Party and Independent General Election Discussion

[John Dule]

Regardless of what their motives are, the chief role the Libertarian Party plays in national politics is making the two-party duopoly (even the current GOP!) look legitimate by comparison, and serving as a constant reminder to the public that third parties are a sick, sad joke.

American third parties are clown shows because 99% of the country is constantly railroaded into choosing between one of two options, and the only remaining 1% are hardcore ideologues who think "compromise" is a four-letter word. If the Libertarian Party were given an actual chance in a fair, ranked-choice voting system, it would quickly move towards the center, attract more voters, and expel the nutjobs who are currently associated with it.

[emailking]

Squidward is safe Trump.

[John Dule]

Squidward is safe Trump.

No way, Squidward is a Gloria la Riva supporter.

[Turbo Flame]

I find it hilarious.

[Never Made it to Graceland]

She has a right to be mad. Nickelodeon represents their prime demographic, although I think some of our yellow avatars are more at home watching Nick Jr.

[NYSforKennedy2024]

Patrick Star - QAnon Republican

Squidward - Marxist-Leninist

Spongebob - Slightly-progressive establishment Democrat

Sandy - Constitution Party

Plankton - Alt-Right 4chan lurker

Mr. Krabs - AnCap

Gary - The enlightened Centrist

Squilliam - The one person who bought a Mike Bloomberg 2020 hoodie and still wears it

[Mexican Wolf]

Well, there's an angle on the whole "TV is indoctrinating our children" thing I've never heard before.

I agree that Squidward at least disproves this theory since he's obviously an ardent Marxist.

[PSOL]

On squidward, you also have to admit he really hates working class people as well; from trying to leave for a gated community, to hating his customers, and his regular demeanor. Just because of one strike doesn’t exactly fit it in.

Now I do believe he’s anti-capitalist, because from his side gig as a starving artist and his terrible experience in college.

[Coolface Sock #42069]

guys what parties would each SpongeBob character be

SpongeBob - Undecided
Patrick - Libertarian
Squidward - Too depressed to vote
Sandy - Democratic
Krabs - GOP (business wing)
Plankton - GOP (populist/burn it all to the ground wing)

I feel like Squidward would totally be from the insufferable portion of the Libertarian Party.

Squidward is a communist, remember?

[MasterJedi]

Failed Republican Jo Jorgensen hates kids.

[PSOL]

The butthurt is real

Also LeftVoice refuses to endorse the PSL because of the party’s support for China.

Now that we know where JoJo is, where exactly is Blankensh!t and Fuente?

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

There was some ASP Twitter drama this past weekend, past members grousing about alleged party purges and extremists going in. Most people aren't aware of it though, and it seems very inside baseball.

I’m wholly unsurprised by this. Still, may you give more details with links.

Long-ass thread here

https://twitter.com/SamRochadotcom/status/1317298226274267137

Well, I suppose we will see if the American Solidarity Party survives this with its current rhetoric. BRTD must be livid right now about this news.

I'd read something that they once selected their board with approval voting thinking it'd be a more holistic approach. You can imagine how that went, each side only voted for themselves, more conservatives were present, and they got all the seats. 1 of the conservatives removed himself in the interest of party unity for a moderate to get on the board. They dropped approval voting after that.

Ironically, prior to that election, some of the more socially conservative faction were pushing for dropping approval voting in favor of RCV, but the board which was then predominately from the more liberal faction didn't find it necessary.

[AltWorlder]

I keep wondering where the ASP would be if they hadn't lost a bunch of people and become renowned for having more of a social conservative bent. Any third party should aim to be a bit of a big tent- but not '90s Reform Party big!- in order to grow and maintain legitimacy. But the difficulty of the ASP as I see it is to not appear as simply a pro-life version of the Democratic Party.

[AltWorlder]

Patrick Star - QAnon Republican

Five Star Movement, surely

Sandy - Constitution Party

wtf

[PSOL]

I keep wondering where the ASP would be if they hadn't lost a bunch of people and become renowned for having more of a social conservative bent. Any third party should aim to be a bit of a big tent- but not '90s Reform Party big!- in order to grow and maintain legitimacy. But the difficulty of the ASP as I see it is to not appear as simply a pro-life version of the Democratic Party.

They mainly seem to be doing that for being in favor of distributism and having an originalist position in regards to the courts

[StateBoiler]

Democrats say they're pro-choice on abortion; Republicans say they're pro-choice in the markets. Fortunately, both sides can agree that they're anti-choice when it comes to political parties. Amazing how red avs who claim to oppose monopolies will so eagerly jump to defend the two biggest monopolies in this country.

Agree 100%. It's a complete shame that every four years we must choose between two candidates who we have virtually no say in the nominations of. There's no need to pretend like the two-party system is in any way a positive one just because we may like certain candidates of either party.

For better or worse, the voters have had an all but complete say in the nominations of both major parties for over 40 years. This is complete nonsense.

Yes. McCain 2008, Romney 2012, Clinton 2016, Trump 2016, and Biden 2020 were clearly the consensus choice of their whole parties and everyone was happy with it. And none of them were abandoned the day after the election ended by voters or the party either.

[StateBoiler]

Regardless of what their motives are, the chief role the Libertarian Party plays in national politics is making the two-party duopoly (even the current GOP!) look legitimate by comparison, and serving as a constant reminder to the public that third parties are a sick, sad joke.

American third parties are clown shows because 99% of the country is constantly railroaded into choosing between one of two options, and the only remaining 1% are hardcore ideologues who think "compromise" is a four-letter word. If the Libertarian Party were given an actual chance in a fair, ranked-choice voting system, it would quickly move towards the center, attract more voters, and expel the nutjobs who are currently associated with it.

Well, we'll see what happens in Maine the coming decade.

If anything right now we're so ripe for third parties. Not nationally, but on a local race level. There are large areas of this country that one of the two parties is absolutely dead dead dead due to the nationalization of politics. I'm getting involved in Indiana state Libertarian politics coming up, and this election I'm going to do some data-diving.

1.) No Democrat is going to get more support than Joe Biden will this year for president. Indiana has 92 counties. Anywhere Biden receives less than 40%, that county Democratic Party is dead, will never win an election for anything, should disband, and be replaced for 2nd-party status, aided by...
2.) The Democratic nominee for governor in Indiana this year is beyond horrible. This is mostly due to they could not find anyone else for run. That's how you end up with a Mayor of South Bend deciding to run for president because he thought that was the more winnable race. The governor nominee anyway is the most left-wing the party has ever ran, and recent polling has him in the 25-30% range when the previously established floor for weak statewide Democrat is 37%. The Libertarian is running strong here and looks like he'll get more than 10%. But in a political system where people reflexively vote one party and vote straight ticket and all the Democrat votes are only in a handful of counties, he's likely beating the Democrat for 2nd in some counties, which shows the Democrats should be replaced there for main opposition to the Republicans due to those county Democratic parties being complete failures.

You can apply this thinking beyond just Indiana. You can apply this thinking everywhere except big cities from the Midwest over to the Mountain states. That's a LOT of votes right there. (The reverse can be said for the cities, as I go into in my WFP paragraph below). But I'm going to be doing a mega data dive from this November's results, I need to get some historical data to work out when some of the county Democratic party affiliates in Indiana actually succeeded in electing someone, and hand it to some people. Going to be pretty enlightening I feel, I think most know the death of Bayhism has killed the state party but I want to quantify the extent.

But this is why I'm highly critical for example of the Working Families Party of New York getting on their knees and sucking the cock of Cuomo and the state Democratic Party who then backhands them like an abused prostitute. The largest city in the country the Republicans are a complete non-entity: why are you automatically co-endorsing Democrats? Run your own people in the general and you're instantly 2nd-largest party in New York City. If voters want an alternative, you're the next strongest organization.

What kills third parties best? New York Times said it, although they were talking about Russia:

http://ballot-access.org/2020/10/24/new-york-times-says-russia-keeps-candidates-off-the-ballot-with-technicalities/

This New York Times story is about a Russian local election, in which the incumbent Mayor of a small town wanted an easy re-election, but he also wanted the election to look genuine, so he recruited a janitor to run against him. To everyone’s shock, the janitor won.

The story says Russia is a “managed democracy”, where “elections take place on schedule, but the incumbent virtually never loses. To achieve this, the police squelch real political opposition, and election commissions bump promising candidates off the ballot with technicalities.”

When that happens in the United States, the Times in recent years has not expressed any complaint. This year, when miniscule technicalities kept Green Party presidential nominee Howie Hawkins off the ballot in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, the Times either ignored the story, or its news coverage was supportive of the candidate’s removal. In Wisconsin, Hawkins was kept off the ballot because his running mate moved during the petition drive and some of their petitions had the old address listed. In Pennsylvania, a form was faxed in to the Elections Office instead of being attached to the petition. This year, the Green Party was also kept off the ballot in Montana for all office, after Democratic officials invented a procedure to ask voters to retract their signatures that did not exist in the election law, and courts then removed the Green Party. The Times did not cover the Montana story.

[AltWorlder]

Finally watched the third 3rd party debate. Definitely do think that the ASP and the PSL came out looking strong out of it, that they do have voice and presence. Howie Hawkins was forceful and good. Brock Pierce was also forceful, despite looking like David Spade, but he also seems almost completely made up of platitudes. On lower military presence abroad he actually said "base by base basis and case by case casis" which is real "not strums, but normalcy" levels of empty rhetoric inventing new words.

Free and Equal fixed their production issues a lot more, which is great, though it doesn't make up for all of the issues in the second debate, nor does it make up for (like most of their debates), the questions always lead to the candidates agreeing with each other against their true absent foes: the establishment. Also too many questions from F&E partners, it made the debate seem like half PSA on the need for electoral reform, half a word from our sponsors. Which made the debate feel cheap and weirdly beholden to special interests, which a third party event should be the antithesis of!

[beaver2.0]

Yeah as others have said, Pierce talks well, he just doesn't seem to have much actual policy and even if he's unlikely to actually become President, I'd like some of that.

I've heard that he's openly said this is a rehearsal for 2024, and I'm curious to know what his plan is regarding that.

[PSOL]

Yeah as others have said, Pierce talks well, he just doesn't seem to have much actual policy and even if he's unlikely to actually become President, I'd like some of that.

I've heard that he's openly said this is a rehearsal for 2024, and I'm curious to know what his plan is regarding that.

Only if you manage to fall into his persona and are swayed by showmanship. People who can see through that can see he’s a joke of a grifter.

[Torrain]

Yeah as others have said, Pierce talks well, he just doesn't seem to have much actual policy and even if he's unlikely to actually become President, I'd like some of that.

I've heard that he's openly said this is a rehearsal for 2024, and I'm curious to know what his plan is regarding that.

Presumably he wants a crack at the LP primary? They're still the biggest name in third party politics, and he'll probably have the name recognition after this year.

[PSOL]

Yeah as others have said, Pierce talks well, he just doesn't seem to have much actual policy and even if he's unlikely to actually become President, I'd like some of that.

I've heard that he's openly said this is a rehearsal for 2024, and I'm curious to know what his plan is regarding that.

Presumably he wants a crack at the LP primary? They're still the biggest name in third party politics, and he'll probably have the name recognition after this year.

Considering how badly received Amash was when he floated the idea, along with the break between the party and the Paul clan, I don’t think the Libertarian Party wants outsiders who just “use” the party for their own ends. Unlike the former aforementioned celebrities and Gary Johnson—what does Brock pierce bring to the table?

Even within the Libertarian Primary, outsider Vermin Supreme lost in the end to the more moderate insider. I think the Libertarians have grown into developing a selection system with party members.

 

[Torrain]

Yeah as others have said, Pierce talks well, he just doesn't seem to have much actual policy and even if he's unlikely to actually become President, I'd like some of that.

I've heard that he's openly said this is a rehearsal for 2024, and I'm curious to know what his plan is regarding that.

Presumably he wants a crack at the LP primary? They're still the biggest name in third party politics, and he'll probably have the name recognition after this year.

Considering how badly received Amash was when he floated the idea, along with the break between the party and the Paul clan, I don’t think the Libertarian Party wants outsiders who just “use” the party for their own ends. Unlike the former aforementioned celebrities and Gary Johnson—what does Brock pierce bring to the table?

Even within the Libertarian Primary, outsider Vermin Supreme lost in the end to the more moderate insider. I think the Libertarians have grown into developing a selection system with party members.

 

That makes sense. Sorry, I haven't paid close attention to the LP since Gary Johnson's 2016 primary. I hadn't realised the party had circled the wagons like that.

I guess I don't know where else Pierce can go? Without some party infrastructure, or a run for a local office (he's a Puerto Rico resident, so that throws up some issues), I just don't see how 2024 will be much better for him.

[StateBoiler]

Posted this in a thread about third party vote share:

Blankenship is greatly hurt by this even though he's on the 5th-most state ballots at 18 because the only state of those 5 he's on is Florida. In 2016, Darrell Castle was on 24 in contrast.

De La Fuente is going to get a huge jump in his vote count from 4 years ago (~33k votes, .02% for 8th) just from being on the California ballot. The entities backing him is also somewhat organized unlike his singular personal vehicle he had in 2016, so I think getting above 100k votes would not surprise me.

La Riva is going to also get more votes than 4 years ago (74k votes, .05% for 7th) due to increasing the number of ballots she's on from 6 to 15. Likewise think she'll cross 100k.

Hawkins can perform the exact same as Stein and his vote is going to go down due to going from being on 45 state ballots to 30. He's on most all the big states, largest state he's not on the ballot is Pennsylvania.

Pierce is on the ballot in 16 states, but the only big state he's on the ballot in is New York with the Independence Party. I think he's the Rocky De La Fuente of this election. We'll see if he crosses the "De La Fuente Line", the bare minimum number of votes a presidential candidate that tries can get: 33,136 votes.

Kanye West is on 12 states, but they're medium-sized states at largest. If he finishes ahead of anyone already mentioned it's a demonstration of the power of name value/celebrity, because otherwise he should clearly finish 9th as he's the 9th-strongest candidacy and it's a gap to get up to 8th based on his ballot access.

The "race" if you want to be a political nerd is who takes 5th between Blankenship, De La Fuente, La Riva, and if you want to throw in Pierce and West, go ahead, but they're outsiders at best.

But based on 2016:

Jorgensen down
Hawkins down
Blankenship down
La Riva up
De La Fuente up
Carroll up (strongest candidacy outside of those already mentioned)

remove McMullin's vote, and add in Pierce and West, who combined maybe get about a third of McMullin

There were also 699k recorded write-in votes in FEC results that were not officially assigned to anyone, that's greatly dropping.

Anyone see different? I like the idea of "The Race for 5th".

My gut take is Jorgensen 1.7%, Hawkins 0.5% (due to less ballot access), Blankenship, La Riva, and De La Fuente all around 0.1%, and everyone else less than that. I think Blankenship will finish behind La Riva and De La Fuente.

[StateBoiler]

Yeah as others have said, Pierce talks well, he just doesn't seem to have much actual policy and even if he's unlikely to actually become President, I'd like some of that.

I've heard that he's openly said this is a rehearsal for 2024, and I'm curious to know what his plan is regarding that.

Presumably he wants a crack at the LP primary? They're still the biggest name in third party politics, and he'll probably have the name recognition after this year.

Considering how badly received Amash was when he floated the idea, along with the break between the party and the Paul clan, I don’t think the Libertarian Party wants outsiders who just “use” the party for their own ends. Unlike the former aforementioned celebrities and Gary Johnson—what does Brock pierce bring to the table?

Even within the Libertarian Primary, outsider Vermin Supreme lost in the end to the more moderate insider. I think the Libertarians have grown into developing a selection system with party members.

That makes sense. Sorry, I haven't paid close attention to the LP since Gary Johnson's 2016 primary. I hadn't realised the party had circled the wagons like that.

I guess I don't know where else Pierce can go? Without some party infrastructure, or a run for a local office (he's a Puerto Rico resident, so that throws up some issues), I just don't see how 2024 will be much better for him.

They had 3 "former Republican" nominees in a row, and while I think most liked Gary Johnson (although most everyone thinks he ran a better campaign in 2012 than he did 2016), Bill Weld being the VP nominee was highly controversial and he only barely won it after Johnson pleaded with delegates for him to be the veep at the Convention, which Weld narrowly won. Amash would've been the strongest person they could have nominated, but he was facing headwinds and would've had to at least fight for it. The most anti-Amash candidate vocal against him was Jacob Hornberger, who ended up losing to Jo Jorgensen in part because his style means he pisses a lot of people off. So I think everyone was kind of relieved with Jorgensen as being a good reflection of the party, she was Harry Browne's VP nominee 24 years ago, it's a woman which checks a box for a party that's always been seen as "a party for men", and she's not a former Republican. Think the Amash reaction though shows you can't just show up a couple months before the Convention and automatically get it. Amash was a sitting Representative that voted for Trump's impeachment. Brock Pierce is a candidate that's a complete small fry this election compared to where Jo Jorgensen finishes. He's not going to get any love simply for that unless he puts time, effort (and money) to try to win the party over.