Identifying as independents means nothing. 67% of independents in 2018 viewed one party more favorable and were unfavorable to other. In other words, the independents have a partisan lean towards one party and are more likely to vote that way.
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.
I've never understood why I should join a political party. I mean, yes, I lean pretty heavily toward one of the two major parties in my voting, but what advantage does it get me to declare loyalty? Perhaps if I lived in a state without open primaries, but as it is I gain nothing by putting an R or a D in front of my name.
No, you are cutting off the nose to spite the face. Clearly if you lean heavily toward one of the two major parties, you should want to influence the party you lean to in some way.
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.
Voting 3rd party is throwing away your vote in the US electoral system. The reason is structural. Currently, I believe there are two independent senators and one independent representative. Independents are not another party they are just unenrolled and they all caucus with one of the two major parties. There is no third party representation in congress.
Less than one third of eligible voters vote. Your espousing a self fulfilling prophecy.
The only reason party politics exists is because of you and people like you who keep spouting this lie that keeps them in power.
So instead of lying just say that you fully agree with everything both parties do and thats why you keep them in power and refuse to vote for someone rather than against.
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.
The parties arent actually opposed its just that democrats want to change everything and republicans dont. Dems propose something and reps oppose it. Thats generally how its supposed to work but usually there is a debate that should accompany the proposals.
The general difference between a liberal mindset and a conservative mindset is the difficulty in making things work. Liberals believe that things usually work and the hard part is getting them to work exactly how you want them too. The conservatives think that things usually dont work and the difficult part is getting them to actually work.
This actually really matters when your talking about renovations whether its a building or a government you have to choose between the new fancy shiny thing will all the options and the old beaten up reliable thing that only does one thing and does it really well.
When dems propose something new, all the reps see is every way that it could go wrong or even be worse than the last thing.
When reps oppose something new all dems see is stupid old people afraid of progress.
And thats assuming that everyone actually has good intentions before we get into partisan bs and outright corruption.
The dem-rep balance would actually be really great in the politicians gave half a fuck about the country but they arent trying to make the country better in good faith they are trying to win politics which isnt even possible, a win for one party means the end of the country no matter which party the country needs the balance i just laid out above. You need long term trusted institutions and you also need to change and update things over time. Both perspectives are necessary if you want a functional government this petty infighting serves no purpose besides allowing politicians and their corrupt friends to loot and pillage the country from the inside while the stupid population argues over men in womens sports or when child sacrifice is okay.
That only matters of you actually do make different choices. But of course in turn even trying to control for that depends on their being meaningful changes in party platforms between elections.
So I'm pretty content calling it a meaningless measure.
Democrats lost to a gameshow host. Twice. They just had to be better than that, and they couldn't manage. Pathetic. They also created the conditions for his rise. Twice. The bar is so amazingly low, and yet you can't comprehend how they keep fumbling this. Maybe, just maybe, it's a good cop / bad cop arrangement where only capital interests win, and it's a race to the bottom for everybody else. Or maybe that's just a childish, stupid opinion. Who knows!
So you're capable of identifying that how people vote does matter, that the electorate actually did determine the outcome, you are not alleging that the election was actually rigged, but you think not voting in a first past the post electoral system - while expressing dissatisfaction with the outcome as decided by the voters - will achieve something?
You're ignoring the important fact that Dem primaries are rigged, or like last time, simply non-existent. Their agents of capital are preselected from the start.
Feel free to pretend you have a voice in the ballot box, but you don't in any significant way. You get to decide the color scheme and decide between decorum or crude, but it's the same pile of self-serving shit behind the scenes.
An "independent" in America is a person who greatly desires everything Trump is doing but realizes that makes them a bad person and therefore refuses to admit it.
> An "independent" in America is a person who greatly desires everything Trump is doing but realizes that makes them a bad person and therefore refuses to admit it.
There's some truth to what you're saying, particularly a few years ago... but a rapidly increasing number of "independents" in America are strongly left leaning but feel that the Democratic party has abandoned them.
And they'll continue to vote Democrat, if they vote at all, for the purposes of harm reduction, but have renounced their official party affiliation.
>but a rapidly increasing number of "independents" in America are strongly left leaning but feel that the Democratic party has abandoned them.
Then they are listening to the Right. Biden did what he could to help unions and eliminate student debt.
The truth is those "left" leaning want socialism, but only for them, and not brown people. Socialism but only for their in-group. (That's also what you see with recent immigrants voting for Trump against even more recent immigrants. "Leopards eating faces party won't eat my face, etc.)
Union support is so absurdly widespread, I don’t even know what to reference. E.g., on his 3rd day in office, Biden signed an executive order to empower government employees to join unions. This resulted in about a 20% increase in unionized federal employees. He was also the first sitting president to ever attend a picket line on the side of the workers. His Department of Labor and NLRB appointees were longtime unionized labor advocates, who through regulations lowered barriers to joining unions and hammered anti-union behaviors by companies like Starbucks.
Student loan forgiveness is DOA since it fails to target the root problem: inflated tuition prices.
As for unions, ask the average union member what they thought of Biden's presidency. Clearly you weren't paying attention when these issues were making headlines and Biden was looking like the POS that he is in that regard.
It's all fluff, and you were swooped up by it. Get a grip or don't be surprised when your party keeps losing to a gameshow host.
Your response is all fluff. Yes. Raising union membership is not fluff. Actually forgiving student loans of 800k Americans, after the Supreme Court partisanly blocked your efforts to forgive them for 5M is not fluff either.
Lots of union members, like you, lack the ability to tell shit from Shinola. That’s a huge problem, and one I have no clue how to solve. Con men are, sadly, effective despite being, y’know, con men.
You seem to be a perfect encapsulation of the "both-sides" mindset. Blissfully unaware of what's happening around you. But that has 0 impact on your confidence in being right that nothing matters, both sides are the same. The vibes are negative no matter who's president, so everyone should just stop caring about what is or isn't "better". If it's still imperfect, it sucks, bro! Hear that guy over there complaining? Checkmate, libtard!
Tell you what, the next time somebody like Bernie Sanders comes along, don't stab him in the back a thousand times. Then you might actually have a chance at beating that gameshow host one day!
The same Bernie Sanders who backed Fetterman and Platner?
Bernie Sanders is where he is because he's all talk and fluff, and not because of backstabbing. Meanwhile, your bothsidesism is actually backstabbing any progressive cause that doesn't reach your high bar.
The discussion above is in the context of presidents and presidential candidates. So far, zero progressives have been allowed to enter that race without being sabotaged by the party, to their own detriment. That's the party's self created problem to contend with.
What party did Bernie Sanders run for president under, again?
- A Bernie voter
(just popped open your comment history to see your other latest comment complaining about vegans, identity politics, doing the "not all men!", "not all white people" thing... You are a parody of a parody of a clown. I'm beyond finished here.)
Bernie ran under the Dem party, even though every corpo-Dem made sure to point out that he wasn't a Dem. To most people, that's a feature. Your loss though for blindly supporting the party that sabotaged their best candidate. There's a reason Trump feared the prospect of debating him. Fortunately Dems never let that happen, so congrats on that.
Your post history is full of establishment boot licking, so I frankly give no fucks what you think about mine.
I know you’re going to get downvoted to hell, but you’re pretty much spot on. There’s something strangely desirable about being seen as the edgy contrarian “not left, not right” person. But 9 times out of 10, that person has approximately the same incoherent worldview most Trumpists have.
He's not spot on at all, and that's why he's being downvoted. He's examining the world through a false dichotomy of "if you aren't on my side, you support my enemies". But the reality is that most people who consider themselves independent are actually independent and vote for whomever they consider to be the best candidate.
New High of 45% in U.S. Identify as Political Independents (January 12, 2026)
https://news.gallup.com/poll/700499/new-high-identify-politi...