I’m german and since 2016 I learned a lot about the US political landscape, figureheads, voting systems, political events, media etc.
I don’t want to be condescending. It’s just l spent way to much time reading articles, watching us media and documentaries to let that knowledge go to waste, so…I’m pretty confident to say that voting 3rd party, no matter who, is a bad decision. This election even more as the long-time future of your country depends on it so much.
You probably heard of the main argument against 3rd party already, namely the winner-take-all system:
Imagine 1000 people in an election district. 500 are hardcore MAGAs hellbent on voting orange Mussolini. 400 are “Vote Blue no matter who”, 100 are “Both sides bad let’s force a system change”.
Ok got it? Mussolini wins. Even worse: he wins all of the electoral college voters of the district which unanimously vote the president. This pretty safe wasn’t a very accurate description and the numbers are purposefully skewed to illustrate the principle. But at the end this is it. Your whole presidential election system needs to be reformed to truly can be called fair, democratic and make every vote, even 3rd party, count. If you want to know it more specifically google “Duverger’s Law”.
I repeat: Every 3rd party vote is a vote for Trump. That is why the European Greens have just advised Jill Stein to suspend her campaign. MAGA did this by letting Robert F. Kennedy suspend his campaign and endorse Trump. They learned from 2016 that when 3rd party voter turnout was at a record high 6% that it made Trump president. 2020 was only 2% 3rd party voter turnout. Good for Biden.
This all is bad enough and all the neverending crimes against humanity in Gaza are horrifying but under Trump the genocide will get worse. To understand this I would have to deviate into the connection of the US radical evangelists, the Heritage Foundation and Trump as well as his shared interest with Netanyahu. Oh yeah you also will get the chance to watch the USA transform into its final form of a white, rich, male, christian hypercapitalist dystopia.
Hope you can see now how 3rd party could backfire gigantically. If you understood it after considering the facts again, don’t be angry with yourself. Just make sure you prevent others from making the same mistake these next 2 days when you see them walking into the same fatal trap.
They were also responsible for the demise of the Jamaica coalition.
But with this traffic light coalition we got more sinister powers at play. Springer press (Welt and Bild) drove a 2 year long smear campaign against The Greens (especially Habeck and Bärbock). Behind that stands essentially the fossil fuel industry (KKR, Koch Brothers, Heritage Foundation, The Republic, BlackRock). We got one of the most stable energy grids in Europe, only import 2% of our energy and export in return to european neighbors when the massively build out renewable energy is producing to much. We’re not dependent on russian gas anymore. Broadband internet initiative is running (small villages get fiber now).
But yeah the automotive industry is struggling and Habeck already warned VW in 2019 that they have to invest in electric vehicles. Now they and suppliers plan massive employment reductions and closing of factories and everyone cries “The Greens are destroying the economy”. VW made 23 billion revenue in 2023, btw.
CDU will continue to enable the far-right AfD (who wants to actually disassemble wind turbines) and reap all the merits of the Ampel and then destroy it for deals with the fossil fuel industry. Once in a lifetime chance we had.