You know what the real difference is between the Left and the Right?

[Tyler Durden]

The Left is chock full of people who believe in "Pyrrhic Victory" while the Right knows how to network and bide their time until they can either win fair or cheat.

Confidentially, I think anyone who will play "hard place" to the Right's "rock" in this election by saying "If I can't get what I want, I won't vote/will vote 3rd party/write in a candidate has completely missed the point of American "Winner Take All" politics. The party that is not in the majority is POWERLESS, and that is not acceptable in this election.

[Faygo Kid]

1. You are right.

The greatest principle of all is to get this Administration out of there, for a second term will surely destroy our nation. I believe that sincerely.

[sadiesworld]

2. I think/hope some just need time to heal.

[el_gato]

3. so many on the left attack our own radicals while the right enable thiers

I see this all the time even here on DU.

[JailForBush]

4. You're missing the big picture.

Yes, losing an election costs us power, but voting for the lesser of evils only guarantees more evil. Sooner or later, we're going to have to break out of this insane rut.

The only reason I'm not voting for Ralph Nader in this election is my belief that he's corrupt - and I had to conduct my own investigation, because Democrats were too busy making up ridiculous excuses to really check Nader out. Of course, my discovery began with Nader's stupid education statement, which looked something he copied from the Democrats.

As long as people view politics with tunnel vision, we'll never get anywhere. Each election should be viewed as a building block for the next election. Unfortunately, few people really give a damn except for the last couple weeks before the election itself.

[einniv]

6. And losing breaks out of it how?

You should focus that energy. Not on helping a Nader candidacy re-elect Bush but by lobbying for more sensible election methods.

On Edit: Sorry I misunderstood what you said. I read "were voting for Nader"

[kodi]

7. morally & ethically the Big Picture is to reduce evil by one's actions

Choosing the lesser of two evils is a moral imperative.

Life doesn't afford us the opportunity to remain aloof from the basic moral questions which confront us.

[einniv]

5. I don't think there are many who have missed the point

We on the left are smart folk. Folks who recognize that ideology never trumps mathematics.

http://electionmethods.org/plurality.htm

Plurality voting is our current system. Each voter votes for one candidate, and the candidate with the plurality (most votes) wins, regardless of whether that candidate gets a majority or not. In a plurality election with N candidates, a candidate can theoretically win with just over 1/N of the votes. The larger the number of candidates, the smaller the percentage of the votes needed to win. Plurality voting is perfectly adequate when only two candidates are running, but it cannot effectively and fairly accomodate more than two viable candidates. This fact is known as "Duverger's Law," and it explains why the US political system is a two-party duopoly without effective competition from other parties.

As most voters know, plurality voting in general elections essentially forces voters to vote for one of the two major parties. Everyone is free to vote for a minor party, of course, but voters who do so usually "waste" their vote on parties and candidates with little or no chance of winning. Supporters of minor parties, therefore, are caught in a dilemma: they can vote sincerely and waste their vote, or they can vote defensively for the "lesser of two evils" as a hedge against the "greater evil."

Take Libertarians and Greens, for example. Libertarians tend to prefer Republicans over Democrats, but Greens tend to prefer the opposite. If either adopts the attitude of "damn the torpedos, full speed ahead" and votes sincerely, they risk hurting their own cause. In the 2000 US Presidential election, for example, voters who voted for Green candidate Ralph Nader failed to help Democrat Al Gore defeat Republican George W. Bush. Hard-core Greens might argue that their votes "sent a message," but many Greens would no doubt gladly retract their "message" to put Gore in the White House.

It is possible, of course, for a popular third-party candidate to gain widespread support. Reform Party candidate Ross Perot, for example, managed to win a respectable 19% of the vote in the 1992 US Presidential election. However, Perot may have tilted the election from Republican George Bush to Democrat Bill Clinton, who beat Bush by 43% to 38% (in the popular vote). In other words, had Perot not run, Bush might have won re-election. If so, plurality voting failed to serve the interests of democracy. Many other examples could also be given of failures of plurality voting.

As ineffective as plurality voting is in gereral elections, morover, it is even worse in primary elections, which is why even Democrats and Republicans should be very interested in dumping it. Primary races often attract several credible candidates. What then typically happens is that the race shapes up as the most prominent candidate against the rest of the pack. The "rest of the pack" then split the vote amongst themselves, and the most prominent candidate wins. The last three Republican Presidential nominees (Bush, Dole, and Bush), for example, were the "highest ranking" or most prominent candidate very early in the race.

[JanMichael]

8. "Me" v. "We".

Sorry, wrong thread:-)

[tom_paine]

9. Agreed, Tyler.

Completely.

[distortionmarshall]

10. true, but.....

.....real old news......

i think the best way i've heard it is: democrats would rather be right than win, while the opposite holds for republicans.... think i heard that either during reagan's time, or when repubs took over the house (god the american public is stupid.....)