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If someone refuses to admit their political affiliation in the US you can basically guarantee they're right wing.
Other places too. I had a long conversation with a German visiting the US once and I was very exhausted by the end. Lots of skirting around problematic ideology without ever making any hard statements. They did say Starship Troopers was their favorite movie and I think they rooted for the humans.
Starship troopers is one of my favorite movies too. I love satire. Just... Yeah. So many people who love that movie miss the satire that I don't like talking about it with strangers.
so democrats are like vegans?
No, leftists are like vegans. Call a vegan a vegetarian, "I'm not a vegetarian, I'm a vegan!"
Call a leftist a democrat, "I'm not a democrat, I'm a leftist!"
(btw, I'm a leftist. Not a vegan though)
I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone call themselves a “leftist”, but maybe I move in the wrong circles. (I am a vegan though.)
About half of my close friends are leftists so it's definitely a circles thing.
I am both a leftist and 89% vegan.
It’s a distinction I’ve seen increasingly in the past year or so. On riddit there are a couple communities (stupidpol, for instance) of people who consider themselves leftists and not US-style liberals… specifically, stupidpol members believe in marxist/socialist economics and societal structure but reject American liberal identity politics. People will correct you if you refer to them as liberals vs leftists.
Ya know, it's not always democrats versus republicans....
Until everyone stops voting for this bullshit two-party system, it's just going to keep being dems and repubs pointing fingers at each other.
(This- is in no way me providing any endorsement, or affection for whatever candidate is in question. I know nothing about the person).
They didn't say Republicans, they said right wing. The Democrats are also a right wing party, just center-right.
Here in the US(topic of this post), democratic party is considered left, republican is considered right.
And it's silly, since the Democrats barely support any policies that could be called left-wing.
and yet the Democrats are still a right wing party.
Just because we let Republicans pull the Overton Window so far to the right it's damn near broken doesn't change the fact that Dems are still right wing.
Right and left wing are always relative, not absolute. The Democrats might be right wing if transplanted with no changes to another country, but that doesn't matter. They are left win in comparison to the only other party that matters, so they are left wing.
It's always relative.
That's..........not how that works at all. They're to the left of Republicans but that's akin to saying that Mt Everest's distance from sea level ain't shit compared to the moon.
That's exactly how it works.
Left and Right are always relative positions, not absolute one. And they are relative not only to each other, but to the polics of the country as a whole.
Mount Everest's high IS absolute, so it's not a valid comparison.
Left and Right are, like what they are named for, merely directions. They mean nothing without a point to compare them too.
Right is typical the traditional position, orginally with the king, and left is the reform/change position.
Which is definitely true of right and left in the US.
We do a lot of weird word play in the US. Liberal, for example, has come to mean something akin to left wing. In the rest of the world liberal would idealogically be a much closer fit with something like a center right party. Or it would have elements of both (personal freedoms combined with limited government).
This isn't going to happen until the majority of the country implements ranked choice voting, so that third party voting isn't just throwing your vote away. As long as we are in the current system, third party voting is pointless.
Focus your efforts on getting ranked choice adopted. It is the key that will actually unlock the ability to vote for third parties.
Now three guesses which party is trying to make RCV illegal & already have in Florida.
I'm assuming it's the party of ratfuckers who refuse to do anything that would win them the popular vote.
Ranked Choice Voting doesn't make third parties viable, either. It uses the same counting method as our current system (tally up people's first-choice preferences) and therefore suffers from all the same problems, like vote-splitting, spoiler effect, and center-squeeze effect. You can't fix the problems of FPTP by adding more rounds of FPTP. You need to allow voters to express opinions about all of the candidates and then actually count all of those opinions.
If you want third parties to be viable, you want real reforms like STAR Voting, Condorcet RCV, or Approval Voting.
Until everyone stops thinking that way- the same cycle will repeat every 4 years.
Democrats and republicans blaming the person who came into office before them, for all of the countries problems, followed by a lot of election promises they will never keep.
No, pp gave ipoh a viable path forward on 3rd party options.
Going "my way or the highway" instead of voting for people who can win is what gets you locked in fptp.
If voting records reflect spey for people who agree with and support ranked choice you'll see more politicians who support it.
It's pretty much an objective fact that voting third-party (especially in a swing state), is indeed "throwing your vote away". It has been well studied and well documented.
In the current fptp system it has to be. Until ranked choice for president and proportional representation for the house then usually the left will shatter. The republic strongest point is they all vote under one big group even if they disagree internally. All splitting the vote will do is empower that "team"
That wouldn't change anything. RCV still produces a polarized two-party system.
its literally always democrats versus republicans. thats how a FPTP winner take all voting system works
I'm not a democrat, I'm a leftist.
Stop trying to play the victim. I didn't say a single thing about you, nor your political affiliation.
Sorry, I was making a joke. I replied above about leftists being like vegans. Joke missed, my bad.
Apologies then. Clicking my alerts by default only gives the immediately comment reply as context.
Good luck electing anyone not in the two party system. I think there's 1 or 2 independent senators and no independent representatives. You need to change the rules of the game, cause like it or not were all playing the game. And not voting or voting 3rd party when they're polling at 1% is just giving an extra vote to someone who disagrees with you.
There isn't that much luck needed. Just people to realize they don't have to vote between a douche or the turd (south park reference). And, when people do so- turns out, it is possible to elect something other than a douche or a turd.
https://my.lp.org/elected-officials/
It is possible, but a major US election requires a massive burst of popularity to avoid splitting the vote of the majority candidate having "less shitty than the other guy" policy positions. Failure to breach that threshold hands the victory to the majority candidate with the shittiest position on policies.
The simple test is this: has your third-party candidate achieved a realistically high margin of popular opinion behind them? I'm not saying be a slave to polling, but it isn't rocket science either. You will know if a third-party candidate has momentum behind them. They have charisma that sucks people in. They are somehow getting attention regularly driven to them despite the majority candidates pumping much more money into the news media.
If the third-party candidate doesn't have something bordering on a revolutionary ideological movement backing them, they aren't going to make that cut in a nationwide race.
Edit: I'm not saying give up. Donate to causes you honestly believe in. Volunteer. Do what you can to make a difference. Support local government efforts to implement ranked choice voting in your state, which can and will break this system. (look at Alaska) But when it comes to casting that final vote, be realistic, even if it means voting against all the hard work you just put in. Sunk cost fallacy at the expense of giving away victory doesn't help anyone.
Not even majority....just plurality trump lost the popular vote and the more you split it the less majority is needed (until ranked choice or runoffs is brought in). In the UK the current government holds absolute power on just 38% of the popular vote thanks to first past the post and constituency based representation.
It's not actually two parties though. Both of them have multiple factions vying for power inside their party. Progressives versus Third Way. MAGA versus Finance.
The entire idea of two parties is an info op.
Elected officials from both parties almost always seem to all vote for the same as the rest of their party and even at times vote against the opposing party only because the opposing party is voting for it.
You should take a closer look then.
Ill gladly admit im wrong and probably start to think differently, if someone can show me just one example of where a portion of elected officials in a single party split votes on an issue. I just cant recall ever seeing that happen.
It never looks like that from the outside because they usually talk and get to a bill they can all agree on or not. The news never reports on why bills don't get passed beyond the parties though so the average person never sees a caucus in operation. A recent example where that veil got pierced though is the progressive caucus pushing for the green new deal and getting quashed by the other section of Democrats and all the Republicans.