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As a liberal-libertarian, this shit pisses me off.
I want the libertarian party to be taken seriously. I think the libertarian platform could very well have mass appeal.
But they need to stop focusing on wingnuts like this who not only will NEVER get elected to anything more than dog catcher, but harm the whole image of libertarians and libertarianism.
Libertarians should focus on personal freedom and lower taxes. And Stop with the far right wing shit- 'let's lower taxes by defunding the EPA and let the open market tackle pollution' type stuff.
Dude that's what this party is. Maybe stop pulling for a party that is ideologically bankrupt.
They're the party of "gubmint bad". They're a joke.
I dislike most political parties. Red, blue, yellow, I think the system is fucking broken and there are no angels in it. All political parties do, as a concept, is reduce the number of choices voters have overall.
I think if you want true democracy, you have to get rid of primaries. Anyone who can get enough signatures goes on the ballot, and people vote with ranked choice voting.
The amount of work and connections required to run a campaign basically guarantees political parties. There's a reason why political parties exist in practically every democratic or pseudo-democratic country.
I agree that the current system sucks and I'd prefer ranked choice which would increase the amount of viable political parties.
But the libertarian party and everything it stands for are still ideologically bankrupt and the politicians in the party are deeply unserious people who haven't exercised a single ounce of grey matter between them on how government could or should actually work in the US.
I'd argue the amount of work and connections necessary to run a campaign is because of political parties. You need a media machine because the other guys will have one.
I would love a situation where the media machine is more or less prohibited- where events like debates are what affects peoples minds, not slick 30 second ads that do a shitty job explaining anything so they just throw mud.
I think what you say is probably accurate- but I'd add the libertarian party (the organization) has the exact same problem the DNC / GOP have (national group focusing on own interest or special interest, losing touch with their base).
I heard a good joke a few weeks ago-- Libertarians are like house cats- fiercely independent, yet totally dependent on a system they have no understanding of. I think that especially applies to a lot of the national Libertarian platform- they expect that dismantling the EPA and Dept of Education is going to have some kind of positive effect on quality of life.
They'd do much better if they stay away from conservative/wingnut talking points and focus on personal liberties, a subject most Americans can get behind...
I'm starting to see why you occasionally fall for libertarians, this is practically a libertarian argument. You've picked an element that is ever present (government in their case, political parties in yours), blamed it for the way things turned out in the real world, and then imagined if it were relegated to as small as possible a role, or eliminated it, that things would be perfect / better.
The amount of work and connections necessary to run a campaign has to do with there being lots and lots of people, consuming lots and lots of media, and trying to persuade them to decide in your favor.
I'd like ranked choice everywhere, and I'd also like for solely public funding of campaigns. And the overturning of the citizens united decision.
All of that said I agree with most of what you're advocating for anyway and largely agree with most of what you're saying and want more than two parties in the US so rock on. 🎸
I suspect we'd agree a lot more than we'd disagree :)
FWIW I think most libertarian talking points are crap (especially lately).
I think the whole 'take some piece of something and blame it for whatever's wrong' attitude is sophomoric to the point of being childishly immature. Libertarians do a lot of that publicly, and it's stupid and narrow-minded. Thus, housecats.
I'd summarize my political position as 'I think the married gay couple should be able to defend themselves, their marijuana farm, and their adopted children with AR-15 rifles, knowing that if they get hurt and have to go to the hospital, single payer health care will mean they don't go bankrupt'. I take my positions on their merits, not out of revenge against some apparent problem caused by some group.
I oppose political parties for the same reason George Washington warned us about them in his farewell speech- that they encourage voting based on party loyalty rather than the common good. And that's in addition to the complaints about the two-party system I've already laid out.
I think if we eliminated primaries and let anyone with signatures get on the ballot, that by itself would sufficiently reduce the influence of parties. They could stop being kingmakers and start being more of a broader support structure for ideologically similar (not identical) candidates.
We definitely need more functional parties though. We need minimum of 2, probably better with 4 or 5, and right now between GOP and DNC together we have about 0.8 of one. :(