this post was submitted on 09 Feb 2024
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The problem is sadly a bit more complicated. Thanks to the winner takes all system over in america a third party candidate has virtually no chance of being elected. Therefore if you want to counter a candidate you disagree with you have to necessarily vote for the most popular candidate that you can mildly agree with.
Some states have signed a pact to switch to ranked choice voting (i think new york and new hampshire are among them) which will help a lot with this problem on a state level. Only when most states adopt this it will matter on a national level.
Then and only then will it be viable to vote third party.
Well good luck! This back and forth between two parties looks like it's destroying your country through division.
The only ones seemingly coming out on top are the people in those parties and their corporate friends
You're not wrong but I think things have been much worse in the past few years thanks to trumpism and social media using destructive algorithms. I only see a future for the US if a non-GOP candidate wins.
Roughly 1/3rd (maybe slightly less) of the US population looks like it has the same feeling, but directed in the opposite direction.
Another 1/3rd feels the way you do, and the remaining 1/3rd doesn't care to vote
Common ground then, I don't think will be found with continuing this game of duopoly
You're right though, that Trumpism era caused more divide, but there's even more folks paying attention now thanks to that
All just my opinion as an outsider though, maybe I'm not seeing everything
This is sort of an open question to anyone listening.
How long do you think the US can keep the GOP out of winning the presidency if nothing changes politically?
In the past 100 years the longest a political party has held office has been two presidents. So even if Joe Biden wins this next election there is a high probability the Republicans will win eventually.
What happens then?
Edit: Corrected mistake.
Two terms? 80, 84, 88.
Yeah I realized I was wrong. I was looking at the following list: https://www.britannica.com/topic/Presidents-of-the-United-States-1846696
and made a mistake that every president only lasted one term (I don't know how). What I should've said is that no party has lasted 2 presidents in a row. My point still stands though just that it will take longer than just this election year.
Our hope is that once boomers die off the GOP will lose much of its political clout.
The cycle continues.
Worst case scenario it leads to a death spiral
Best case scenario they keep each other in check to maintain the system, but not much will change
The GOP has plans to implement a fascist takeover of the government if they get in power. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_2025
I don't think things can stay the same.
Either they eventually win and implement this plan.
Or our political system is overhauled so it isn't likely that they win ever again.
@[email protected]
Here's the summary for the wikipedia article you mentioned in your comment:
Project 2025 is a plan to reshape the executive branch of the U. S. federal government in the event of a Republican victory in the 2024 U. S. presidential election.
^article^ ^|^ ^about^
You're saying you feel that your choices are being stuck under a fascist government, or alter the system so the repubs can't win?
Essentially creating a one party system in either scenario - which is just full circle to being a non-democratic country. Historically, this usually leads to the concentration of wealth to a small group.
This is the divisive death spiral I'm referring to. Either way might lead to one party dominating everything, and the downfall of symbolic freedom that the US represents to the world
I'd take option C - vote in someone different
You're framing this like democrats want to rig the system against the GOP. The truth is that Dems want to institute democratic reforms that strengthen the voting power of average Americans.
Will that create a system where Republicans can't win? Probably, and good riddance. If they want to win, they need to have actually popular policies. That's how democracy works.
Who else competes against the DNC that the majority would vote for?
You'd be stuck with one massive party
☝️ The GOP values & strategy have changed over time. They would probably still exist as a party, but they would need to change their approach. Today's GOP is not the party of Lincoln.
Speaking of which, you know that the Republicans didn't always exist, right? But before them, it wasn't just One-party rule by Democrats, the Whig party existed. A first-past -the-post voting system structurally incentivises two-party rule.
I'm not disagreeing with you. I'm saying that at the current moment (with the current political system in the US) those are the options.
Option C is only an option if a significant majority believe that a third party can win which is not what a majority of people believe. It is like a catch 22.
What I am mainly saying is that things are likely going to change but the way in which that happens is unclear.
Yeah fair points. It's been entertaining to watch from the outside at the very least, and I'm sorry you have to live through it - sincerely.
The US sends shockwaves to Canada though, so I might be in your boat soon enough
The downvotes are because of the "both sides" bullshit. It's not because of a back and forth. One side is clearly much much better than the other. It's very stark if you pay attention at all.
No idea why you're being down voted, you're 100% correct.
So many downvotes, and so few willing to even speak up and say why.
Fwiw I think you are right, and moreover I am glad you have offered a civil conversation throughout.:-)
I have heard people ask the following question - though I have never heard of an answer (if you know I'd love to hear an answer): what country throughout history has ever survived devolving into a purely 2-party system? It has the effect that neither party actually needs to step up and DO anything, thus both devolve to simply slinging insults at the other one. e.g. Biden was elected b/c he was "not Trump", and before that Trump was elected for being "not Clinton". Obama was different, in his second term - many people had real hopes it seems, though Congress killed them all.
One of the worst parts of that effect is that it kills the desire to actually ACCOMPLISH any task at all, b/c when you do SOMETHING you can then be criticized for that. Whereas if all you do is halt what the other side is doing then you have succeeded at your objective (or like, at least you tried I suppose?).
Obstructionism kills governments. I legit doubt that democracy will survive in the USA, in another 10 years or so.
But yeah, I agree that if Biden wins, it will almost certainly be a Trump-blessed nominee who wins the next one. That said, there is a very non-negligible chance that Trump himself will personally win this one - some even say quite strong, if the poll numbers mean anything at all (debatable:-P). Like Clinton, some people may vote for the other side just to protest the situation of supporting Israel (never mind the fact that Trump would have supported them even harder).
Ehh, this is Lemmy, I shower in downvotes here lol.
For your question about surviving two party systems - I don't really know. From my understanding, this system is sort of a run off from British colonies and how their governments were setup. So I'm not sure if this is just a (relatively) modern issue that we need to overcome, or if it's happened before.
Yeah the contrarian effect is real, and that's part of the sluggishness of democracy. Dictatorships are horrible (obviously), but they can pivot on a dime compared to the democratic beaurocracy where there's 1000 checks and balances for every decision that just have never ending opposition.
That's part of why I was saying a third option might be a good choice here, because the two current political parties can't agree on anything to make good changes happen, it's almost in their benefit that it doesn't. If they're both making lots of money/connections for themselves while doing it, why change anything?
Maybe inserting more competition for these parties will help the people get their leaders to listen a bit more, and help mediate a middle ground to get shit done. Again, I could be wrong, but I don't think it's a crazy idea
It's only crazy because it's not feasible. If we get rid of the winner take all voting systems, it would be a good change.
A third choice would not only be good, but is mandatory for survival, as we are both saying. It's just a matter of getting to there from here, but yeah totally. Or better yet, 5, 20, 50, even 200 - having real options would be great.
What I know about the history of democracy is that ancient Greeks tried it, but they had more of a "direct" democracy, whereas America used ideas by like French philosophers such as Locke. Note that at the time the USA was founded, England was still a strict monarchy. Then America's success, later repeated in France, led to democracy spreading all over the globe, and at some point wrapping back around to the UK which despite retaining the monarchy at least introduced a Parliamentary system.
So now, many of the most successful nations on earth, like Germany, have some forms of democratization, which has refined and reimplemented the idea and put in different kinds of checks and balances... whereas the USA has left it mostly alone, so we are running on like Democracy 1.0, without the advantages of e.g. ranked choice voting that other nations use.
Some additional context to this discussion is that (a) Americans are really stupid. That sounds mean to say but, as one myself, it really is the biggest elephant in the room - like that's not just an invective, it's a diagnosis, and it terrifies me to say it, bc it's true. And (b) also greedy and vindictive, but that relates back to the former, so mostly what's important is (c) automation and globalization have changed things. The rich do not need factory workers, hence when COVID happened the plan was to just let them die. But also they don't need many worker class people anymore either - which isn't entirely true yet but is in the process of becoming more so all the time. Doctors? There's an app for that. Artist? Song-writer? Billionaires such as Bezos and Musk do not see the value in supporting anyone else, and more important the millionaires who want to become billionaires want to pay lower taxes, no matter how much they benefit from them.
The USA, like many Western nations, seems to me to be coasting along on past successes, thus continues to succeed now bc that's just how things work, but in spite of our current systems not because of them.
To reiterate: it literally does not matter what system of governance would be "best" - facts have little to nothing whatsoever to do with this conversation, where misinformation reigns king.:-( We are like those zombie animals that have been taken over by a parasitic fungus or some such (I mean the irl kind, but the movie versions work just as well), where we no longer act according to our best interests, but instead to whoever is pulling the strings now, behind the scenes.