Something I’ve experienced traveling around the state is that there is a palpable fear of even letting your friends know you are a Democrat, or even in line with what Democratic politicians are doing. There’s vandalism that takes place here, and people are scared of that. Having your yard sign stolen or your flag taken down is one thing, but having your car keyed or trash left in your yard, that’s another. I know people who have been harassed after they are outed as a Democrat, and then people give them trouble. People hear those stories. They’re not fake. They’re not made up. I’ve seen and heard some really ugly language.
I’m not a Dem (I’m a Leftists), but this pretty much sums it up. The Right plays dirty. They aren’t bound by any sense of decency. I’d say the only way we can beat them is to respond with our own violence (which I, personally, detest). I don’t see us beating them because they don’t believe in rules of engagement. Sorry to be so demoralizing in this post.
Third parties (in any form) under First Past the Post voting are actively harmful to the interests of the voters who support them.
The way to actually have viable third parties is to switch voting systems. The option that seems like the stand-out best for encouraging the growth of third parties is STAR
While this is an enormous leap forward from FPTP, it still seems like it would suffer from the same issues as STV. We need to both change the voting system, and move to some form of proportional representation, of which I tend to be a fan of Mixed Member Proportional.
I realise this thread is about the US and there are some structural differences, the over all message is the same. We need a move away from FPTP voting, and FPTP electoral systems.
There are issues with Mixed Member Proportional, but the biggest for the US is that it would require a full constitutional amendment.
Also, most implementations of MMP use some sort of Ordinal voting system as a base. This is less than ideal.
STAR is not an Ordinal system. STAR is a Cardinal system. There are also proportional versions of Score (the voting system that STAR is based on)
Anyway, for the US, changing the voting method is far easier than changing to a proportional system.
Fun fact for proportional systems, if you have a 5 member district, you need more than 80% of the population to actively vote against an incumbent to get rid of them.