The two-party system is failing us. While Trump escalates nuclear threats against Iran, Democratic leadership refuses to take real action. We’ve seen this cycle before—funding conflict instead of demanding peace.
There is another way. The Green Party takes $0 from the military-industrial complex. We stand for international law and human survival.
Stop the warmongering. Join the movement for humanity. Join the Green Party 🌍🕊️
It looks to me that the Green Party has consistently failed to understand how to gain power in the US electoral system.
There are several issues. One is the repeated nominations of woefully underqualified candidates for president. Another is the focus on presidential races rather than congressional, state legislative and municipal elections.
And then there’s the history of Russian funding of the Green Party, using them as spoilers to help fascists win office.
If you’re serious about gaining political power, you need to get qualified candidates to run in local elections. Imagine if the Green Party held 15 seats in the house right now. They would be the power brokers. Nothing could get done by the plurality party without them.
A small minority can get big things done. The temperance movement was a minority movement with a single issue. They were willing to throw their support behind anyone who would support a constitutional amendment to ban alcohol. Because they prevented any major party from having a majority, they were able to get their agenda through by trading their support for just about anything in exchange for support for the 18th Amendment. The Green Party could do something similar.
The Green Party’s challenges in the U.S. system are def real, but to clarify:
First, the implication that they ignore everything except presidential races is false. 62% of all Green candidates since 1985 have run for county, municipal, school board, and special-district offices — not president or Congress. They have run over 7,100 candidates total and won at least 1,679 elections. As of late 2025 they held ~159 elected offices nationwide, almost all at the local level (city councils, mayors, school boards, etc.). In recent cycles they win 50–65% of the local races they actually contest. They do run down-ballot and the data is public.
Second, “woefully underqualified” presidential nominees is subjective. Jill Stein is a Harvard-educated physician; Ralph Nader built a national consumer-protection movement. It’s not so much candidate quality as it’s that third-party presidential runs are one of the only ways small parties can secure ballot access and media attention in dozens of states.
The Russian-funding claim is crap, brother. There was interference aimed at boosting Stein in 2016, but no credible evidence of direct Russian funding of the Green Party itself. Think about that, if Russian really funded the Green party, it would be front page news. Instead we have Lemmy whining about it because they don’t like third parties.
If the goal is building a real alternative to corporate capture and endless war, running visible national campaigns while grinding out local wins is a rational (tho hated on Lemmy) strategy.
The system, not incompetence or foreign cash, is the main reason third parties stay small.
Whelp. I guess all we can do is make sure Trump wins then, amiright folks? I mean, if you gotta pick one, you may as well make sure as many people as possible get killed.
Or pick third party. Ya know, if enough people chose third party, then third party would have a bigger shot at winning. How has ignoring the third parties out there worked out so far?
What would that accomplish? At least in terms of electing a 3rd party president, that is? Without a single representative in Congress or the Senate, how would they get their legislative agenda passed? Electing a 3rd party as president, would result in a lame duck administration. Whoever actually controlled Congress would simply ignore the wishes of the president, and enact their own legislation…and the president would have no power to do anything but veto all of it. Literally nothing would get done for the next 4 years. How does that prove to the public that 3rd parties are even effective? If anything, it would prove the opposite.
If a 3rd party wants to even have a chance, they need to fill more seats starting at the bottom, and work their way up to the highest office…not start at the top, and work their way down.
This isn’t even a matter of principle, either. Without 3rd party support at the state level, there’s no guarantee that they’ll be given fair treatment in local elections. All the shenanigans that the two main parties get up to, to keep 3rd party candidates out of the race, are because those elections are controlled by the two main parties at the State level. Until there are more 3rd party representatives in State legislatures, they will always be locked out of certain races.
Whoever actually controlled Congress would simply ignore the wishes of the president, and enact their own legislation…and the president would have no power to do anything but veto all of it.
Good! I want that to happen. So all the simps who worship the Democrats can see that the Democrats don’t really care about working-class people, and that they are no different than the Republicans.
I already know that, but I want everyone else to find that out. Then people can finally start electing more 3rd parties across the board. Let’s do it.
I’m ready for the Democrats to unmask themselves.
