I think the tone of some of the articles I linked is a bit troubling.
Hey man...I've found the tone of more articles than I can count from about 2014 on a little bit troubling.
The effect of independent journalism on mainstream journalism has been an increasingly biased and distorted narrative being inserted both into articles and editorial pieces to cater to specific demographics.
The one I linked that said "will third parties doom democracy" carries the tone of something bordering on emotional blackmail.
And intellectually dishonest. Voting for someone is democracy....the only time it isn't is when there's only one party or no real choice apart from the predetermined victor.
If a person doesn't like either of the two main options and opts to go with someone different (or make a third party run themselves), "you're complicit in potentially destroying democracy because that could cause the other guy (we don't like) to win"
Well...that's not exactly a new message. It's been around since at least 2016. It may not have been a drum the media beated as consistently and loudly as it does now....but back then nobody on the left really believed "the other guy" could win.
It's a troubling trend to be sure....but secondary in my mind to the legal persecution of candidates who are campaigning. That's actually a threat to democracy. It's the sort of tactic Putin is known for.
Sort of a "well, WE say this other guy is so dangerous, that the only moral and decent thing for you to do is abandon half of your principles and vote for our guy so that other guy doesn't win, so if you come up with an Option C, just keep it to yourself"
I recall during the 2020 campaign pointing out the obvious bias of an article reviewing a Democratic Party debate...in favor of Kamala Harris. It wasn't labeled an "editorial" but rather masquerading as "political analysis" which sounds much more authoritative and factual than mere opinion. When the person posting asked "what bias" I went through sentence by sentence describing Harris' performance and how each used positive terms and adjectives and none were negative....and then showed the others.
I don't recall if it was WaPo or NYT but it was quite literally political propaganda being presented as news.
...which to me, presents a more dire picture about our democracy than the scenario of "the bad guy" winning because of the spoiler effect of a third party candidate.
We're in a bit of a rough spot for multiple reasons. If I had to sum it up....the information age, and again independent journalism, has exposed a level of corruption that perhaps the general public had previously suspected but were uncertain about.
Nowadays, we can quite literally look up the net worth of the Clintons for example.....and see how 2 public servants who have never run a business or worked another job (apart from their "charity") are magically worth tens of millions of dollars (maybe over 100 at this point, I haven't checked in awhile) and it's difficult to conclude that career politicians are representing the people.
If there's this construct in which it's "socially unacceptable" to vote for the Option C who you really like, because the Option A & B people are afraid it'll split their teams' votes, then the thing people are worried about is already happening to a degree.
Sure. You didn't hear these dire warnings about the "future of democracy" when Ross Perot was on the list of options.
Again though....as concerning as the progandistic nature of journalism has become....I have more concern when lawsuits are filed to keep a candidate off the ballot based on an obscure law written specifically about civil war era candidates. I read briefly that Biden's campaign team screwed up badly and he wasn't on the ballot in Ohio....not because of lawsuits, just sheer incompetence. If the legal system is bending over backwards to squeeze a candidate on the ballot....and another off....we have more trouble to worry about than the news.
That's not a stellar democracy if people voting for their first choice is going to be portrayed as a "problem" and the power-brokers (media outlets, pundits, campaign financiers) are going to pull every lever they can to emotionally manipulate people back into the two-party ecosystem.
I still recall a rather sober and serious analysis of why Hillary lost in 2016 that looked at everything from adopting a similar strategy to Obama, ostracizing working class white men, lack of campaigning in rural and more hotly contested states, third party options that many found more attractive, and of course....overconfidence in the outcome.....
Then about a month or two later....this sort of analysis disappeared almost entirely for a much simpler explanation....white supremacy. I sometimes wonder if the guy who wrote that article still has a job.
To me, that's a symptom of the DNC and RNC asking the wrong questions.
Instead of "how can we manipulate people out of voting for third parties so it doesn't split our votes?"
They should be asking "how can we get more people to vote for us because they actually want to?"
We've sort of come to accept the idiomatic belief presented in an episode of South Park that the choice is always "blank sandwich or giant douche".
It doesn't have to be....and it certainly shouldn't be. I don't think anyone believes that we're going to see a living saint run for office....but someone genuinely interested in improving the lives of the citizens of the nation would be nice.
Seems like the obvious one would be candidate quality. They should look back at the election cycles in which third parties had virtually no presence to speak of, and pick D & R candidates like them.
The left and right are experiencing very different sorts of problems with candidate options.
The right's problem is actually pretty simple....authenticity. They got stuck with Trump despite throwing 15 other options in 2016 because the 15 other options essentially gave the public the same song and dance as the right presented for the previous 5 elections. A politician who espouses positions they either cannot deliver on or won't even attempt to deliver on. The voter base lost faith in the traditional right wing narrative....and took a former Democrat (yes, Trump previously supported democrats and voted for them) who was openly against war.
The Democratic Party however has adopted a completely different ideology from the big tent, diverse opinions, middle/working class advocacy of its traditional party....for an ideologically rigid, grievance based, moralizing identity politics approach based on the superficial characteristics like sex, race, sexual orientation, and minority status....which may seem to be effective at casting a wide net, it lacks any sort of central values which those under the net agree upon. One need only look at college campuses to see the "queers for palestine" to realize the problem. Feminist activists and black activists don't have the same values. Muslim activists and gay activists don't have the same values. Trans activists and nearly any other kind of activists don't share the same values. When they get a seat at the table....they don't appear to agree on much. It could be the prelude to a larger fracturing of the party into genuinely distinct parties with different values....or it is merely a bad political strategy that lacked the foresight to understand the difficulty of a candidate who can appeal to all these subgroups.
They ran Biden because they had this problem in 2020....and he had familiarity. People remembered him from the Obama administration and an appeal to returning to those times could win an election. That idea has pretty much been destroyed by the last 4 years. It's the same problem they had in 2020....but much like a Republican trying to sell the people a vision of returning to the 1950s....it's pretty obvious there's no going back to even a decade ago.
The Libertarians and Greens typically only have a noteworthy presence in election cycles where the candidate quality is poor in the two main parties.
I'm trying to think of the last libertarian I can recall anyone genuinely excited about. I think Nader was underrated as a Green candidate.
People know the names of the LP and G candidates in the 2016 and 2020 election cycles... most wouldn't be able to tell you who they were for the 2008 and 2012 election cycles without Googling it (because Obama, Romney, and McCain were all respectable enough candidates that covered enough of the Overton Window that most people didn't feel compelled to look for other options)
The thing that genuinely concerns me is the possibility of one of the candidates dying of a stroke or heart attack or something (Biden or Trump) and the log that either party would try to float to the top of the bowl in that situation being far too little too late.
It could be a completely natural death and either side may lose their cool regardless. It feels like a potential powderkeg situation that is a lot more possible than many realize.
