this post was submitted on 25 Jun 2023
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Asklemmy
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Never said they were. But they are both inescapably corrupt any beholden to their corporate masters. Democrats are just better at pretending to care about social issues.
A vote for either party is a vote against progress.
Unfortunately in a first past the post system voting third party is little more than throwing your vote away, or even worse taking it away from a candidate who you support that actually has a chance of winning
Believing the above, but still believing we live in a democracy.
Sad, but true. But also a self-fulfilling prophecy. If everyone was well-informed and voted for who they really felt deserved the position, regardless of party affiliation, we wouldn't be in this mess. But that would also require that everyone actually spend time researching each candidate, and most people don't have the time/mental capacity for that.
Thinking more on it, maybe this was always the endgame of representative democracy, especially when mixed with unregulated (for the last few decades, anyway) capitalism. Even if everyone spent hours researching each candidate and chose earnestly, we might have a small resurgence of third-party representatives in positions of power for a short while, but people would inevitably move towards two polarized parties, anyway.
So I guess our only option now is to tear it all down and start anew. Or maybe just wait for the AI singularity to happen, then we all either die horribly or live forever in paradise. ๐ค
Ooooor we could push for ranked choice voting, haha
Psh, yeah, if you want the easy way out!
Seriously, though, it boggles the mind that there hasn't been a stronger push for ranked choice voting. Of course the establishment parties would do their best to suppress anything that might help unseat them, but you'd think the disenfranchised millions who feel no strong affiliation to red or blue would be pushing harder for it. It's not perfect, but at this point, I think most would agree that a major change is necessary if we ever want to Make America Kinda Okay Againโข
Oh yeah, 100% agree. It's insane it isn't a top priority to me. I would have to imagine the powers that be have little to no interest in that kind of change. The world would be a much better place with ranked choice voting though, maybe someday!
You just said that both sides are the same, in slightly different words.
This Reddit post collected more specific evidence than I've ever seen:
https://np.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/8xt55v/the_fcc_wants_to_charge_you_225_to_review_your/e25uz0g/
The bottom line is that no, they're not anywhere close to the same. The vast majority of Democrats have supported quite progressive social and economic issues.
Take the Affordable Care Act as an example. Democrats barely had 60 votes in the senate. A clear majority of Democrats were willing to vote for a public option. But just a few centrists were unwilling, and no Republicans were willing to vote for the ACA at all, so it passed without the public option.
There are countless other examples, where 90% of Democrats have actually supported a quite progressive bill, but in order to actually get a bill passed requires catering to centrists.
So yeah, if you're comparing centrist Democrats to average Republicans, there's not that much of a difference. But that's completely ignoring that 90% of Democrats are actually voting for the right thing and 70% of them are actually pretty progressive.