@Isocratia I mean, maybe. But if you bail from a conversation just because people are discussing ideas that don’t neatly align with your views, I think that kind of runs counter to productive discussion. Engagement is the whole point of a forum. Why not take the opportunity to make your case? On that point, I don’t think I was being dogmatic, I was just putting a moderate, measured perspective out here. In particular, that if a candidate has comparable support to what Nader did, he should also be on the debate stage.
As for Kennedy, I’m not sure if you followed his campaign directly, but from what I saw, his platform had some surprisingly rational moments. Whatever mistaken views he holds about healthcare, his core message was about dismantling corporate capture of government—which, let’s be honest, is exactly the route that’s brought us to the brink of fascism today. Frankly, he seemed more committed to stopping Trump than the Democrats did.
Like him or not, he was a third-party candidate who genuinely threatened to shake up the duopoly—something we haven’t really seen since Nader. And given how deeply dysfunctional the two-party system has become, that’s not nothing. The political landscape is a real-time disaster, and reform doesn’t just happen on its own. While it wasn’t his main agenda, one thing I appreciated about his run is that he was literally the only candidate to talk about ranked-choice voting and other technical fixes.
That said, I completely checked out when he aligned himself with Trump. At that point, his platform basically collapsed. His current sellout stance disillusioned a lot of his supporters—and honestly, he should’ve just bowed out once it was clear he couldn’t win.
If you see it differently, I’d be interested to hear why. That’s why I brought this topic up in the first place.