this post was submitted on 14 Jun 2025
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This is unironically how FPTP systems work. You ALWAYS have to vote for the lesser evil, because if you don’t and the bigger one wins, the other one will shift even more to the right since they know actual voters lean more towards them.
Except thats not how anyone who might vote dem works. There is no mythical moderate who won't vote for free healthcare, but will vote for subsidies for employer-based health insurance purchased through 1 of 50 market places where you have no idea what it will cost each month, what it will cover, what portion of the healthcare cost it will cover, or what the top line bill will be for literally any procedure.
They’re not aiming for “moderates” at this point, they’re straight-up aiming for right-wingers. Right-wingers who have a working brain, and when given the choice between a right-wing party and literal fascism, they’ll vote the former. People who like Liz Cheney, basically.
That's why FPTP doesn't work. It's a broken electoral system that produces exactly this result, because the majority of people are not willing to vote for lesser evils and you can't make them no matter how much you scream at them for letting Trump win.
Oh no, FPTP works very well, for the two main parties. That’s why neither ever bothered to change it. You’re strong-armed into voting for the lesser evil because if you don’t, everything just keeps getting worse.
This way you can build a party on a cult of personality revolving on a cartoon villain and get votes, because cults strengthen participation, and another party that is allowed to do literally anything as long as they’re “not as bad as” the other. It’s absolutely perfect for rich people in power who only care about their own benefits.
And the worst thing is, people keep falling for it. They think they’re giving some sort of comeuppance to the Dems by not voting, but the reality is they don’t care that much if they win or not. They’re rich, they can survive four more years of Trump as long as they don’t oppose him too much.
Hell, at this point the worst thing you can do to the DNC (besides actually voting for progressives in primaries) is getting them elected, multiple times in a row, so many that the Overton Window shifts and they’ll be forced to actually act as a leftist party because Republicans won’t be able to fash their way into power if they want to get elected.
Of course, the purpose of a system is what it does.
But that means there is no path to fixing anything through voting, and in fact, the worst thing is people believing that voting "works" and voting is the only thing they have to do to change the system. We aren't going to give Democrats comeuppance to Democrats by voting for them either. Voting is a busybox.
Do something else.
Consistently electing Democrats will force Republicans to become “less of a threat”, which will force Democrats to have an actual platform since “the other guy” getting elected isn’t as scary anymore. It’s all about shifting the window.
The path to fixing the system through voting exists, it’s just not viable as long as people keep staying home because “they don’t like either candidate”.
And if people can’t move their asses to do something as simple as voting, I really doubt they have what it takes to actually do “something else” resulting in concrete changes.