General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: It would be nice if the centrists in this party did some introspection, too. [View all]Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)I DON'T defend third-party votes, let alone ENCOURAGE them.
All I have done is to point out that our party didn't do a good job of persuading people who voted third-party(or DIDN'T vote)to vote for our ticket instead.
Based on the results, you'd pretty much have to concede the point.
Our party's usual tactic of simply demanding that people not vote third-party, of insisting that everyone on the left simply OWES our ticket their votes, no matter what, is an approach that has failed every time it's been used.
As we saw in 1980, 2000, and this year, it doesn't WORK to just shake our fists and scream "you HAVE to vote for us!"
What would have worked was to find the way to say "here's why you SHOULD vote for us".
What would have worked was a positive approach. An approach that sent the message to the voters we needed that what they did in the primaries had made a huge difference and they should regard it as a worthwhile effort, and that this party is a place where its worth their time in the future to work for what these people want-that all their efforts were not for nothing, that in many respects they had won the argument on some issues within the party-WOULD have worked. It would also have won us at least some of the votes of people who didn't vote and even a few who voted Trump on what turned out to be the delusional belief that he would create jobs, because the Sanders policies that were adopted were very popular with voters over all.
People, especially young people new to politics, need such reminders. And it would have given floating voters, kind of people for whom "it's time for a woman to be president" was never going to be reason enough, a reason to back our ticket.
We would have won a lot more of those votes if we had run ads in states where Sanders did well reminding people that a lot of Sanders ideas ended up in the platform(it wouldn't bother you to run ads like that, would you?)
I spent a lot of the fall doing all that I could to talk people out of voting third-party. I warned them of the consequences if Trump got in. Over and over I did this. It didn't work.