R.F.K. Jr.’s Environmental Colleagues Urge Him to Drop Presidential Bid (www.nytimes.com)

submitted 6 months ago by jeffw@lemmy.world to c/politics@lemmy.world

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[-] WamGams@lemmy.ca 13 points 6 months ago

I wish, but I don't even think he has a choice in running as it is. If anybody had ever been compromised through the use of extortion, it is this guy.

[-] autotldr@lemmings.world 2 points 6 months ago

This is the best summary I could come up with:

But dozens of Mr. Kennedy’s former colleagues at the Natural Resources Defense Council are calling on him to withdraw from the race, in full-page advertisements sponsored by the group’s political arm that are expected to appear in newspapers in six swing states on Sunday.

Separately, a dozen other national environmental organizations have issued an open letter calling Mr. Kennedy “ a “dangerous conspiracy theorist and a science denier” who promotes “toxic beliefs” on vaccines and on climate change.

“The path to victory here is clearly maximizing the reach of these left-wing alternatives,” Stephen K. Bannon, the former White House chief strategist who also served as Mr. Trump’s campaign chairman in 2016, told The New York Times earlier this month.

But in the same video, he also said that a “war on carbon” was not the answer and that “this crisis is being used as a pretext for clamping down totalitarian controls.” He said that the actors behind the clampdown were “the intelligence agencies, the World Economic Forum, the billionaire club at Davos,” and that their goal was to make the rich more wealthy.

Mr. Kennedy called it a “useless and huge boondoggle to the industry” and criticized Mr. Biden for agreeing to include those subsidies in the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act, the president’s landmark climate law.

Manish Bapna, the president of the Natural Resources Defense Council Action Fund, the political arm of the nonprofit environmental organization, noted that Mr. Kennedy had also criticized the federal subsidies that jump-started domestic manufacturing of electric vehicles and batteries and solar and wind production in the United States.

The original article contains 1,332 words, the summary contains 264 words. Saved 80%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!

[+] DMBFFF@lemmy.world -10 points 6 months ago

Are the US Democrats that vulnerable?

[-] jeffw@lemmy.world 17 points 6 months ago

Anyone is vulnerable to a third party polling at 10%

[-] DMBFFF@lemmy.world -1 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

USA is a de facto two-party state.

[-] firebyte@lemmy.world 6 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

Problem lies in the 'first-past-the-post', aka 'winner-takes-all' system. There are others, like the electoral college, but I digress.

Third party candidates only ever bleed votes from another in FPTP. Assuming RFK is going after Democratic/'swing' voters he'll potentially end up costing the Democrats votes in key states which, at the margins we're currently seeing, would potentially allow Republicans to win, holding slightly more votes to be 'first-past-the-post' at the end of ballot counting even though a majority of people would've preferred a Democrat representative anyway.

Under the FPTP system, voting for RFK as a protest vote, at his 10% margin, becomes a wasted vote because of how FPTP works.

The only true way to fix this is 'single transferrable vote', or 'ranked choice' voting. Voters simply rank their preference from most desired (1) to least desired (n) on a single ballot.

If the first round of counting doesn't yield a winner (usually 50% of ballots + 1 ballot in a candidate's pile), the candidate with the least amount of ballots is eliminated. Ballots are then redistributed from the eliminated candidate, according to the voters next preference on their ballot, amongst those candidates who remain.

Process continues until a candidate has 50% of ballots + 1 ballot in their pile.

The best version of this is 'full' preferential voting (every candidate must be numbered), rather than 'optional' (number at least one candidate; better versions of this are 'number at least n candidates'). Optional preferential votes 'exhaust', potentially becoming wasted, if the voter didn't number all the boxes.

This will allow people to protest vote, without actually wasting their vote.

[-] pezmaker@sh.itjust.works 5 points 6 months ago

Uh, yes? Good, bad, or otherwise, always has been.

[-] rayyy@lemmy.world 3 points 6 months ago

USA is a de facto two-party state

Right now it is but if a group would start a solid grass-roots party they very well could change that. Unfortunately it takes a lot of dedication and money to accomplish this. Alternatively, the teabaggers were a grass-roots movement that had the backing of right wing radicals and conservative money and they managed to take over the Republican party.

this post was submitted on 20 Apr 2024

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