Party Loyalty

[cascadiance]

124. Would you support instant runoff voting then? Ralph Nader running then wouldn't have mattered...

... since most of them likely would have selected Al Gore as their second choice, and Gore would have been elected by a wider margin rather than the smaller margin that allowed the Supreme Court and the right to steal it from us then.

Instant runoff voting would allow the greens and other left wing parties to have more of a voice, since if even they lose in elections, they can get a bigger piece of the "first round" of voting with people not fearing "throwing away their vote" to allow politicians to get a better temperature reading about where the voter base wants them to go in terms of platform agendas, if the Greens are really strong in certain election counts. That would allow Democrats that win in those cases to do their jobs better in the coming years as they know more what their constituency wants since it is codified in publicly available measurements with these vote counts, and would help us build the party to work more for what most party members and Americans want, rather than what corporate interests that try to "buy the field" that they can do with our current winner take all system has in place if they buy off the candidates of the two major parties.

If you don't support instant runoff voting, then I would say you are more concerned about preserving the power structure that is in place now that allows big money to buy off and own our government.

Now if it in some cases allows third parties to WIN slots that normally might have gone to the Democrats now, then that to me is a sign that Democrats in those races are NOT doing their jobs to serve people instead of big money or their constituents haven't been able to or have not chosen properly those to represent them as their Democratic nominee. Otherwise, they would have won those races.

I predict that if in 2016, the Democratic Party platform includes putting this in to law nationally, you'll get a landslide of third party and independent votes supporting them retaking the congress and winning the presidency then, as then third parties would feel they have a voice in subsequent years, and at the same time give more to the Democratic Party's core constituents in terms of power to govern in the years following too. I've often said that many third party candidates currently would do themselves a favor by running almost as single issue candidates. They would have a broad slate of issues their party supports, but they would predicate their campaigns by saying that if the Democratic Party in the state or nationally where they are running concretely moves to put laws putting in place instant runoff voting prior to the election, that they would withdraw and support the Democrats in those instances. i think long term that strategy would work far better for them being heard than running now in ways that can be claimed to be a "spoiler" in many races.