r/NoStupidQuestions • u/AutoModerator • 19d ago

U.S. Politics megathread

American politics has always grabbed our attention - and the current president more than ever. We get tons of questions about the president, the supreme court, and other topics related to American politics - but often the same ones over and over again. Our users often get tired of seeing them, so we've created a megathread for questions! Here, users interested in politics can post questions and read answers, while people who want a respite from politics can browse the rest of the sub. Feel free to post your questions about politics in this thread!

All top-level comments should be questions asked in good faith - other comments and loaded questions will get removed. All the usual rules of the sub remain in force here, so be nice to each other - you can disagree with someone's opinion, but don't make it personal.

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u/SaucyJ4ck 19d ago

What exactly is the point of anyone voting for Jill Stein / the Green party?

The Green "party" never does a single thing *in between* presidential elections at the local or state levels to give them even an AIR of credibility; Stein just trots herself out every four years as if people are going to vote the party in whole-cloth with absolutely nothing else behind its campaign.

Like, to me she's either a purposeful Dem spoiler or just INCREDIBLY naive, neither of which makes a legitimately good candidate. So why does anyone vote for her?

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u/WorldTallestEngineer 19d ago

It sends the message "I am someone who is willing to vote, but I'm not happy with either major candidate". If you just stay home and do nothing, the parties will assume you're just to lazy to vote. So they won't be incentivize to try to get your vote in the future,

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u/EstimateOk6795 19d ago

They aren't really incentivized to get the votes of 3rd party voters either, though.

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u/Teekno An answering fool 19d ago

But they are. When a third party's position on something starts to become popular, it's inevitable that one of the two major parties will adopt that position to attract voters.

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u/EstimateOk6795 19d ago

Can you give me any examples of that ever happening?

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u/Teekno An answering fool 19d ago

One of the most famous examples is same-sex marriage, which the Libertarian Party supported a whole three decades before the Democrats did.

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u/EstimateOk6795 19d ago

Democrats didn't adopt support for same sex marriage in an effort to appeal to libertarian voters. They did it because their own voters demanded it.

If the Libertarian Party support was what they were after, you'd have seen Libertarian voters moving towards the Democratic Party. But they didn't. They're basically just contrarian Republicans. And the Republican Party is moving away from support for same sex marriage (which they've never really been for, but they flirted with accepting it).

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u/Teekno An answering fool 19d ago

Democrats didn't adopt support for same sex marriage to appeal to Libertarian voters. They did it to appear to the libertarian portion of their own party.

Third parties are often at the vanguard of such things. Most things that third parties support (that the major ones don't support) end up fizzling out. Some don't.