Can we stop vilifying Hillary Clinton to the point where Democrats are turning to Trump?

What do you honestly mean the "next big claim?" Do you have zero knowledge of how political systems, especially elections, work?

You're dismissing the claim that a "third party vote gives the election to Trump." Except that's exactly what it does in many cases. Voting for a third party often selfish and wasted. It's called First-past-the-post voting and it's based only around the premise of who gets the most votes, though not actually requiring a majority of the voters' support. It's problematic because you can have a candidate win with 25% support because the next candidate only has 20% support and so on. Yet 75% of the people don't actually want that candidate to win in the first place, but they won because the 75% was divide among another 5 candidates with 10% or 15% or 20% support.

This is the best video to explain the dangers of thinking like yourself:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s7tWHJfhiyo

The American political system has been designed around the premise of two major parties, not to polarize the people, but to protect their interests and representation.

Sometimes you have to look past your own self-interest and understand that the party system is created not to be a cult-like hive-minded arena but to make sure that your ideas and beliefs are not infringed upon. You don't have to agree with everything in either party (in our case Republican or Democrat), but people generally find themselves relatively aligned to one party or another come election cycles, even if they're an independent.

This is why people, like myself, question you for not supporting Hillary in the general if you support Sanders in the primary. They have such similar ideology (one slightly more moderate than the other), that it would be foolish to jeopardize a candidate's nomination simply by voting third-party. It's happened to George Bush Sr. in 1992 with Ross Perot and again in 2000 with Al Gore and Ralph Nader. Let's say you agree with Bernie on 100% of his policies, that means you probably agree with Hillary on at least 90%. It's extremely carless and ignorant to then not vote for Hillary out of some frustration over your favorite candidate not getting the nomination. Because then you increase the likelihood that someone who shares 50% of your beliefs or less ends up becoming president.

It's not surprising seeing the amount of thoroughly misinformed people on /r/politics, but this theory of third-party voting is something everyone needs to consider.

/r/politics Thread Parent