Voting for a third party in a majoritarian electoral system is functionally the same as abstaining. A majoritarian system is intended to produce a binary choice. And this situation is not “undemocratic” if the two parties are internally democratic, with factions and primaries and so on.
Here in Europe we have mostly PR systems with lots of parties in the final round - and we still have voters who whine that nothing’s good enough for them. Here they sometimes campaign for official recognition of blank votes, as if that would solve anything.
Personally I’m in favor of the proposition by which, if you abstain or vote blank, your name gets put onto a special lottery ballot and you risk finding yourself personally elected. Seems appropriate. After all, apparently these people think they can do better than everyone else.
The two parties aren’t democratic though. More so the Democrats who have a primary where the party still ultimately decides the winner with super delegates.
This is where is gets more complicated. To pol-sci specialists of authoritarian breakdown, American parties are in fact too democratic. The smoke-filled-room elitism of super delegates, and so on, has historically been a very good way to stop demagogues gaming the system. The essential reason you guys are having to suffer Trump is that the Republican party couldn’t stop him. The party had become an empty shell, a brand waiting to be taken over by whatever unscrupulous demagogue could win its primary. The Democrats, with their supposedly undemocratic super-delegates, are at this point America’s only genuine political party. It’s not a bug that the DNC leadership can assert a direction as you suggest, it’s a feature.
You’re the one that is loudly cheering for election fraud and calling it “too democratic”.
Telling me (a leftist that watched both parties get taken over by corporatists/fascists BECAUSE the DNC literally stepped in to artificially subvert the will of the voters in 2016, which allowed Trump to win easily) that the crimes that they committed were “too democratic” is enough to stoke the fires of rage against you for the rest of my life.
The Democrats, with their supposedly undemocratic super-delegates, are at this point America’s only genuine political party. It’s not a bug that the DNC leadership can assert a direction as you suggest, it’s a feature.
I’m beginning to understand why people clamor for better blocking features. I am just expressing a viewpoint and I have never so much as downvoted anyone else here, you included.
With your hysteria and insults and false accusations you are poisoning this discussion. I’m done here. Others will judge for themselves.
Populist candidates only succeed when there is massive discontent among voters. If either party had attempted to work for their voters he would be irrelevant. Arguing the people that caused the problem need more power is a non starter for me.
Trump became the GOP nominee in 2016 because the Clinton campaign claimed colluded to elevate him to the nomination in a “pied piper” strategy, because they believed he was the only candidate Clinton could beat.
The Dems continue this strategy still. They dump millions into the primary campaigns for far-right lunatics, because they don’t believe they can beat or differentiate themselves moderate republicans. And it’s not like this is a conspiracy- they openly defend this strategy.
Trump became the GOP nominee in 2016 because the Clinton campaign claimed colluded to elevate him to the nomination
This is conspiracism. Sure, it was convenient for the Democrats, but Trump did not get where he is “because” of Democrats. Trump became the nominee because the Republicans were a hollowed out party with nobody in charge and a voter base that become radicalized and completely unmoored from the official free-market ideology. The Democrats had nothing to do with that.
As for interfering in Republican campaigns since then, yeah sure, and it’s even a strategy that worked somewhat. I agree it’s cynical and risky and generally a bad idea.
It’s really pathetic bootlicking of the ‘party elites,’ and obscenely undemocratic, to insist that there needs to be someone “in charge” to overrule the democratic choices of the party base.
The “democratic choices of the party base” is precisely why you’ve got Trump on the ballot. Democracy is a good thing but you can have too much of a good thing. America’s founders understood this. They thought the electoral college would be the filter to prevent authoritarian populists getting into power. In the end it was the parties that ended up serving this purpose, until the Republican party broke. So, yes, I absolutely do think you would be better off as a country if your political system had an elitist mechanism to stop would-be dictators getting their hands on power.
I’m loving the lack of self-awareness. Trying to play both sides as if y’all love democracy, but losing your minds when anyone suggests any government that isn’t an oligarchy.
Yes, someone else made that point and I conceded it. Unfortunately the constructive bit of this discussion got drowned out by a couple of activist types who preferred to sling mud and ad hominen insults.
It would require a separate nominative register for the blank votes, sure. But the whiners complain that they are unheard. This solves that. If you want your “no preference” added up and counted, then sure, but you have to be ready to be elected yourself. Seems fair to me. Democracy does not work without participation. People who opt out are effectively voting against democracy and they should own that fact.
There is absolutely no situation in which I would be okay with one of these people being in a leadership position. They’ve proven that they can’t be bothered to do the basic citizen’s duty of caring about politics enough to cast a vote at all, and you want to put them in charge of operating the government? No.
So at what point does low turnout become a problem, and how would you propose to fix that? The system we have depends on people voting and running for election. For every additional person who opts out, the legitimacy of the elected politicians falls, the scope of what they can get done is narrowed, and the relative voice of those who do vote becomes louder - these people typically being richer and more powerful already. It’s a problem. Forcing citizens to take responsibility is one solution.
My point is that this system is not necessarily undemocratic, and indeed that it can even be too democratic. It all depends on the internal setup of the two parties. The Republican party is definitely a “sham of a democracy” in that it has too much of it. In Sweden no Trump figure can take over the government because the parties will stop him. In the USA in the past, the Republican party would have served the same purpose.
THEY ARE PRIVATE ORGANIZATIONS THAT ARE NOT SUBJECT TO FEDERAL ELECTION LAWS AND THEREFORE THEIR PRIMARIES ARE ACTUALLY LITERALLY ANTI-DEMOCRATIC SHAMS THAT PRETEND TO BE UNBIASED WHILE ADMITTING TO BEING BIASED IN LEGAL PROCEEDINGS WHERE THEIR INTEGRITY WAS CALLED INTO QUESTION.
We saw that twice with how the Democrats treated Bernie. And when the DNC was sued for it, they argued publicly in court in Florida that it’s their right to rig primaries.
✊🏼
The situation we are in today was influenced and pushed so hard by the Clintons that I’m tempted to start a tour where we drive by the Clinton mansion and show people the family that did the most damage to the working class in the United States. To me, it’s almost unfathomable how much better a country we’d have been without rampant neoliberalism. Manufacturing would still be here, Temu wouldn’t exist, global warming wouldn’t be even remotely as bad as it is since we had a whole government intent on shipping everything from China for the past 30 years, unions would still exist, college would be covered by taxes, we’d have Single Payer, etc.
If you haven’t heard about it, look into the DLC. They were formed with the purpose of pushing the DNC (the de-facto “left wing” of the FPTP US political system) to the right.
It’s no coincidence that their archives were sealed and locked up into the Clinton Foundation archives.
Even if everything you wrote is true, none of it applies to the United States because we have the electoral college. Sorry, but it’s not Europe, and we have our own weird system.
The electoral college does invalidate my argument about third parties. To vote for a third party in the US electoral system is effectively to surrender one’s vote to other voters.
Percentage of votes for a given party can affect debate and ballot access, and federal funding. So it’s not worthless, it just isn’t deciding the president.
Yes, good point. Effectively, what I argued only applies to swing states. Completely agree that people should always vote anyway, for the reasons you outline.
Voting for a third party in a majoritarian electoral system is functionally the same as abstaining. A majoritarian system is intended to produce a binary choice. And this situation is not “undemocratic” if the two parties are internally democratic, with factions and primaries and so on.
Here in Europe we have mostly PR systems with lots of parties in the final round - and we still have voters who whine that nothing’s good enough for them. Here they sometimes campaign for official recognition of blank votes, as if that would solve anything.
Personally I’m in favor of the proposition by which, if you abstain or vote blank, your name gets put onto a special lottery ballot and you risk finding yourself personally elected. Seems appropriate. After all, apparently these people think they can do better than everyone else.
The two parties aren’t democratic though. More so the Democrats who have a primary where the party still ultimately decides the winner with super delegates.
This is where is gets more complicated. To pol-sci specialists of authoritarian breakdown, American parties are in fact too democratic. The smoke-filled-room elitism of super delegates, and so on, has historically been a very good way to stop demagogues gaming the system. The essential reason you guys are having to suffer Trump is that the Republican party couldn’t stop him. The party had become an empty shell, a brand waiting to be taken over by whatever unscrupulous demagogue could win its primary. The Democrats, with their supposedly undemocratic super-delegates, are at this point America’s only genuine political party. It’s not a bug that the DNC leadership can assert a direction as you suggest, it’s a feature.
This person is such a fascist that they’re pretending anti-democratic cheating is a “feature of democracy”.
Chill. Your arguments would be more persuasive that way.
These aren’t arguments. They’re facts.
You’re the one that is loudly cheering for election fraud and calling it “too democratic”.
Telling me (a leftist that watched both parties get taken over by corporatists/fascists BECAUSE the DNC literally stepped in to artificially subvert the will of the voters in 2016, which allowed Trump to win easily) that the crimes that they committed were “too democratic” is enough to stoke the fires of rage against you for the rest of my life.
Please stop insulting me and accusing me of things I didn’t say. Thank you.
You literally said these things. Stop trolling.
I’m beginning to understand why people clamor for better blocking features. I am just expressing a viewpoint and I have never so much as downvoted anyone else here, you included.
With your hysteria and insults and false accusations you are poisoning this discussion. I’m done here. Others will judge for themselves.
Populist candidates only succeed when there is massive discontent among voters. If either party had attempted to work for their voters he would be irrelevant. Arguing the people that caused the problem need more power is a non starter for me.
Trump became the GOP nominee in 2016 because the Clinton campaign claimed colluded to elevate him to the nomination in a “pied piper” strategy, because they believed he was the only candidate Clinton could beat.
The Dems continue this strategy still. They dump millions into the primary campaigns for far-right lunatics, because they don’t believe they can beat or differentiate themselves moderate republicans. And it’s not like this is a conspiracy- they openly defend this strategy.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/09/12/democrats-interfere-republican-primaries/
This is conspiracism. Sure, it was convenient for the Democrats, but Trump did not get where he is “because” of Democrats. Trump became the nominee because the Republicans were a hollowed out party with nobody in charge and a voter base that become radicalized and completely unmoored from the official free-market ideology. The Democrats had nothing to do with that.
As for interfering in Republican campaigns since then, yeah sure, and it’s even a strategy that worked somewhat. I agree it’s cynical and risky and generally a bad idea.
https://www.salon.com/2016/11/09/the-hillary-clinton-campaign-intentionally-created-donald-trump-with-its-pied-piper-strategy/
It’s really pathetic bootlicking of the ‘party elites,’ and obscenely undemocratic, to insist that there needs to be someone “in charge” to overrule the democratic choices of the party base.
The “democratic choices of the party base” is precisely why you’ve got Trump on the ballot. Democracy is a good thing but you can have too much of a good thing. America’s founders understood this. They thought the electoral college would be the filter to prevent authoritarian populists getting into power. In the end it was the parties that ended up serving this purpose, until the Republican party broke. So, yes, I absolutely do think you would be better off as a country if your political system had an elitist mechanism to stop would-be dictators getting their hands on power.
I’m loving the lack of self-awareness. Trying to play both sides as if y’all love democracy, but losing your minds when anyone suggests any government that isn’t an oligarchy.
Either an astroturfer or bootlicker.
Throwing around insults doesn’t get you to win the argument.
Ballot access and federal funding are tied to federal elections, so it’s functionally something. Ballot access is actually useful to states.
Yes, someone else made that point and I conceded it. Unfortunately the constructive bit of this discussion got drowned out by a couple of activist types who preferred to sling mud and ad hominen insults.
That last paragraph doesn’t work in a secret ballot system.
It would require a separate nominative register for the blank votes, sure. But the whiners complain that they are unheard. This solves that. If you want your “no preference” added up and counted, then sure, but you have to be ready to be elected yourself. Seems fair to me. Democracy does not work without participation. People who opt out are effectively voting against democracy and they should own that fact.
There is absolutely no situation in which I would be okay with one of these people being in a leadership position. They’ve proven that they can’t be bothered to do the basic citizen’s duty of caring about politics enough to cast a vote at all, and you want to put them in charge of operating the government? No.
So at what point does low turnout become a problem, and how would you propose to fix that? The system we have depends on people voting and running for election. For every additional person who opts out, the legitimacy of the elected politicians falls, the scope of what they can get done is narrowed, and the relative voice of those who do vote becomes louder - these people typically being richer and more powerful already. It’s a problem. Forcing citizens to take responsibility is one solution.
You’re not mentioning the biggest reason for this: First Past the Post.
We have two corrupt parties in the US. A literal sham of a democracy. The UK has FPTP too and it shows. They’ll lose NHS pretty soon because of it.
I did mention it, “majoritarian” means FPTP.
My point is that this system is not necessarily undemocratic, and indeed that it can even be too democratic. It all depends on the internal setup of the two parties. The Republican party is definitely a “sham of a democracy” in that it has too much of it. In Sweden no Trump figure can take over the government because the parties will stop him. In the USA in the past, the Republican party would have served the same purpose.
They’re both sham parties you strangely disingenuous fascist
The internal setup of the two parties is that
THEY ARE PRIVATE ORGANIZATIONS THAT ARE NOT SUBJECT TO FEDERAL ELECTION LAWS AND THEREFORE THEIR PRIMARIES ARE ACTUALLY LITERALLY ANTI-DEMOCRATIC SHAMS THAT PRETEND TO BE UNBIASED WHILE ADMITTING TO BEING BIASED IN LEGAL PROCEEDINGS WHERE THEIR INTEGRITY WAS CALLED INTO QUESTION.
They are an anti-democratic sham.
We saw that twice with how the Democrats treated Bernie. And when the DNC was sued for it, they argued publicly in court in Florida that it’s their right to rig primaries.
✊🏼 The situation we are in today was influenced and pushed so hard by the Clintons that I’m tempted to start a tour where we drive by the Clinton mansion and show people the family that did the most damage to the working class in the United States. To me, it’s almost unfathomable how much better a country we’d have been without rampant neoliberalism. Manufacturing would still be here, Temu wouldn’t exist, global warming wouldn’t be even remotely as bad as it is since we had a whole government intent on shipping everything from China for the past 30 years, unions would still exist, college would be covered by taxes, we’d have Single Payer, etc.
If you haven’t heard about it, look into the DLC. They were formed with the purpose of pushing the DNC (the de-facto “left wing” of the FPTP US political system) to the right.
It’s no coincidence that their archives were sealed and locked up into the Clinton Foundation archives.
Thank you for the reply and the info. I’ll read up on them.
Even if everything you wrote is true, none of it applies to the United States because we have the electoral college. Sorry, but it’s not Europe, and we have our own weird system.
The electoral college does invalidate my argument about third parties. To vote for a third party in the US electoral system is effectively to surrender one’s vote to other voters.
Percentage of votes for a given party can affect debate and ballot access, and federal funding. So it’s not worthless, it just isn’t deciding the president.
Yes, good point. Effectively, what I argued only applies to swing states. Completely agree that people should always vote anyway, for the reasons you outline.