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.
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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Sadly it is just as easy to just squash the protest and be done with it. France has major problems with riots since a while. Mostly because of racism, police violence and inescapable poverty.
So who does Macron blame for the riots? TikTok and parents who didn’t teach their children how to behave correctly.
What does he do? Kart in more police with heavier anti-riot gear.
Same with Russia, Turkey or Poland. People don’t like the government? No problem, just grad random people from the protests and send them to a gulag. The rest of the protesters will get scared and fall in line. Done.
Sure, at some point a tipping point might come. Then you get a revolution or a civil war, and then the dice are in the air. Could be you get a new, super democratic government that tries to fix the system. Or you could get a military dictatorship. You never know.
Sorry, I am pretty disilusioned by all this. Representative democracy just makes it too easy for populism to blind the electorate (“Don’t look at me, while I shovel lots of government money into my pockets, look at the evil immigrant over there!”), and there is far too much temptation for corrupt politicians to extend their power.
And there are no real checks and balances in any system I have seen so far.
E.g. the USA: Yeah, the house, the senate, the president, the surpreme court and all, they should separate the power and they should check and balance eachother. Problem is, the writers of the constitution totally forgot that parties could be a thing. And the checks and balances just plainly don’t work if all these offices are dominated by the same party.
Yeah, my last response was way too half-baked, I didn’t really put as much thought into it as I thought I had, and I didn’t like how close I was getting to sounding like I wanted violence (even though I don’t). So I deleted it, to avoid spreading these worrisome comments (to myself, anyway) any more than I already did. I’m not sure exactly how effective “deleting” really is on a federated network like this, which I’m very new to, and I also don’t want to annoy people by deleting comments after they reply to them. So I’m sorry for being annoying, if I have been, and hopefully I’ll have some better takes once I get more used to being on Lemmy.
Relevant video regarding the UK, which is in a similar situation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YoLJ1ggJ3P0
That was an interesting video, and I either didn’t realize or it just didn’t “click” in my head that it was possible for FPTP to lead to wins with even less than 50% of the vote. Now that I think about it, I looked up the US situation on Wikipedia, and yes, in most states FPTP is used but it’s possible to win with a “plurality” (largest number of votes in the state or district, but not necessarily 50% or more)! The point about there being no advantage to getting more than 50% (of votes, not seats) still stands, and it still can be advantageous up till that point, but confusing plurality for “majority” (strictly 50% or more) still bit me. I’ll add a note to my original comment to reflect that. Thanks for the good link!
I really like TLDR news. They are good!
Yeah, while you are at at, look up Gerrymandering. That’s drawing electoral districts in a way so that your own party gets ~55% in most districts, with the opposition voters bunched up in few districts, so that they ideally get >90% of the votes in these districts. In FTTP systems, every vote above 50% is lost, so that way you can make the opposition lose lots of seats.
And that’s only one way to hack the system, when you are in power. Another option that is widely used is vote suppression. If e.g. the opposition voters tend to be poor, and tend to not have any photo ID (as is the case in many areas in the USA), then you can just introduce a law that makes it mandatory to have photo ID, so that many opposition voters cannot vote.
Or you can make a certain level of English knowledge mandatory, to prohibit some minority groups from voting.
And if you have a look at the US presidential election, this becomes more striking. The last time a republican actually won the popular vote was in 2004, when George W. Bush was re-elected. But even when he was elected for the first time, in 2000, he did lose the popular vote.
The last time a republican came into the office winning the popular vote was in 1988, when George H. W. Bush came into office.
If the US had a popular vote system, the democrats would have won 7 of the last 8 elections, instead of 4 out of 8.
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.
In Canada our current prime minister had campaigned on changing us from a FPTP to something else. In the end he commissioned a team to discuss feasibility of changing and they came back with the result that it’s not worth. Probably because of all of the reasons outlined. We also need electoral reform, especially at a provincial level. Our federal elections have 5 main parties that receive votes but only 3 that are actually contenders for PM. But at a provincial level it’s way more likely to be 2 parties FPTP. At least those have been my observations as an Albertan. I may be a bit off on some things, if I am I’m sure someone will point it out 👍.
I like your pm
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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.
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.
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”
Until ranked choice for president
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.
Good luck electing anyone not in the two party system.
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.
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.
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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.
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.
Yeah, I certainly didn’t think “progressive” when I read the name. It sounds like they’re afraid to say what they are, which is a common far-right strategy.
I’ve been saying it since 2000 and I’ll keep on saying it: the time to push for third parties is every year except election year. We need election reform first. The current system simply does not allow for a meaningful election between more than two parties. It cannot represent the will of the people. It needs to change.
It’s very both-sidesy. I think we’re all smart enough at this point to be able to see through that equivocating bullshit.
They’re basically enlightened centrists
Centrists in 2023 are just MAGAts who don’t want the shame
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.
I don’t know my friend who almost died from COVID and blamed me for viral shedding from the vax seems to like him. Then again he voted maga so not quite the group they are trying to spoil.
Yeah that’s weird right? RFK also only seems to find a voice on notorious Right wing networks too, from Joe Rogan to NewsMax and Fox News, what Democrats do they think they’re pulling from those audiences?
Also it’s crazy how antivaxx used to be considered a far left or “hippy dippy” movement, but now it’s a requirement for at least the MAGA faction, if not the whole Republican party.
RFK is a registered as and running as a democrat, and afaik has no affiliation with “no labels”.
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.
No labels is just a bunch of rich white dudes that want tax laws and legislation that makes them richer. They could not care less about social policy.
Yeah pretty much. It’s always such a big tell.
Lol
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.
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.
The point of this entire post is to try to illustrate how you do not have to buy out an entire political party, when you only have to get to those on the margins of a majority.
You put all democrats into a little box, things are more nuanced than that. Yes, people with tons of money have tons of influence is US politics, this post illustrates specific names and examples.
Do you have anything to add to this conversation, or do you just want to paint with broad strokes?
I will paint party politics with broad strokes because that is exactly what party politics is. Collectives representing collectives. You don’t get to individualise it as and when it suits you, then collectivise it as and when it suits you at other times.
The path of America from now until its end is liberals increasingly doing nothing to prevent the declining standards of living of millions of people while enriching the people they actually represent up until the population becomes so alienated that they give up on them. Then? Fascism. Until the country is torn into pieces.
There is no off ramp. And I will continue to advocate that people organise around planning for this inevitability through means outside of the useless dems ushering in this fascism. Anything else is morally reprehensible.
The Supreme Court just decided that businesses refusing business to protected minorities is free speech. The door is open for segregation again. What are the Dems going to do about it? Actually fucking use any powers in their hands or just tell people to voooooooote? They’ll do nothing, because they’re complicit.
Not a fan of todays supreme court decisions today either.
The rest of your response is unhinged, I’m going to keep going to my day job, and voting for the most progressive candidates.
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.
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Is labour still even left of Democrats? Their anti trans courting and behavior speaks volumes.
Pink washing doesn’t make the party “left”. It doesn’t absolve the democrats of being warmongers, global keepers of imperialism, upholders of torture facilities or the border concentration camps full of children.
What makes them left or right is where they sit economically as representatives of the capitalist class, the millionaires and billionaires.
Even David Cameron, former leader of the Tories, is to the left of Biden.
I absolutely agree that Labour throwing trans people under a bus is abhorrent though. Unfortunately with the way things are there is no left spoiler alternative to go for, although the Greens will probably function as one they’re very far from what the those of us in the third of the country who fought for Corbyn believe in.
What reform, exactly?
Ranked choice voting, fix gerrymandering and voter suppression, end disenfranchisement of felons. Such things. I would love to hear any ideas if you or lemmy had some.
Lots of people say and think that Biden is too old and demented but his has been the best Democratic presidency in 50 years.
Care to say why he’s the best in 50 years ? I for one think Obama is hard to beat.
Don’t confuse president with presidency. Obama did a poor job of negotiation and was unable to achieve any give and take with republicans. Biden just prevented a government shutdown and has passed far more progressive legislation and has made much more decisive decisions. Biden’s DOD knew Putin was going to attack Ukraine for months and prepared for it.
Biden’s DOD knew Putin was going to attack Ukraine for months and prepared for it.
As if that matters to a wage earner.
Under both Obama and Biden, the following statements are true for at least 40,000,000 Americans (probably a whole lot more now): You need multiple jobs to live. You can’t afford health care. You can’t afford to educate yourself or your kids. The majority of the taxes you pay go overseas to fight between eight and ten wars, some of which aren’t ours. Israel gets more in aid from your tax dollars than you do. You are never more than one paycheck away from being ruined and homeless.
We’re likely going to be an outright fascist state within the next ten years because Democrats, when we gave them power, used it to make the rich wealthier. It’s that simple.
Loool. Is this a joke?
Republican policies have destroyed the middle class since Reagan. You just said “you can’t afford to educate yourself or your kids” yet fail to acknowledge Biden’s student loan forgiveness plan.
You are complaining about problems ENTIRELY CAUSED BY REPUBLICANS yet are blaming Democrats. You call when the shuttle lands crazy man.
Why does no one making this kind of dumbass comment ever acknowledge the very obvious role that Republican obstruction has played in stopping any Democratic attempt to fix this shit in the past 40 years?
Stop gerrymandering, implement approval voting (easier for most people to understand than ranked choice), watch good legislation actually get passed.
Is this comment satirical?
So do you have anything of value to contribute? All of your comments seem to just be criticizing Democrats for ‘40 years of doing nothing’. When the choice is between fascists and status quo, there’s one choice. It sucks but all we can do is try to pursue the Democratic establishment to push progressive changes. Obama wasted opportunity with control of the Senate, but Biden hasn’t had the same luxury. Trump appointment SCJs also set back progress.
Third party literally isn’t an option, otherwise we’ll get more fascists because everything center and right is content voting against any progress to maintain white ‘supremacy’ and ‘family values’ (read Oppression of minority groups and female autonomy).
We’re forced to work with the system we have and the parent commenter makes sincere note of necessary changes that would make it possible to maybe not be in the position where we’re forced to choose between the lesser of two evils.
But go on with your sarcastic dissent, it’s really helping progress. Fucking pathetic.
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.
Biden has accomplished alot of big things actually, they just aren’t culture war issues so Republicans have never heard of any of them.
nonetheless, Biden still sounds far, far more coherent than Trump ever did when President
“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.
Yeah but what about drag queens and fighting about childrens movies? Clearly those issues are far more important than infrastructure, strengthening the economy and taking care of veterans
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:
They’re both far from the best the USA has to offer, but it’s better to understand and attack the structural barriers to viable 3rd parties here than to get pissed off at the state of disenfranchisement of the average voter and elect a ’ wild card’ out of spite
undefined> attack the structural barriers to viable 3rd parties
Which starts by voting third party and ignoring people who parrot nonsense like “a vote for X is a vote for Y”.
Nope, terrible idea. You’ve walked into their trap card: First past the post voting. It takes advantage of your impatience and lack of understanding of the system to lure you into throwing your vote away.
I’d say it starts with bringing ranked or approval voting to your state, supporting voter initiatives in your state that erode the 2 party systems power.
You need to understand
- how party primaries function to prevent real candidates from getting in
- how the 2 parties have sequestered funding and resources that the other parties don’t have access to
- how the 2 parties have changed the US government to entrench their power
Nope, that’s nonsense that just reinforces the existing dual party structure. The statement ‘throwing your vote away’ is the first sign you’re on the wrong track.
I want a viable third party as much as you do. I’d like to actually have a choice instead of always choosing Democrats because I’m not insane. But third party votes aren’t the way to change that. I think plenty of people have mentioned the game theory and FPTP, so I’d like to touch on two other points.
For one, if you look at the third parties, they’re laughable. They aren’t even serious about winning! What power would a Green or Libertarian president even have if they somehow won but Congress was still just Democrat or Republican? This is an important litmus test with these parties. You don’t grow top down. You field every election, but your priorities are local and state. If you want to be a serious national contender, you need to start influencing local and state elections. Then, elections for the House and Senate. And finally, president. You need candidates who have plenty of experience throughout government, and right now no third party can offer that. The fact that they only care about the presidency tells us something very important. They’re only in it for the grift. It’s their cash cow. Hell, look at their platform, and you don’t need to even be against third parties to vote against them. Vaccine hesitancy and anti nuclear are instant rejections from me.
Second, it does actually seem like we could see a third large party, and it isn’t from any current third party. Republicans are heavily fractured. There’s sharp divisions between the extremist Trump wing and the more moderate and establishment Republicans. It’s very possible the Trump wing breaks into its own party, especially if Trump doesn’t seem like he’ll be the GOP nominee. We can examine this dynamic. The faction is probably 10-15% of Americans, which puts them at the third largest. And if they become a new party, it’ll be after having exploited the Republicans to get themselves off the ground, and they’ll be taking some infrastructure and voter networks with them. There’s also the possibility that a third party forms if Republicans do disastrously in the next elections, but that’s a way more involved situation.
In my world history class, we learned about two men who disliked the Catholic Church’s corruption and wanted to see it cleansed. One was Martin Luther, who left and made his own successful sect. The other is Erasmus, who worked within the church and eventually brought about the changes he wanted to see. Luther may have influenced matters at the time, but it still took someone like Erasmus to create the change. So, who in the end was actually successful with their goal to purge corruption? Erasmus, by working within the system. Luther was quite successful, but he failed horribly at his original goal.
Vote for who you want in the primary, but in the general, vote blue no matter who. We’ve already seen that this works at changing the party. This is why there’s now a prominent progressive wing, and why Biden, a moderate, has championed progressive legislation. It’s much easier to co-opt and use an existing system.
go back to the fox news grandpa
tbh I think if Biden gets reelected, america will inevitably collapse as a nation. we’re already close to the tipping point and biden has done nothing but accelerate that collapse.
Biden has been as milquetoast as possible. The fact that the right is becoming more and more unhinged only shows how off the rails they are.
I think biden is actually an extremist in social policy, and an emboldend corporate shill in economic policy. So while he might be “milquetoast” in terms of democrat vs republican, he’s far from what regular people want/need.
Ironically, most establishment republicans are also this way. They’re happy to push insane social policy stuff, while bootlicking the corporations.
I honestly think that the GOP will probably split or collapse due to the establishment GOP’s resistance to their populist voterbase. Democrats call it ‘unhinged’ but when informal polls show literally hitler as preferable by both left and right to biden/trump, I would say that both dnc/gop are the unhinged ones, not the people sick of the two parties.
“milquetoast” is the literal polar opposite of what we need right now.
I would like to see those polls.
See here. Obviously informal, obviously people expressing “as a joke” or just trolling. These polls bias towards right wing followers. But still revealing nonetheless. In my circles I’m seeing both far left and far right move towards populist “centrist” rhetoric and labeling. Andrew Yang’s Forward Party being emblematic of that (who I just found out support No Labels).
We also saw things like Jimmy Dore go onto Tucker Carlson’s show, both Dore and Carlson expressing discontent with the Biden/Trump matchup, and both being pushed out from more establishment MSM/DNC/GOP stuff.
To me it looks pretty clear that many people are eager for drastic change, in a way that would clearly benefit and help the average person; with severe opposition to the establishment talking points and organizations. We also recently saw this with the covid stuff, both far left and far right joining to express skepticism over the mainstream establishment narrative.
People are very clearly upset with the way DC politics are going. Biden is historically unpopular with everyone except his core base and progressives. Trump is pretty universally disliked except among the right (who are growing discontent with him).
When I say a Biden election will lead to the collapse of America I say this mainly because I see the way things will go in the next few years if Biden gets reelected. The automation crisis will worsen, wealth inequality will worsen, progressive extremism will worsen, geopolitical conflict will worsen, the border crisis will worsen. And when push comes to shove it’s obvious to most people that biden will side with the larger wef/un agendas.
America is starting to reach around 250 years, which is historically shown to be the point of collapse for empires. The establishment organizations are planning for a big 2030 political event, and I’m sure already have an entire plan for 2028 election. I imagine growing discontent with a biden or trump second term will roll in nicely to people flocking to the candidate picked for 2028 who will almost certainly be addressing automation crisis and geopolitics.
Most people are aware biden and trump are awful, and do not like them. Most people already do not vote. and those who do vote feel “stuck” with biden/trump. Many are saying things like “I don’t like biden, but I vote for him because I don’t like Trump” and vice versa.
Strong action is needed, but not the kind that Biden is doing.
And Donald trump will be better? He did more harm in his 4years than biden has in his
If trump gets elected, america will also inevitably collapse. neither are equipped to handle the upcoming issues.
Forgot to mention, they have no Platform.
Their website suggests they’ll be releasing policy positions later this summer. Seems that they’ll announce a candidate in april if they’re running.
This is the most absurd part of No Labels. You don’t get into politics first, then decide why your doing it later. Platforms are built with planks, planks are the individual policy positions. These people just stand in the middle telling people to get along, suggesting nothing.
I feel like Trump will be running as a spoiler candidate in 2024 at this rate.
I just want to live my life without being harassed tbh. I vote D, but they are largely all corporate shills at the presidential level. I don’t know what else to say. The money involved in politics sort of makes the whole thing a farce imo.
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.
The term millionaire ought to be updated to mean someone with the capacity to spend a million dollars at any given time, not people whose assets total 1 million
I would wager the former definition includes more bad people than the latter
There’s Batman!
(yes, I know he’s fictional.)
He probably donates to ALL parties. That being said, business does not like rule changes (laws) being made. This entire party is made of people who stopped legislation in favor of big money people. Under ‘Domestic Policies’ on the wiki there is this “Efforts to block tax increases on the wealthiest Americans and corporations, especially in 2021 and 2022, have been attributed to No Labels by The Intercept[11] and Jacobin.[12]”
I mean, if you’re a wage earner in this country, all the candidates are spoilers.
Thats not what spoiler means
Agreed. Working Class people must vote for a Working Class party. A party that tells everyone from the Professional/Managerial Class to Small Business Owners to the super-rich: fuck off, we don’t want your votes and we don’t want your money.
If I was the the maga or republicans right now I would fund as many leftist third parties as possible as the best way to secure a trump victory
See also: Forward party, both parties have lots of catchy slogans about working together or moving forward. Yet no platform.
And they will.
The problem is they don’t have to lie about how bad Democrats have been for the people. (Not that Republicans would be any better, mind you.)
Most Americans have seen their cost of living jump 30%-50% under Joe Biden, and Biden’s response is to send $100 billion overseas to fight another country’s war, not to give a dime of aid to people here who actually need it.
Are you seriously claiming that Ukrainians do not need help? Try losing your kid to a bomb on a pizza restaurant. Wonder how the real estate market in Mariupol is.
So does Yemen, but you know what has the US been doing? Helping Saudi Arabia starve and decimate the country for the last eight years.
And your fellow Americans are being neglected in order to fund all of this. I’m not sure why it’s such a radical notion that maybe, just maybe that hundred billion should be used to benefit our own people instead of funding yet another war.
Dont forget funding Israel to do the same thing to Palestine that they say the Russians are doing to Ukraine.
They don’t speak of such things when a Democrat is in charge.
There’s a remarkable level of racism in the level of concern for Ukraine vs. somewhere with less white and European people like Yemen.
The war in Ukraine is definitely easier to market, and I think that’s why.
And it infuriates me how war - people getting killed and cultural heritage being destroyed - is so capitalized like that.
Pretty sure it was the same deal with Vietnam back in the day, actually.
Sudan is imploding right now
Great post. I feel for the people of Ukraine, the Russian aggression is not acceptable, but it is their war not our war {though we are doing as much as possible to make it out war).
There’s just a part of me that gets really frustrated with how generally ignorant our people are of US warmongering worldwide, and they see the nightly news broadcasts about Ukraine and they’ve bought into the narrative.
Reminds me of when Bush I pushed the lie about babies being killed in Iraqi hospitals in order to get more public support for his war, and the endless funding that came with it.
Wikipedia article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_Labels
So the rightist want to appeal to the voters to appear like they are not partisan and instead are just bunch of centrist?
No. They want to peel away the Democratic vote by promoting fake leftist parties.
Ew, Crispy Enema’s in on this? That’s all the information I need to shun this scheme. We HAAAAATE Crispy Enema here in Arizona. Plus she’s a terrible dresser. She came into Congress one day to vote down an important bill while wearing this overblown yellow dress with huge shoulder pads. I was like, “You’re a senator, not Jor-El from the planet Krypton.”
