Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.) went after former President Trump for his legal woes in an interview on MSNBC Saturday.
“I’ll take the individual who’s 81 over the guy who has 91 felony counts,” Swalwell said, making a reference to President Biden’s age in an interview on MSNBC’s “The Katie Phang Show” on Saturday.
“It’s not about two individuals,” Swalwell continued, speaking about the 2024 election. “It’s about the idea of competence versus chaos, or even greater, freedom versus fascism. If we make it about those ideas, and what they mean in our daily lives, we’re gonna win.”
Swalwell’s comments come after Trump was ordered to pay almost $355 million in penalties in a civil fraud case and amid increased scrutiny faced by the president on his age and memory in the wake of a special counsel report on Biden’s handling of classified documents. The report noted that Biden had problems with memory and recall.
In many ways, now is the worst time to make other parties because elections are so close. If you elect a 3rd party senator or congressperson, you might tip the balance so your least favourite big party takes control.
But, say you think it is a great time to do it. What’s your realistic way to make it happen? The two big parties have control and they don’t want other parties.
I’m not saying for this election. I mean it’s a good time after this election. It takes time to build up steam for these things.
I also don’t care. I just look at how Europe has better options and how they run their elections. I would like to copy it. Because they also have the highest satisfaction as a citizen.
Europe has always had multiple parties. It’s possible to go from having multiple parties to functionally having only 2 parties. I don’t know of any case where it has gone the other way.
Look, for example, at how many parties were in the running for Germany’s first election after WWII:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1949_West_German_federal_election
The biggest party got just 30% of the vote. The 7th biggest party was still big enough to get 3% of the vote.
Or look at the history of French elections:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legislative_elections_in_France
Even in the 1700s, there were never fewer than 3 strong parties. Since the 1870s, it’s more typical to have at least 6 parties splitting the vote.
You can’t just magic that up, it has to start like that. Once it gets down to 2 parties (or one party) those two parties make it so that any vote for a 3rd party is effectively a thrown-away vote.