WYSK: There funded by dark money PACS, but some good reporting has brought out these names: David Koch, Peter Thiel, Reid Hoffman, Mark Cuban, Harlan Crow, and Michael Bloomberg. Some of there members are most famous for stopping big bills. Joe Leiberman, for example, single handedly stopped the single payer portion of the ACA. Senators Joe Manchin and Kyrsen Simena kept the John Lewis voting rights act from passing, and famously kept the senate from repealing the filibuster.
Edit: please note that I made at least one mistake here (as well as some kind of boneheaded comments later). FPTP, even in the US, does not require a 50% majority, just more votes than anyone else (a “plurality”). It can still benefit parties to get to 50%, since it makes their winning more likely, and so in the absence of any drawbacks, most successful parties will still aim for it, but it isn’t strictly necessary, as has been sometimes demonstrated in the UK. Thanks to squaresinger for linking a YouTube video that mentions this below. /Edit
I just want to share my thoughts on this. It started as a response to one comment, but I realized that there’s a lot more that can (and I think should) be said, so here goes.
First, for those who don’t know, FPTP stands for First Past The Post, meaning a system where everyone votes for a single candidate and whoever gets more than 50% (i.e. “past the post”) wins the entire election (the losers get nothing). For many Americans, this might be so familiar that one would wonder how it could be any different (in a small-d democratic system), but there are in fact many alternatives: ranked voting, proportional representation, Condorcet method, etc.
They all have strengths and weaknesses, but for FPTP, and other similar systems, there’s a result in political science called Duverger’s law that says FPTP-like rules tend to cause a two-party system, essentially because because even if you don’t team up with a larger party you may disagree with on many issues, to get a majority, others will, and then they’ll win and you’ll get nothing. And since getting significantly more than 50% consumes party resources that might better be used elsewhere, but gives no reward, 50% (plus a small “safety margin”) is what all the successful parties will eventually aim for, and thus you get two roughly equally-successful parties. Tiny swings in voting then lead to massive differences in outcomes, which threatens the stability and security of everyone (even America’s “enemies”).
So saying “just vote for third parties” (like I see some calling for here) is tone-deaf at best, or part of a cynical ploy to fracture the opponent’s party at worst. Even if a “third party” does win, the best that can be hoped for under FPTP is they just end up replacing one of the two parties, becoming one of the two parties in the “new” two-party system. And the two existing parties have likely spent far more time and effort researching ways to stop even that from happening than any of us ever will.
If we, as Americans, or others with a stake in what America decides to do, want to change this (and I personally do), then we need far more fundamental changes to how the system works. Just choosing a candidate we like (whether they have any chance of winning or not) won’t cut it. I don’t know what’s the best voting system to use, but I know I’d like to scrap the Electoral College, for a couple reasons:
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Even though one might argue that Congress and the Supreme Court are more essential to reform, it’s hard to deny that the President has a very large leadership role today.
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One might argue that relying on a convoluted/Byzantine method for choosing the President makes it harder to manipulate, and that’s probably true, but the two parties have shown that it being difficult is not a deterrent to them doing so: in fact, they likely both benefit from it by keeping smaller parties that can’t afford to do it out.
It reminds me of the fallacy in computer security of “security through obscurity”: if it’s possible to break into the system, and large numbers of people can benefit substantially from it, then someone eventually will, no matter how hard we make it to exploit. We need to change the system, not only so that it is prohibitively difficult for anyone to exploit the system, but also to get rid of a lot of the corruption that makes most people want to exploit it in the first place.
All of this is much easier said than done, I know, but we need to explain clearly to the public why “quick fixes” won’t work, before we can convince them of the need for more fundamental changes. We still need to work on figuring out the details of the best changes, but unless we can show people the reality of the deep structural problems that acually exist, why they exist, and how we know we’re right about what we’re saying, we’ll never convince most people to change anything.
One of the biggest problems with making this change is that in areas where one party is dominant, voters of that party are afraid of changing the system because they fear it’ll mean that they won’t dominate anymore.
You are totally right. The problem isn’t zqthat such a change from within the system can only happen from a position of immense power. So to actually fix these bugs you need to
- Have enough power to change the constitution
- Have gotten that power through the current system
- Be so dedicated to change the system that you are willing to risk all that power for the change, because any meaningful change means that the systems that brought you to power won’t work in that way anymore.
Now, to make matters more difficult, representative democraties usually spread that power over hundreds or thousands of people. So not only you need to fit the bill above, but also the top few hundred politicians in your country need to agree to potentially losing their power.
So what tends to happen is the opposite: Politicians amass power and make it harder and harder to replace them, until a war/civil war/revolution happens and the next crowd tries to make it better.
The US has had centuries to concentrate power, contrary to many European nations that were re-founded after wars in the last century.
So unless the US as we know it collapses, there won’t be significant change to the better for the political system.
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If someone refuses to admit their political affiliation in the US you can basically guarantee they’re right wing.
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 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.
And it’s silly, since the Democrats barely support any policies that could be called left-wing.
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).
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”
Until ranked choice for president
That wouldn’t change anything. RCV still produces a polarized two-party system.
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.
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.
throwing your vote away
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.
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.
Now three guesses which party is trying to make RCV illegal & already have in Florida.
When I see a name like No Labels, it tells me they don’t want to be upfront about what their real platform is. So they should more straightforwardly be called Hidden Agenda.
I remember reading an article that did a deep dive into them once, and I was absolutely astounded by just how much they embodied the “enlightened centrist”. I didn’t think there were an appreciable number of people who were actually like that.
They continue the trend really of there being no good third party in the US - largely because FPTP makes two large parties preferable.
When you really look at their ideology, “enlightened centrists” are right-wingers who think they’re smarter than the usual bigots that group has. This can be seen by the fact that they pretty much always will complain about hate speech being called out, but will not call out the hate speech itself.
Yeah pretty much. It’s always such a big tell.
Lol
Forgot to mention, they have no Platform.
Also their candidate RFK, is a lying moron who’s been called out many times over the years by his supposed “sources”.
RFK is completely unfit for office, but I don’t think he’s involved.
Biden is doing a good job given the circumstances. If you don’t want the total destruction of the United States, there is really only one choice for president… Joe Biden. All other roads lead to the Dark Lord Trumples, the Silly Piggy.
Joe Biden should be in an old folks home. He can barely stand up let alone lead a nation. No fan of the other guy either, but let’s face it. Both of them are only puppets on a string.
go back to the fox news grandpa
Biden has accomplished alot of big things actually, they just aren’t culture war issues so Republicans have never heard of any of them.
“a historic bipartisan infrastructure bill, generational investments in clean energy and semiconductor manufacturing, the first gun safety law in almost 30 years, a bill codifying same-sex marriage, a bill aiding veterans who suffered health effects from burn pits and an electoral reform to prevent a repeat of Trump’s attempt to use Congress to undermine the election.”
I think he’s doing a fine job.
How many kids are still imprisoned in the concentration camps on the border?
In today’s news, people can think about more than one thing at a time. Border policy doesn’t negate the fact that the Climate Bill and the Infrastructure Bill were objectively good, historic pieces of legislation.
I don’t think that answers my question? How many children are still locked up in concentration camps on the border? What is the number? Do you even know or are you just completely checked out from the issue because you are morally reprehensible? Let me illuminate it for you, 1 in 3 of all migrants held in america’s concentration camps is a child.
The fact the US has concentration camps on the border and that liberals have just conveniently forgotten about it and gone back to brunch as soon as Biden became president is the problem here. You make claims before an election about issues and then do nothing about them when you have every power to do so. Then you wonder why nobody is enthused to vote for a gaggle of liars.
Pretending that the US is doing literally anything about climate is also a joke. The bill is worthless because it does not change the fact that fossil industries have a higher rate of profit than renewables and until this is resolved every single action on climate is completely performative that only brings us closer and closer to the inevitable disaster that capitalism has caused. What you are doing is greenwashing concentration camps.
Hey, here’s the funny thing about the internet: No one is obligated to engage in questions posed in bad faith.
Here’s what the climate bill contains for anyone actually interested:
https://youtu.be/qw5zzrOpo2sIt wasn’t asked in bad faith. If you knew the answer beforehand I would have happily conceded you do in fact care about having concentration camps. Not knowing is absolutely a sign of being checked out, which is half the issue here, none of you actually do anything except vote. You see politics as something you do once every few years and as a spectator sport the rest of the time. You have no concept of electoral vs non-electoral politics, you literally do not take part politically except as entertainment consumption outside of voting. You all have this embarrassing mindset:
Biden. Voting Reform.
The dems are never going to pass voting reform for the same reason the UK labour party (a considerably further left party than the dems) has never passed it despite pretending they would consider it for multiple decades now. They benefit from FPTP. All they would be doing is diluting their power and handing over a huge portion of the political landscape to socialists who would immediately become relevant, they would then be forced to actually come to agreements with those socialists as opposed to just completely and totally ignoring them as they do currently.
Oh looky here,
https://www.cnn.com/2022/01/19/politics/senate-voting-legislation-filibuster/index.html
Manchin and Sinema blocking exactly what your talking about
And you think that the dems wouldn’t magically find someone else to do a spoiler vote on issues they don’t really want to pass? Lmao why are americans this hilariously naive? These people do not represent the average working class person, they represent millionaires and billionaires, they represent the very corporate owners that the fediverse exists to escape from. When you finally realise this you will begin to start seeing through the bullshit. Half of this stuff can be done via Executive powers. They don’t do it because they do not want to.
Unfortunately, we’re all so polarized left/right, red/blue, that everyone’s become blind to this. The big wigs started a culture/political war to keep us away from the class war. And they’ve won unfortunately. Part of the reason I can’t get I to politics with anyone, because while they all scream left or right, I’m out here on my soap box screaming tear the whole government down and start over. The “progressive” parties will only push as hard as they can without losing any of their/their corporate overlords excess income.
The liberals will never recognise the trend of history that they’ve created, or take blame. They will blame the people instead, choosing to blame ontological factors over a materialist understanding of history.
No Labels as a name isn’t even going to appeal to left-leaning folks, it sounds nonsensical and oversimplified. Things need labels, a Nazi is a Nazi. Useful label, even if the Jewish-hating, strong ethno-state sorts don’t like it.
It’ll appeal to moderates, but that’ll pull from both sides.
Unless they run an environmentalist or something? Like a Green Party type spoiler? Would have to be an idiot not to run under their own banner though, raising awareness is their whole thing.
Yeah, I gives me similar vibes as “I don’t see color.”
But even if we remove bigotry and politics and all of that… labels aren’t necesarily bad. Like I am a creature who identifies as one of two main types of sexes that is sexually and emotionally attracted to creatures who identify as the same.
Which is a weird way of saying I’m a man who is sexually and romantically attracted to men, but those are labels, so I couldn’t say man, human, etc.
Of course I could also just say I’m gay. While yes, everyone is a little different, it has worked so far for me. People tend to get it.
Labels are not bad. It’s an idea only used by edgy teenagers and liberals who want to be good for the praise more so than for simply being good.
Aw man, I kinda liked Mark Cuban.
No good multimillionaires.
*billionaires.
There are millionaires just from buying a house for $150k in the right city in the 90s. Doesn’t make them evil.
ultimately I will be voting for the best candidate, regardless of party. My litmus is ubi. no ubi, no vote. if the “spoiler candidate” is the only one supporting and pushing ubi, then I will vote for them. If you don’t like that, then endorse ubi and I might vote for you instead.
Issue is that once they realize UBI is what needed to the votes, they will promise it and not delivery like with everything else since FDR.
Political process is a waste of time. Vote with your money and feet. It has more impact.
We need ability to give no confidence vote, I guess voting third party would work like that
