this post was submitted on 05 Apr 2024

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has the whole world gone crazy? (lemmy.world)

submitted 7 months ago by distantsounds to c/politicalmemes

36 comments fedilink hide all child comments

mark it, Dude.

all 38 comments

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[–] Eldritch 15 points 7 months ago

And this is why we lefties will never achieve our goals. Too many focused on hyperbolic virtue signaling shit posts. And not enough focus on pragmatic policies or candidates to actually improve anything. More focused on tearing everything down and being useful tools to their enemies. Than building anything regardless of it being imperfect.

I agree. Biden sucks when it comes to his Israel policy. He's done too little too late and only after massive amounts of pressure at that. But realistically what other option do we have? Can someone show me a plausible way to elect someone other than Trump, RFK(lol) or Biden? And can anyone explain to me. Despite being the best of a bad bunch; what we have to gain right now by boosting his enemies in tearing him down.

I'd love to have seen a president Sanders. Single-payer healthcare. Large works of public housing being erected etc. I'm sure self righteous shit posting will achieve much of that. And that surely liberals don't have a valid point that we are facing fascism and the end of democracy. Despite many of their own politicians having enabled it. Failing to learn the lessons of 1930s Germany. I'm sure phyric infighting will end well. Yup, this is fine.

[–] Ultragigagigantic 14 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Always has been.

Ranked Choice voting or bust

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago (2 children)

Multiple choice is statistically better

[–] morphballganon 1 points 7 months ago

What's that?

I've heard of Ranked Choice or STAR

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 children)

Fuck all that. STAR voting for presidents.

Edit: want more details, see my other comment

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago (1 children)

STAR is ridiculously bad, it just has good marketing. It favors the preferences of voters who pick extremes, ranking everybody either a 1 or a 5 - likely the least informed and thoughtful voters - over voters who carefully weigh whether a candidate deserves 3 or 4 stars. Ranked choice is simple and effective, takes more granular voter preference into account, and provides runoff for each virtual round, rather than just the last. It also has a simple variant that works equally well for multi-seat elections.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

I've read up on all the voting systems and I think your take is incorrect. I want to be clear that both are better than FPTP and I politically support RCV more often because it is more well-known, because IT is actually the one with all the PR, not STAR voting. RCV does not get pitched because it is the ultimately best choice - it gets pitched because it's the most well-known from PR. Meanwhile it's mostly math geeks talking about STAR voting.

With that out of the way, RCV has issues that STAR voting does not.

Ranked choice deals with bizarre issues which makes it finicky in various cases. Because of how ranked choice works, during any round, parties with the most candidates end up with their votes most split, which can actually lead to candidates being eliminated early despite them having more overall support than other candidates. Ultimately this means the party with the most candidates actually gives its voting base the least amount of voting power. You can also have various cases where a third party candidate with very little majority support can flat out win elections through the premature elimination case. On top of this, your vote can often not be counted in RCV, called ballot exhaustion. This occurs if your top vote is eliminated after your other choices, leading to your ballot having no other candidates for your vote to go to.

I could also go into Arrow's Impossibility 'theorem' but it ends up not being useful to the overall conversation IMO.

Meanwhile, exhaustive testing has shown there is currently no known way to game STAR voting. The idea that voters picking extremes have more power in a STAR voting system is misguided. They cannot sway the space, they only make the mistake of essentially destroying their own nuance. What this does is it flattens the overall distribution curve - which does nothing major to actual results. If two candidates were the most likely to win, then they will still be spikes in the distribution and will proceed to runoff. If another candidate is less popular than the other two but still has a following, they will also still show up in the distribution the same - they will also not win and thus them not being in the runoff will not matter. It ultimately does not affect the end results of the election. The only edge case it deals with is equal votes at runoff, which is an edge case so unlikely that it shouldn't even be considered possible.

You can go ahead and even try to break it.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 children)

My God dude not this again

Healthcare, no idea what you're talking about, is Biden bad for health care somehow now?
Biden's corporate tax reforms swung Amazon's taxes from negative $1.2 billion per quarter to positive $1 billion when they took effect at the start of 2023, and they're currently paying $3 billion per quarter, a comfortable amount more than they've ever paid before. Here's this year's proposal of what he plans to do to build on top of that. Raising corporate taxes was most of how he funded stuff like the infrastructure bill.
Biden passed the largest single action against climate change in American history, although Republicans and Manchin blocked his earlier much more aggressive attempt.

If you were just talking about him funding a genocide we could rock and roll about how right you are, but no. I get it though -- including the other three is a necessary part in the propaganda equation because the accusations have to stay fresh and varied in order to continue hitting the right buttons to blend into an overall gestalt of badness to make it "feel" like there's a groundswell of overall opinion that Biden is just bad on everything, if that's the perception you're trying to engineer.

(Oh, and also, blaming the messenger who relays to you that Trump is infinitely, infinitely worse and that that's relevant to what we should do in the upcoming election makes about as much sense as a teenager saying "it's not faaaaaaiiiir" that we have to keep the thermostat lower or we can't take a trip because of money reasons. Yeah, I too wish we had Bernie Sanders in the election, that would be fuckin great, but also don't treat it as something I invented when I relay to you that not electing Hitler is an important priority in this election.)

[–] stanleytweedle 1 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (3 children)

The 'lefty' persecution complex is starting to make conservatives look... well- no... it just makes them look as petulant as conservatives.

Also making the DNC 'The Dude' doesn't really fit the theme that well.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 7 months ago

They aren't lefties, I think, they're just people who really want to complain about Biden and yes are inventing reasons they're being persecuted when people disagree with them

[–] distantsounds -4 points 7 months ago (2 children)

[–] [email protected] 5 points 7 months ago

Even absurdist humor makes sense in some way.

[–] stanleytweedle 5 points 7 months ago

Glad you agree it doesn't make sense.

[–] [email protected] -3 points 7 months ago (1 children)

O? You are not excited and happy to have Biden as president again? You aren't jizzing in your pants at the thought of voting for him again? Clearly you are a MAGAt Trump supporter stop posing as a liberal or something!!

[–] [email protected] 5 points 7 months ago

This clearly keeps you up at night, and I want you to know that NyQuil can help in a pinch.